On Canada Day we all went down to Victoria Park to enjoy the celebrations. There was a huge crowd in the park, but Victoria Park is large enough that it didn’t feel overcrowded.
Tag Archives: Tourism Prince Edward Island
Elmira Railway Museum. An Artist’s Review.
Model train panorama in the shape of PEI.
Prince Edward Island doesn’t have a large or central Provincial Museum but it does have several small Provincial Museum sites that are open mostly in the summer. One of our favorite summer activities is to take a drive and visit some of these fascinating and fun centres.
On a cold, wet, and windy June afternoon we drove to Eastern Kings County in Prince Edward Island to visit the Elmira Railway Museum. It is a small museum, and it’s a great outing for the family.
Elmira train station.
When we got there we wandered around the gift shop, and then we took a ride on a miniature train that ran through the woods. For some reason — the cold wet weather maybe, or the children who were trying to jump the tracks — I forgot to take a picture of the ride.
Rail platform.
I doubt that the original platform was as wide and long as it is now, but I imagine it was a busy space with passengers coming and going, and of course locals hanging around exchanging gossip. Back when passenger trains ran on Prince Edward Island Elmira was the Island’s most Easterly train station.
Station office.
I have several ancestors who worked on the rails in Prince Edward Island. My Grandfather was a station master at Morell, and I like to imagine that his work place was similar to this. My Mother’s Grandfather, David Pound was a train engineer, and he was killed in a train wreck in 1900.
Stations of Prince Edward Island.
There are no longer any trains on Prince Edward island, and I miss the sound and sight of trains as they roll down the tracks. I remember being a child drifting off to sleep at night and the sound of the last train’s whistle sounding as it crossed Belvedere Avenue.
Station my Dad grew up in.
This is the station my Father grew up in when his Father was the station master in Morell, Prince Edward Island. The station was torn down sometime in the 1970s but I can still remember it.
Model train.
The displays at Elmira are an interesting and varied selection of artifacts from the days of steam and diesel trains.
East Point.
There is one building with a large model train diorama shaped like Prince Edward Island, and I have to admit I love this display and couldn’t wait to see it. The kid in me wants to put on an engineer’s cap and spend the afternoon playing with the trains. The artist in me thinks it’s some kind of crazy conceptual art exhibit and that an unreadable artists statement would not be out of place.
Close up rails.
If I had a basement rather than a damp cellar I would probably have something like this, and I guess that confessing this makes me some kind of nerd, but then again, everyone should have something to be a total nerd about. Shouldn’t they?
Island rails.
We had a great time visiting the museum. It is a simple and charming museum with nothing flashy about it, and though I wish it had a real train on display it is well worth a visit.
The fountains of Charlottetown. An Artist’s Review.
Charlottetown is one of those nice small towns that really causes it citizens to stop, pause, and think WTF. We don’t have many examples of public art or monuments, but we do have what can only be described as one of the world’s great motley collections of just plain strange and crazy water fountains.
Fountain stairs.
This is a new water feature at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, and I actually like this one. When they were renovating the building they converted a set of stairs into a waterfall. It would have been more impressive if it was on a larger scale and looked less like a water main had broken, but small children like it, and I imagine that late at night after the bars close young men pee in it.
Province House fountain.
The fountain in front of Province House is a great example of Charlottetown’s fountains. In the summer it may seem like a nice little fountain but upon closer inspection it really is just an under-scale circular concrete basin with a jet of water that shoots an impressive three feet in the air. I think my garden hose could do better.
Storm drain fountain.
Yes, this is an actual fountain and not a sewer line backing up. Each summer Charlottetown closes off a section of Richmond Street to use as a pedestrian mall, and then they turn a storm drain into a fountain. They must attach a hose to a section of the water main, and it shoots a couple of jets of water into the air. As you can see, children love to run around it in ever decreasing circles until they run through it. When people come across it for the first time they often stop dead in their tracks and stare dumbfounded upon its glory. I have to admit that I love this fountain, and it’s one of those strange things I like about Charlottetown. Whoever thought of doing this was some kind of crazy, and I’m glad they did it.
Storm drain fountain.
Fountain cake?
I have saved this one for last. It looks like someone wanted to create a beautiful and impressive fountain for Charlottetown. Unfortunately, they seem to have built it with off-the-shelf or leftover parts, none of which were in proportion to one another. The hand with the torch popping out of what appears to be a cake really confuses me, and wouldn’t it have been better to include some of the forearm? The base is too wide for such a squat structure, and the bronze cake with the flaming hand seems to have been dropped on top as an afterthought. I’ve noticed that the water element seems to be broken at the moment, but when the water is on it does look better due to the reflection of light on the water’s surface.
Fountain.
Though this is the most formal attempt at a fountain in Charlottetown it is in my opinion the least successful. Maybe on paper it looked better, and I wonder if they bothered to build a scale model before building it?
