Prince Edward Island
To get to Prince Edward Island, you drive, and drive, and drive. It is just over a thousand miles from my home in Harrisburg, Pa. Even from Boston, it is nearly 600 miles. That distance has protected the island from the mass tourism that overwhelms beautiful islands along the Atlantic Coast in the U.S. You can buy oceanfront property here for a fraction of what you would pay further south, and the water is warm in summer, not frigid at all.
We came here because my eldest daughter was accepted into the one-week veterinary camp at the Atlantic Veterinary College of the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown. She's the only American in the camp this week. The school is a good one, with a special research interest into diseases of fish and shellfish, two mainstays (along with potatoes) of the local economy. This morning she observed "large animal surgery," probably on a horse. I'm waiting to hear how that went. The school (as opposed to the camp) takes 18 Americans or other foreigners into each year's class of 60. Students from the Maritime Provinces of Canada pay a subsidized $9,500 a year, and Americans pay $44,000 a year for tuition, room, and board.
The Canadian dollar is nearly at par with the U.S. dollar. Just a few years ago, it was worth 66 cents to the U.S. dollar and travel here was dirt cheap. An article in the Toronto Globe and Mail this morning attributed the rising Canadian dollar to the rise in world oil prices--Canada is a major supplier of oil to America--and to the U.S. trade deficit with China, a persistent and damaging drain on our economy.
Prince Edward Island is one of the whitest places I've ever been. Blacks and Asians are nearly non-existent here. The island is also one of the more friendly and well-mannered places you'll ever hope to visit. IIt is almost unnerving. Drivers automatically stop for pedestrians, even in the absence of a crosswalk (note to Prince Edward Islanders--don't expect that in Harrisburg, Pa.). We had a flat tire yesterday and pulled onto a side road. While I was in the process of changing it, a complete stranger stopped and made sure we were okay. He recommended a place to get a new tire and said he would swing past later to check on us.
We're staying in Crescent Isle Cottages on Tracadie Bay, down a long dirt road where we regularly see a mother fox and her cubs. There are scores of similar cottage colonies on PEI set up to serve, primarily, middle-class Canadian tourists. I walked down to the bay on Sunday night with my wife and a man and woman and their dog were digging clams. The bay is a major source of blue mussels. This is seafood heaven, although cheap lobster is as distant a memory here as it is anywhere else. You can buy them fresh for $12.95 a pound, which isn't bad, but the famous lobster suppers cost about $30 a head.
All in all, this is a special place, far enough from the world to seem lost in time, yet close enough to have all the modern conveniences.