Illustration by Vian Wrya
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First light. A cool breeze. The sky a pale, robin’s egg. Nary a cloud.
I’m on Blooming Point Beach on the north shore of PEI with my sweet cockapoo, Scout (yes, from To Kill a Mockingbird).
I’m channeling John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie.
Scout loves road trips. Last night we completed the 16-hour drive from Ontario for a seaside vacation.
Throughout my childhood, every summer, Mum and Dad would pack my brother, sister and me into the pale blue station wagon and drive from Ottawa to Scarborough Beach, Me. They came for the gentle sea breezes and long beach walks. I fell in love with that stretch of white sand and the sand dollars that were so plentiful in those days.
But this year, I couldn’t imagine vacationing in Trump’s America. So here we are in Canada’s idyllic Prince Edward Island.
The drive from Ontario is a chance to zone out and listen to a book you haven’t found time to read. (I think the best audio books are read by the authors, like Barack Obama’s extraordinary Dreams from My Father or Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.)
The meditative drive sets one up for the time warp as you ascend the long, tall Confederation Bridge. I fill my grateful lungs with sweet salt air.
Here you can stop at a lemonade stand managed by cute children unafraid of strangers, buy goat’s milk soap, sea-green pottery, blueberries and pick up hitchhikers.
PEI is a place to read poetry and fiction and turn off politics, tariffs and war.
Forget about finding The Globe and Mail or The New York Times.
Put away your iPhone and open paper maps taking you to tiny crossroads named Dunstaffnage and Toad Hill. Here you can talk to strangers, rest and expand the mind, feel the planets’ vibrations and the music of the spheres, snuggle your sweet dog and restore the soul.
I wonder what Scout makes of PEI? Mark Twain’s short story A Dog’s Tale illuminated the world from a dog’s perspective. But apart from quiet requests for belly rubs, Scout keeps her own counsel. She’s excited and happy. Content.
PEI’s soil really is red, the pristine beaches pink, the seawater warmer than Maine.
The island’s flag features a stately oak and three saplings. Sadly, in 2022 Hurricane Fiona uprooted almost half the island’s trees and some of the legendary sand dunes were washed away. But the calmness is deep. The magic eternal.
Japanese tourists really do wear Anne of Green Gables red braided ponytail wigs.
Mermaids, whales and wondrous sea creatures are born each day from sand. They remind me of soapstone carvings - the Inuit artists finding the spirit in the stone - and of Co Hoedeman’s magical stop-motion animation short The Sand Castle.
Grouped in clusters, behind drift-wood fences, sweet white cottages with red gabled roofs fill with families from around the world, desperate for a week or two of quiet simplicity. The beds sport red-checkered comforters from the 1940s.
Those beckoning beaches stretch on forever, clean and clear, wide and flat. One is called Singing Sands. It does.
Scout enjoys frisbee toss and chasing kites with long tails made of magazine pages. She loves the gentle surf, tentatively stepping through shallows, dog-paddling a little, then finding her feet again. At low tide you can wade out a hundred yards without swimming. Heaven for children, of all ages.
In the evening, I search out a legendary church supper: chowder, rolls, oysters, mussels, lobster, coleslaw and lemon meringue pie to die for.
And the stars! No aerial haze or light pollution here. The Milky Way invites us to lie back and gaze forever at the millions of tiny sparkles. And dream and doze off to sleep, wrapped in a wool blanket. Then a lick on the cheek from Scout suggests its time for bed.
After morning stretches and coffee, as we drive past fields of potatoes, tall white churches and small homes proudly flying the Canadian flag, I’m transported back 36 years to when I first came to PEI as a new father with my wife, Lindalee and our three-month-old son, Liam. That’s when I fell in love with this place and these people.
Much has changed. But, gratefully, so much remains.
The idyllic isle helps us find that intangible peace we all seek.
We’ll be back.
Peter Raymont lives at Stoney Lake, the Kawarthas, Ont.