Introduction
Charlottetown, the provincial capital, is a well-designed colonial seaport with tree-lined streets and rows of woodframe houses. Main places of interest are Province House, a fine Georgian building of Nova Scotia sandstone, the site of the 1864 discussions which led to the Canadian Confederation, and the Confederation Centre of the Arts, which houses art galleries, theatres, a restaurant and a museum. Founders’ Hall, located on Charlottetown waterfront, is a newly opened attraction which tells the story of Canada from the 1864 Charlottetown Conference to the present day.
A tourist route known as the Blue Heron Drive heads westwards from Charlottetown to Port-la-Joye-Fort Amherst, the original French settlement on the Island, and on to Prince Edward Island National Park, 45km (25 miles) of fine white sand beaches and red sandstone capes on the north coast. Green Gables, the farmhouse immortalised in the book Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, is now a museum in Cavendish, located within the park. Further along the route, through Stanley Bridge where there is a large marine aquarium, is New London, where the author was born and wrote; there is now a museum in the house where she lived. Dunstaffnage, halfway between Charlottetown and Prince Edward Island National Park has a car museum worth visiting.
A second tourist route, the Lady Slipper Drive, circles Prince County, home to most of the province’s French-speaking residents. The route passes through Miscouche, which has an Acadian Museum, and Mont Carmel, which has an Acadian Pioneer Village. West Point, on the western tip of Prince Edward Island, has Cedar Dunes Provincial Park, with a century-old wooden lighthouse and a connecting complex housing a museum, restaurant, handicraft shop and guest-rooms.
A third route, the King’s Byway, traverses the hilly farming region of the eastern interior. It passes through Souris, where ferries depart regularly for the Québecois Magdalen Islands; and North Lake, where boats can be chartered for what is claimed to be some of the best tuna fishing in the world. Seal-watching tours have become very popular in the King’s Byway region. Point Prim, located on a long promontory to the southeast, has the oldest lighthouse on the Island, built in 1846 and still in use. In the interior of the Island, accessible by this route, is Milltown Cross, offering the Buffaloland Provincial Park, home of bison and white-tailed deer, and the Harvey Moore Migratory Bird Sanctuary, home to many varieties of duck and geese.
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