Category Archives: Newsy Notes

Glen Property Visit, July 2019

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An area of Bill Glen’s woodlot. The nut orchard is slightly visible in the background.

On Wednesday 18 July, some of the GeoREACH Lab team members took a trip into the field (literally) to visit Bill and Elizabeth Glen’s land in the Bonshaw area of Lot 30, Prince Edward Island. Bill and Elizabeth are well known in PEI genealogical and historical circles, and Bill was formerly a forester with the PEI Provincial Government. He now serves as a forest and woodland consultant, and he co-authored a chapter with Josh MacFadyen in the University of Calgary Press collection on Historical GIS Research in Canada. The Glens have been on their property since the early 1980s, and they were able to provide some real insight into how the land has changed over the last forty years, including how they managed the forest, fields, and hedgerows!

Bill Glen, GeoREACH Lab Director Dr. Josh MacFadyen, and research assistants Nolan Kressin and Abby Craswell.

The team has studied Lot 30 extensively using aerial photos and historical maps on GIS. We were excited to explore the real area that we have been examining from above for the last several months. It reminded us that our research is much bigger than just a computer screen! We could see the changes that have occurred in the land since the aerial photos that we are currently studying were taken in 1968, before the implementation of the Comprehensive Development Plan (for more on that see this post). Some of these changes include hedgerow planting, the appearance of new homes, and a new nut orchard on the property.

Research assistants Nolan Kressin, Nick Scott, and Abby Craswell (L-R) in the field.

While on this excursion, we learned about hedgerow and woodlot composition, as well as the importance of biodiversity and climate change adaptability in wooded areas. White spruce (what we use to plant most of our hedgerows) is incredibly vulnerable to slight shifts in climate! Bill also showed us a hydraulic pump that dates back to 1890, which he still uses to pump water to the tank for his nut orchard. The GeoREACH team would like to thank Bill and Elizabeth Glen for having us to their home and sharing their knowledge of land-use change on Prince Edward Island.

The PEI Comprehensive Development Plan: A Timeline

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The signing of the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) in 1969 was one of the most influential events in the modernization of Prince Edward Island. The developmental plan offered wide-sweeping changes to the island’s economy, infrastructure, and education that still affect the province to this day.

Here at the GeoREACH laboratory, it is one of our goals to help others understand how exactly the CDP affected life on the Island, both in the past and today. For this reason, we have created a full, comprehensive timeline of the CDP, from the events leading to the CDP’s formation to its eventual conclusion in 1984. We hope that it is helpful in understanding this significant time period. Enjoy!

Flax

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Below is another informative excerpt from the Newsy Farm Notes column, found in The Guardian PEI Newspaper. Flax and “all that the inventor claims”: In 1929, Agricola turned his regular farm column to flax, making him the latest in a chorus of boosters promoting flax to Canadian farmers. The most familiar refrain here was his suggestion that the main barrier to a Canadian flax industry was technical. “A new machine for processing hemp and flax is now being tested in Ontario, and should it prove all that the inventor claims,” he promised, a flax linen industry would surely boom.

Flax flowers have a vibrant and beautiful colour

“I note in a periodical that the revenue from flax production in Canada has increased by 206% in the last five years, and this led me to inquire into the industry. Flax is grown successfully in other parts of Canada, but I have not heard of its being grown commercially here. The chief drawback of the industry is the amount of hand-labour required in preparing the fibre, and that means money nowadays. The flax is spread in the field and “retted”- which means rotted- till the fibres separate easily. Then begins the tedious process of taking the fibre from the body of the plant. It is run through a “breaking machine” which gently breaks up the woody part, and makes it ready for the “scutchers” who hold it to blunt revolving knives which thresh out the wood and leave the fibre in the scutcher’s hands. The retting process is often speeded up by soaking the stems in a pool keeping them submerged by weights. 

Though flax is one of the oldest of cloth materials, no better method than the laborious hand preparation has been devised, if quality of fibre is required. All machines for scutching up to the present, have proved unsatisfactory, producing too much tow (broken stems, etc.) in proportion to the fibre. The “hackling” or combing of the machined fibre, previous to spinning, has not stood the test. 

Linen is made from flax fibres

There has of course been a long, patient and expensive effort to produce machinery without these defects, but without success. A new machine for processing hemp and flax is now being tested in Ontario, and should it prove all that the inventor claims, an impetus will be given to an industry which means much to Canada. Owing to this difficulty, flax has been grown principally for seed, and that it is productive is shown by the fact that in 1925 1,126,100 acres produced 9,297,100 bushels of flax seed valued at $18,462,500; and in 1926 when 733,065 acres were sown, the revenue was $9,613,000.”

