2.4 Prince Edward Island
Islander indifference to Confederation had its roots in a thorny land ownership issue that had irritated local affairs for nearly a century. This question stretched back to the colony’s early days under British rule.
Escheat
In 1767, the British government divided up the island into 67 lots of about 20,000 acres apiece and gave title away in a lottery involving wealthy and well-connected British landlords in London. The owners were expected to send settlers to the colony; few did so, most failed to maintain their properties or meet their obligations to settlers and the colonial administration. The Colonial Office consistently backed the absentee proprietors against the colonial tenants. In the mid-19th century, this was the issue that dominated Island politics; the search for a mechanism for gaining ownership of the proprietors’ lands and selling them on to the tenants — called escheat — was regarded as an economic issue and also one that would help PEI society grow and thrive. In 1864, there was nothing the Canadian government could do to help this process along. Islanders believed they were at last making headway with Westminster and that a resolution was in sight. Staying with Britain — at least until absentee landlordism was addressed — was the most prudent path to follow.
PEI’s links to the mainland colonies were important and unlikely to change by staying outside of Confederation. Islanders regularly took seasonal work in the mines and forests of New Brunswick, Cape Breton, and mainland Nova Scotia. Their labour was welcomed and no treaty or constitutional change was necessary to this relationship’s continuance. The colony had good trade relations with the United States as well, and produced enough shipping to be active in the West Indies and cross-Atlantic commerce. There was some talk of exploring annexation to the United States and about as much interest in becoming a Dominion in its own right, as Newfoundland would do in 1907. On the whole, the status quo appealed most of all.
This inertia reflected divisions within Island society and the lack of advantages to be gained in joining Confederation. The PEI Liberals and Conservatives were supported, respectively, by comparable populations of Catholics and Protestants. The Tenant League — advocates for an end to the system of absentee landlordism — was more associated with the Liberals and thus with Catholicism. These were fracture lines that preoccupied the colony’s leaders. Against that, the PEI delegates at the 1864 Charlottetown Conference articulated a reasonable fear that the colony would be lost within Confederation. Being one-third of a Maritime Union was one thing; being a tiny sliver of a federated Canada was quite another.
The Cradle of Confederation
What changed? The Island’s government hoped that it could expand economic prospects by negotiating freer trade with the United States. Without British support this could not happen. Concern for the colony’s ec