2004 Buyer’s Guide: Recreational
Pirates of PEI M
Our dreaded reputation cleared the waters of Rainbow Valley
story by Philip Torrens photos by Jason W. Chow
ention Prince Edward Island to any non-islander and the images that probably pop to mind are not
of pirates, but of potatoes and Anne Of Green Gables. And there is indeed an Anne Of Green Gables angle to this story. One of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne books was set in (and titled) Rainbow Valley, which also hap- pens to be the setting for our sordid tale. The Rainbow Valley of Mrs. Montgomery's books was an Arcadian Eden. Presumably the real-life Rainbow Valley (for it is a real place) was also a pastoral delight in L.M.'s day. But by the mid 1970s, the time of our tale, the Valley had developed (or degenerated, depending on your point of view) into a full-blown tourist theme park. It was here that our long-suffering parents, clearly afflicted by a lapse in judgement, brought me and my sister one sunny summer day. The park's offerings included a rustic child-scale barn built of rustic fibreglass, some settings from Alice in Wonderland built of rustic fibreglass, and The Flying Saucer Gift Shop, built of space-age fibreglass. But my sister and I were immediately drawn to the paddling ponds and the rashly unguard- ed canoes. I'm not sure what brand these boats were. Indeed, I'm not sure if they were any brand at all—they certainly appeared as though they might have been hastily cobbled together out of leftovers from the barn and the flying saucer. If prehistoric tribes had built their boats of fibreglass, the results would probably have looked similar to these canoes, though undoubtedly considerably less crude. Not a whit deterred, my sister and I each
expropriated a canoe and set forth upon the waters. Said waters did not consist of the broad, crystal clear rivers of classical Canadian canoe fantasy, but rather narrow
36
www.canoeroots.ca
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68