Read Flax Americana by Josh MacFadyen to read why flax actually boomed in western Canada. Hint: it was more about paint than linen!

Image result for flax americana
https://www.mqup.ca/flax-americana-products-9780773553477.php


Sources: Agricola. “Newsy Farm Notes.” The Charlottetown Guardian. July 26 1929. Accessed July 4 2019.

Bank Swallows

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Below is an excerpt from a series on the birds of Prince Edward Island that “Agricola” wrote in 1950. This one was published on July 22. According to COSEWIC the number of bank swallows has continued to decrease nationwide. In 2018, they were upgraded to a threatened status, and according to Parks Canada, have decreased by approximately 98% in the last 40 years (Russell).

“The last, and least known of the group, is the Bank Swallow. It is also the smallest and least colourful. ‘The little Bank Swallow (Cotile reparia), is a lustreless courser of the air, draped only in dull, mouse-coloured feathers. It chooses, however, the grandest home of the tribe. Sometimes it makes its nest in a low bank but more frequently in the lofty summits of the towering red cliffs that loom over ocean’s surges, on the wild sea-coast. How airy and beautiful their ceaseless circling round the dark summit of the great sea battlement, while the billows surge, and lash, and thunder, and foam, below!


“_DSC5261r” by pshanson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 

“‘The birds dig their nest holes two or three feet into the face of the clay top of the cliffs. At the inner extremities the nests of grass and feathers are placed, having each four or five pure white eggs.’ This lengthy quotation is from Bain’s “Birds of P.E. Island,” and it leaves little room for further remarks.

“This swallow, common in Bain’s time, is now thought to be greatly decreased. It would help to settle this question if readers would send in their observations. There used to be a large colony of these birds on ‘Robinson’s Island’ in Rustico Bay (1934).


“Bank Swallow Riparia riparia” by Mark Peck Bird Photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

“Bank Swallow. AOU 616. Summer resident. Becoming scarcer?

“Plumage: brownish-gray above; underparts white, with a brownish-gray band across the breast.

Length of adult: 5.20 inches.”

Sources…

Agricola. “Newsy Notes.” The Guardian of the Gulf, July 22, 1950. Accessed May 29, 2019.
http://islandnewspapers.ca/islandora/object/guardian:19500722-011
Falconer, Miles, and Debra Badzinski. “Annual Rate of Change for the Bank Swallow between 1970 and 2011.” Chart. Government of Canada. May 2013. Accessed May 29, 2019.
https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/bank-swallow.html
Russell, Nancy. “Threatened Bank Swallows Get Extra Protection in P.E.I. National Park.” CBC News. June 08, 2018. Accessed May 30, 2019.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-bank-swallows-threatened-1.4696465

Newsy Notes

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Newsy Farm Notes (later just Newsy Notes) was a column written by Islander Blythe Hurst under the pen name “Agricola.” It was published by The Guardian PEI newspaper (then known as The Guardian of the Gulf or The Charlottetown Guardian) in the mid-20th century. This column covered a large variety of topics, including farm news, nature profiles, historical tidbits, tips and tricks, and some opinion pieces among other things. It was fairly popular, and ran for four decades, from the 1920s-1960s.

Hurst was a source of botanical knowledge for Islanders, and his column and other publications represent a valuable collection of local ecological knowledge from the early twentieth century. He immigrated to PEI in the 1910s, living in Brackley from 1930 until his death in 1951. Hurst, was the author of A New Flora of Prince Edward Island, published in 1941 by the Guardian and available in full text on Island Lives. In her history of Brackley Beach Women’s Institute, Ellen Cudmore writes that local residents “who had a rare or unidentified insect would travel from all across the Island to consult Mr. Hurst. He had insects and butterflies pinned, identified and mounted in green velvet show cases enclosed in glass. He also had an extensive library and would search his reference books until he found a satisfactory answer for each inquiry.”[1]

Keep checking back, as we will be uploading some excerpts from the column!

The text used for Newsy Notes excerpts comes from the Island Newspapers digital collection here.

[1] Ellen C. Cudmore, Brackley Beach Women’s Institute: Working together “for home and country” (Charlottetown: Brackley Beach Women’s Institute, 2002), p72.