Edward Island Culture

Edward Island Culture

The ice of the Hillsborough River lies beneath the hooves of fifty teams of draft horses, all moving simultaneously to pull the sixty foot long building known as St. Andrew's Chapel. The pace is slow, but steady until the building drops into the water at the channel. Two days, twenty miles, and an enormous amount of horse power later the oldest Roman Catholic church was set on Charlottetown soil to be used as a convent school (Bruce 40). As is illustrated in this scene, horses should be recognized as having an influential role in molding Prince Edward Island's culture. As one of the first animals brought to the island, horses were necessary to live and were therefore needed for a large portion of daily activities. Without the usage of equine, ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...There are countless ways to describe the rare "way of life" present on the island, but farming is essential to an accurate explanation. Although farming remains one of the major industries on Prince Edward Island today, tourism and other service industries have recently outnumbered it. The future of farming on the island is very uncertain. Recent trends suggest that the farming industry, like the horses that started it, will eventually be a minority on Prince Edward Island. However, this does not mean that Islanders will easily forget their history. Marian Bruce states, "[i]n a sense, Prince Edward Island's horse society reflected rural life in the rest of Canada, but Islanders kept more horses per capita, protested more vociferously when the gasoline engine invaded, and clung longer to their horse–powered way of life," (Bruce 9). The physical aspects of the island may be changing to remain relevant in the ever evolving world around it, but the culture will remain the same, because of its strong history. At the center of the island's history is the horse. From miniscule acts, such as riding through a field, to being the main form of transport for many years, horses have impacted Prince Edward Island's history and culture everyday for over the past two hundred years. As years pass and elements of the island change one thing will remain true; Prince Edward Island is its culture.

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