MILLION ACRE IDENTITY: THE ENDURANCE OF COMPLEX TRADITIONALISM IN ’S POLITICAL CULTURE

by

ALISON KATHERINE SHOTT

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Political Science)

Acadia University Fall Convocation 2011

© by ALISON KATHERINE SHOTT, 2011

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This thesis by ALISON KATHERINE SHOTT was defended successfully in an oral examination on 15 JULY 2011.

The examining committee for the thesis was:

______Dr. William Brackney, Chair

______Dr. Lori Turnbull, External Reader

______Dr. Rachel Brickner, Internal Reader

______Dr. Ian Stewart, Supervisor

______Dr. Geoffrey Whitehall, Department Head

This thesis is accepted in its present form by the Division of Research and Graduate Studies as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS (POLITICAL SCIENCE).

………………………………………….

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I, Alison Katherine Shott, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis.

______Alison Katherine Shott

______Dr. Ian Stewart

______28 July 2011

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Table of Contents

Abstract / (v)

Acknowledgements / (vii)

1 Introduction / 1

2 The Study of Political Culture / 10

3 The Farmer : J. Walter Jones and Threats of Incipient Change / 19

4 Challenge Defeated: Alex Campbell, Angus MacLean, and the Comprehensive Development Plan / 31

5 Images, Links, and Negotiations: The Era / 60

6 Mitigating Mandated Change: and Electoral Redistribution / 75

7 Traditionalism in the Post-Redistribution Era: and Beyond / 91

8 Conclusion / 107

Bibliography / 115

(v) Abstract

This thesis examines the contours of Prince Edward Island’s political culture in five eras of provincial politics since the Second World War in order to evaluate the endurance of traditionalism in the face of significant socio-economic, demographic, and political change. The primary focus is on how political elites and ordinary Islanders have responded to specific crises that challenged the province’s traditional way of life, with the understanding that articulated threats bring normally subconscious assumptions about the political sphere and collective self-image to the surface. Despite the complexities engendered by an emerging rural/urban tension in provincial politics, this thesis concludes that traditionalism continues to be a defining characteristic of the Island’s dominant political culture.

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Acknowledgements

It was Dr. Ian Stewart who first piqued my interest in Prince Edward Island politics four years ago in his Politics in Maritime Canada course. Since then, he has provided patient guidance, countless suggestions, thoughtful critiques, and an atmosphere in which I was never afraid to test out or work through the myriad of thoughts about PEI that swirled about in my head.

I found myself in Politics in Maritime Canada on a Killam Fellowship to Acadia University, granted by the Foundation for Educational Exchange Between Canada and the United States, and it was the Foundation that later gave me the opportunity to explore my fascination with PEI politics through a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Prince Edward Island. During my Fulbright, the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI brought me into its fold and provided me with the space, resources, experiences, and conversations that helped this thesis come to fruition.

To all of the Islanders who aided my research and made my time in the province culturally rich, intellectually stimulating, and simply delightful, I am truly thankful. Despite my notation as a “Come From Away,” I have always felt welcomed and supported in the Island community.

This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Jim and Kathy Shott, who have provided unwavering support every step of the way – both on this project and throughout my life. Although the sense of independence they fostered has led me far away from Schwenksville, I have never felt without their love, their encouragement, and the knowledge that I will always feel at home when I talk to or am with them. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for more than I could ever begin to express.

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1 Introduction

In political culture literature, most research is devoted to understanding the events, conditions, and institutions that have shaped a particular political culture, or what a political culture can be used to explain in terms of behaviour and outcomes. Scant attention is paid to what particular cultures actually look like, to their contours and the nuanced details of their assumptions. Without an accurate, detailed understanding of a political culture, the ways in which political scientists employ it will be inherently flawed. Therefore, this thesis seeks to present a nuanced description of Prince Edward

Island’s political culture. By focusing principally on what the province’s political culture looks like, this thesis is free from the traditional hindrances and paradoxes of political culture research; from this unhindered examination, a clear picture can be teased out, and later employed to gain a more accurate understanding of its impact in the province’s political sphere.

Much of the literature published on Prince Edward Island’s political sphere over the past thirty years has employed David Milne’s concept of the garden myth, the idea that Islanders’ collective self-image is of an “independent agricultural people protected from the world in an unspoiled pastoral setting.”1 This concept, though, was developed with minimal methodological grounding and sparse evidence. Milne asserted the existence of traditionalism, but he did not demonstrate the same; the concept has become pervasive in the literature on Island and Maritime politics, but “is constructed on shaky

1 David Milne, “Politics in a Beleagured Garden,” in The Garden Transformed: Prince Edward Island, 1944-1980, ed. Verner Smitheram, David Milne, and Satadal Dasgupta (: Ragweed Press, 1982), 40.

