PEI redux: The value of culture, and a culture of value.

And now for a message of hope

I was surprised at the interest and the thoughtful responses to my last piece on PEI, health care, and anti-racism politics. Clearly heath care touched a nerve, and it was fascinating for me to read the comments about the comparisons of health care system in US, Canada, UK, and Australia. Thanks for the discussions.

In any case, my wife read my PEI piece and thoughtfully critiqued it. She reminded me that I had completely skipped over two key experiences which give a deeper perspective of our decision to move, and our experience here, providing a level nuance, and even hope, that was missing from my earlier piece. So thanks for indulging this addition.

We decided to move to PEI during the Covid pandemic. It was strange decision, and one that I thought might be disastrous at the time for a host of reasons, not least that we couldn’t actually go there to visit to look at properties, and had to do so online.

I was familiar with Atlantic Canada, but my wife had never been here, nor had she ever lived in a place with real winter. But besides the excitement of real estate shopping online for properties we could never have considered almost anywhere else, what convinced both of us that this jump into the unknown was really worth it came from a different online experience.

At the time, the province had a daily online public video briefing with the Chief Health Officer, Heather Morrison, and the Premier, Dennis King. Living in the US, with its dysfunctional politics, and constant vitriol, it was like a breath of fresh air. Both individuals spoke calmly and honestly about what the Province was trying to do to protect people, what the challenges were, and most importantly, how people were working together. Premier King made no effort to grandstand or obfuscate. Both he and Heather told it like it was.

For almost the first full year, in part because PEI is an island, and the authorities had quickly turned the surrounding waters into a kind of protective moat, PEI had had ZERO Covid fatalities. Driving across the bridge to the Island everyone in every car had to be tested, and tested again 3 days later, with full contact information in case anyone tested positive.

The regulations weren’t what impressed us, however. It was the civil manner of conversation, and transparent discussion. It reflected a community where people not only cared about each other, but actually banded together to help out when necessary. Where community actually meant something. Every session ended with Dr. Morrison’s admonition: Remember to be patient and kind.

That was a place we wanted to live!

Once arriving, a full year later, the sense of community was overwhelming, almost everywhere we turned (after the mandatory period of quarantine). When we went to Covid testing areas, it was almost like a party, with all the crew chatting with the rest of us in our cars, commiserating about the situation, their long hours etc. There was the definite explicit agreement that we were all in this together.

This is perhaps why the recent recognition of the neglect of things like the local ICU hits us so hard. In a place where community seems so important, one would think that providing adequate emergency health care for everyone would be high on this list.

The next feature of the Island, which I really don’t think we were adequately prepared for in spite of having heard about it, was the depth and breadth of remarkable artistic and musical talent on the Island. Every corner of the road seems to have a place where you can hear great music, or see great theatre. And I mean great. The performances are overwhelming and it seems almost every extended family has someone who excels at an instrument, or many instruments. As I have told my friends back in the US, we have seen more musical performances and plays in the last six months here than we had seen in seven years in Oregon, or a decade in Arizona.

The Island is fortunate, being the home of the birthplace of Canada’s Confederation, to house an amazing theatre, the Confederation Centre of the Arts. A town like Charlottetown, with a population of 30,000 or so would normally not be able to support the construction of such a venue, but for the 100th anniversary of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, which led to the 1867 federation of Canada, essentially everyone in the country contributed, through their federal taxes, for its construction.

At every venue, before every single show, acknowledgement is made that PEI is the ancestral home of Mi’kmaq, who called PEI EpekwiTk, and performance centers exist for art and music throughout the island celebrating not just indigenous artists, but French artists reflecting the Island’s Acadian heritage.

Population in the Island is growing faster per capita than any other place in the country, and new ethnic restaurants and shops are opening at a fast pace. While it is true that if you are ‘from away’-referring to those, like us, who weren’t born on the Island, we will always be ‘from-away’, nevertheless one feels a welcome embrace, combined with surprise, when people ask “Why did you move here?”. There is excitement about the world discovering PEI, and Islanders discovering the world. Diversity is celebrated as a part of a united whole. Culture and cultures of all sorts grow here, are fostered and appreciated.

Which is the reason why the “anti-racism’ initiatives that the Province, in line with the Federal Government, is devoting precious resources to, strike me at the best as stilted, and at worst as detrimental. It is important to deal with economic disparities that may be endemic, but doing so by creating an identity politics based on victims and oppressors seems out of touch with the realities here and the culture of the place.

So, we love PEI. But that is the reason why I, at least, feel a compunction to speak out about developments that may make it less inviting to stay, either through neglect of important problems, or the invention of problems that may not exist. My hope is that the vibrant culture and cohesiveness of the community as a whole will help steer things in the right direction. But I am also realistic enough to know that hope is not enough.