Prince Edward Island

When you get to my age, you’ve been wrong so many times, you get so you expect it. I didn’t think you could get great food on Prince Edward Island.  After all, who ever heard of P.E.I .cuisine?  I predicted that my visit was certainly not going to be gastro-tourism.  I’d heard it is nice there, but at mealtime I expected to be underwhelmed.

I was pleasantly not surprised to find I’d added one more faulty prediction to my lengthening list. Nice is an appropriate adjective for PEI.  It’s an island of rolling farmland.  There are fields of corn, but it isn’t Iowa.  These are family farms.   There are lovely beaches, a light house or two, and very little else to attract crowds.  The people are friendly. 

Nothing these days is trendier than locavore cuisine, but on Prince Edward Island it’s just what they’ve always had.  Why would they go elsewhere to get ingredients?  Of course the farming is sustainable. It has to be.  Since you’re on an island, the seafood is fresh.  The cooking is simple, but what better way to treat such amazing food?

The hottest tourist attraction on the island is the town of Cavendish, the home of Anne of Green Gables.  Well of course Anne Shirley is a fictional character, but her creator, Lucy Maud Montgomery, lived there, and the house that inspired her story is preserved. 

The book Anne of Green Gables so charmed Annette in her childhood that she had always wanted to visit Prince Edward Island, so there we were.  Even I, who have read the book, felt a pang when I explored the house and came to door of Anne’s room.  Yes I know Anne is a made up person and never lived in a room.  Even Lucy Montgomery never lived in the house, so it wasn’t her room either, but sometimes you forget reality when you’re under the spell of a good book. 

This being the biggest tourist attraction in the province, there are collateral lures. I was a little disturbed to see the bright plastic of Shining Waters Fun Park and even more so to find that Cavendish has its own Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, where you can see a two-headed sheep, a hand painted vampire bat, and a twenty foot section of the Berlin Wall. 

My alarm dissolved when I realized that’s about all the blight there is.The area is like Cape Cod as envisioned by Patty Paige. There are no condos or McMansions or even cottage clutter to block your ocean view.  There are tourist cabins, but few motels.  There’s not a fast food restaurant in sight. If your children are bored with all the scenery, they can play miniature golf. 

And when you have explored the Haunted Wood and wandered down Lover’s lane, which were named by the young Prince Edward Island author whose sweet naiveté charmed thousands, you can have dinner at Chez Yvonne’s. It is a sizable restaurant with a deck. Located as it is in the center of a tourist area, one might assume that its owner would figure that his patronage consisted of one-time visitors, who wouldn’t be back no matter how good the food.  But if you order turkey soup, the turkey is fresh killed from the farm of a relative.  The fish is brought daily to local wharfs, and the deserts are freshly made.

Our waitress was so friendly, she was thankful that it was September, and the crowds had vanished so she had time to find out where we were from and what we thought of her island home.  Chez Yvonne’s was about to close for the season , and the mistress of the tiny nearby post office said that in a few weeks you could fire a cannon down Route 6 without the danger of hitting anyone. 

There is still a narrow road in Plymouth that in my father’s youth was the way to Cape Cod.  There is a grade called Blacksnake hill that is so steep they used to drive the Model T’s up backwards so the fuel tank behind the driver would be above the motor and the gravity feed would still bring gas to the engine.  The date I think about is 1910, the year my house was built and the insurance agency I used to own was bought by my Grandfather.  Instead of a park on Water Street, there were wharfs and ships chandleries, and seamen’s saloons. 

I like to imagine Plymouth and Cape Cod as they must have been in those days, and the closest I can come to it is Prince Edward Island.  I want to go back and spend more time getting to know the people, wandering the countryside, and eating the beautiful food.  The twenty-first century looms offshore.  It has already enveloped much of Nova Scotia, but the countryside of Anne Shirley still exists, and it is worth the trip.