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
• 
  
• 
  
• 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.

Atlantic Nocturne by J. Frank Willis (1908-1969)

Atlantic Nocturne

When the grey of the night creeps out of the east
And the salt of the sea smells cold,
And away in the west the evening has died
With a last brief gift of gold —
Then the rolling long-shore hills stretch out,
In an arabesque of blue
And the soft friendly glow of candlelight
In the cottages calls to you
To come and dream — to forget the day
And its cares — and the murm'ring tide
Will take you adventuring down the world
In your chair by the fireside,
Or bring to you with its mist of night,
The mood for quiet thought,
Or sing to you with its low soft voice
A tune that you'd almost forgot.

For there is a verse, or a melody,
Or a thought for everyone
In the Nocturne the old Atlantic sings
To the shore when day is done.

by J. Frank Willis (1908-1969)

The connections of this poem to Prince Edward Island are more personal but because it is not available on the Internet - thought this might be a spot to place a copy and tell the story behind it.

Frank Willis began his career as a Canadian broadcaster in Halifax, N.S. in 1925 and hosted an evening hour of poetry reading to organ music, initially called Harbour Lights and later Atlantic Nocturne.  In 1936, when the Moose River mine disaster occurred, trapping individuals in an abandoned mine 100 kilometres east of Halifax - Willis brought live broadcasting from an emergency to the CBC airwaves - his broadcasts of the rescue over 69 hours set a new place for radio in keeping Canadians connected to unfolding stories of significance. His career eventually took him to Toronto and he remained on the airwaves until 1963.

Atlantic Nocturne, was a signature piece of poetry J. Frank Willis wrote and read on the airwaves. It impressed another broadcaster, Bob Large of CFCY Charlottetown and he kept a printed copy of the poem in his home. At the funeral of Bob Large in 2009, longtime broadcaster Eric MacEwen read Atlantic Nocturne. Poetry is not often heard on radio - except on the weekly syndicated Eric MacEwen Show - thus it was a fitting tribute to another era when the roots of Canadian broadcasting were first being established.