Before Steeples & Potatoes

Church steeples and potato fields are just about the most plentiful things on Prince Edward Island (along with the more recent wind generators). The first came with French Acadian settlers in the early 18th century. The second European wave came from the UK, a few decades later, after the French ceded the territory in The Treaty of Paris.

The Provincial government’s Historic Milestones page implies these events all but sum up PEI’s earliest human settlement. There is no mention of the Mi’kmaq people, who have lived on the Island they call Epekwitk (Lying in the Water — an evocative name for a low-lying land whose tallest features are quite possibly the wind generators.) for over 10,000 years.