Photographs, Maps, Post Cards, Paintings & Other Visual Resources - PEI

I am often asked about images related to Prince Edward Island, so it may be an opportune time to bring together a list of the top sites for people wishing to explore the visual resources of historic interest. The best source of high quality images of PEI remains the Public Archives and Records Office (PARO) located on the top floor of the Coles Building - they can provide high quality digital images as well as  archival prints from their vast collection. Many of their images are now available through web projects which include:

• A series of On-Line Exhibitions developed by the PARO include great historic images as well as great links to other visual resources.

• Islandarchives.ca, a series of sites managed by the Robertson Library at UPEI including:
• Island Imagined, which includes over 1,000 maps including an early map of the region circa 1574 attributed to Giacomo Gastaldi and features a digitized version of Meacham's Atlas from 1880.
• Island Newspapers, includes full images of newspapers including historic ads from a wide range of years. 
• Island Lives, includes over 200 community histories many which are not out of print and include digitial copies of all the images in those books. 
• A series of items related to UPEI and the precursor institutions Prince of Wales College, and St. Dunstan's University are also rich with visual images. The longest lasting source of published historical articles and images to illustrate those articles remains The Island Magazine which has now been publishing since 1976 is now available in digital for through a cooperative project of the publisher, The PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation and UPEI. Almost all the original back issues of the magazine are also available for purchase through the museum.

• A large collection of PEI postcards on the Flickr site of the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation amounts to over 500 images.

• The PEI postcard collection of Phil Culhane has become a website with easy navigation and search functions providing a major collection of historic images. The site is called PEIpostcards.ca
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• The book Charlottetown: Then and Now, (2014) by Scott MacDonald uses a family photo collection begun by his father and is an excellent source of images and local history. It is sold locally in Charlottetown and through both Indigo and Amazon. Prior to publishing with Acorn Press an earlier version of the book was marketed through Blurb and called Charlottetown 1960 to 2010 through their on-demand printing. This 2010 edition has a full preview function but includes less pictures than the 2014 book. It is available online and print copies can still be ordered through the site.

• Sailstrait a blog about the history of Charlottetown Harbour and small boat sailing on Northumberland Strait on Canada's East Coast has become an important resource for marine history as well as a rich resource of visual images, as is the companion blog Straitpost a history of the early postcards of Prince Edward Island - both published by the award winning historian Harry Holman.

User-provided content is driving the growth of five Facebook sites for historic images of PEI

• Vintage Charlottetown
• Vintage Summerside 
• Historic PEI,
• PEI Family Photos
• Earles Picture Restoration are each great sources of images and a way to share information from a large community of interested people. 

Projects related to architectural history have added images to the Internet. There include:

• Historic Places - Prince Edward Island which documents both historic structures and the architects who designed them. 
• City of Charlottetown - Search A Property site [currently under redevelopment] which draws on the amazing dedication of Catherine Hennessey and others to research and document the built history of the capital city.
• The City has also developed Charlottetown Stories a site rich with visual material but clustered around specific areas of the city or topics.  
• The blog of C.W. Jeffery called PEI Heritage Buildings is also a solid source of information as well as visual resources.
• A 72 page book published online in 2009 for the school system called Prince Edward Island Historic Places is an excellent resource.

Two online publications - published in pdf format are filled with early images of Government House and the Fanningbank Estate in Charlottetown: 

• Government House and the Fanningbank Estate: a Guidebook - 
• Government House Research Manual - Volume I --Historical Images: 1839 to 1967-

The Province of Nova Scotia has developed various on-Line exhibitions that include 30 historic Mi'kmag images from PEI.

PEI postcards on-line - the Doug Murray collection.

Called Brighton Pond on card but also known as Government Pond - Charlottetown, PEI

The first collection of PEI postcards placed on-line was that of Doug Murray, a postal historian and authority on post cards who provided a cross section of his collection to the provincial government in the late-1990s when they were developing a web presence for the province. At the time computer wall paper was a big deal and giving away high resolution images was a great way to attract visitors. We became the beneficiaries of that time and 215 high resolution images of historic Prince Edward Island are accessible for us to enjoy. Thanks Doug !

Update - July 2018 - Changes to the website of the Government of PEI has meant that this content is no longer available to the public.

There have been a number of other postcard collections that now available online, they are included in a blog post on visual resources for researching PEI history.

Facebook - Visual Resources on PEI History

It was interesting to see the interest grow - within 10 days of launching a new Facebook site called Vintage Charlottetown there were almost 2000 people following it. Quickly on its heels was Vintage Summerside with growing numbers and Historic PEI for more widespread interests. All the sites combine the storytelling aspect that social media provides with great images to get people talking. In the early stages still, these sites promise to be a new form of communication and sharing as more and more private images and stories are shared with others.

Post Cards of Prince Edward Island

This super new collection of PEI postcards from the collection of the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation are a great addition of Island visual resources online.Visual resources of great value when preparing presentations on Island history topics and these are a great source for research.

The collection of 532 images are located on the museum's Flickr site. Great to see these resources being shared.