2 foundations.”2 This instability is compounded by the easy characterization of

“traditional,” and the numerous, quick anecdotes about PEI politics that seem to reinforce it.

One can point to a plethora of facts that seemingly support the traditional label: the province once banned automobiles, it was the last to remove prohibition and to allow

Sunday shopping, only one member of a third party has ever been elected the Legislative

Assembly, and strict land ownership limitations remain in place for non-residents. And yet, as Islanders – perhaps sensitive to the condescending undertone that often accompanies the “traditional” label – are quick to point out, it was Prince Edward Island that first elected a premier of non-European descent and was first to elect a female premier. In the early 1990s, in the province second-to-last in enfranchising women, the

Premier, Leader of the Opposition, Speaker, Deputy Speaker, and Lieutenant Governor were all women.3 Traditionalism may still speak loudly on the Island, but easy labels or pervasive stereotypes cannot capture the full picture of the Island’s political culture.

Indeed, where easy characterizations exist, there is the inherent danger that nuances will be lost and subtle changes will be overlooked. Labels are assigned and repeated, but the roots of their truth are blurred by time and use. Therefore, this thesis seeks to contribute to the literature on Maritime and Canadian politics a detailed picture of Prince Edward Island’s political culture, one that is grounded in evidence and methodological variety, and can account for nuances and contours beyond quick labels

2 Ian Stewart, “Vanishing Points: Three Paradoxes of Political Culture Research” in Citizen Politics: Research and Theory in Canadian Political Behaviour, ed. Johanna Everritt and Brenda O’Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 28. 3 Catherine Callbeck, personal correspondence with author, 20 August 2010.

3 and pervasive stereotypes – one that captures the complexities in an enduring traditionalism.

* * *

Prince Edward Island has undergone significant socio-economic, demographic, and political changes in the post-World War II period, changes that have eroded the foundations of the traditional Island way of life. The image of the province as a society of independent farmers was formed prior to World War II; in 1931, an astonishing 1.2 million of the Island’s 1.4 million acres4 were cultivated on 12,865 farms,5 and the farm population of 55,478 accounted for sixty-three per cent of Islanders.6 By 2006, the number of acres under cultivation had declined nearly fifty per cent, to 619,885, and the number of farms had dropped to 1,700, with a population of 5,2957 – only 3.9 per cent of the provincial total.8

While Prince Edward Island remains the most rural province in Canada,9 the decline of the agricultural industry has caused a transformation in the province’s population. The percentage of rural Islanders declined from seventy-seven percent in

1931, to fifty-five percent in 2006, but many of those who continue to live in rural areas now work in the province’s urban centres of Charlottetown and Summerside.10 As socio-

4 John McClellan, “Changing Patterns of Land Use,” in The Garden Transformed: Prince Edward Island, 1944-1980, ed. Verner Smitheram, David Milne, and Satadal Dasgupta (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1982), 40. 5 Statistics Canada, “Prince Edward Island’s Farm Population: Changes Over a Lifetime,” available at: www.statcan.gc.ca. 6 Department of the Provincial Treasury, Province of Prince Edward Island: 36th Annual Statistical Review, 2009 (Charlottetown: Department of the Provincial Treasury, 2010), 38. 7 Ibid., 80. 8 Ibid., 38. 9 Using Statistics Canada’s definition of rural as “persons living outside centres with a population of 1,000 AND outside areas with 400 persons per square kilometre.” Statistics Canada, “Population Urban and Rural, By Province and Territory,” available at: www.statscan.ca. 10 Government of Prince Edward Island, One Island Community, One Island Future: Speech from the Throne (Charlottetown: Government of Prince Edward Island, 2008), 4.

4 economic change grew, so did a fear that a shift away from agriculture would fundamentally alter the Island’s way of life. In 1943, when the transformation had just begun, Premier J. Walter “Farmer” Jones articulated this fear, stating: “The heart of the province is in its rural districts and the cities are only a place where people can go and do their business. If the farmers go all foolish like the people in the towns, good-bye Prince

Edward Island.”11 As the disparity between political culture and socio-economic realities grew, Island premiers remained steadfast in their belief that this disparity should be approached by mitigating further social and economic changes, rather than bringing the traditional political culture into closer step with the province’s present realities.

In addition, the pervasiveness of this traditional culture in the political sphere was bolstered in provincial politics by the Legislative Assembly’s antiquated electoral- system. Until a court challenge (MacKinnon v. Prince Edward Island et al.), was upheld by the provincial Supreme Court in 1993, Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) were elected in 16 dual-member ridings – distributed by county rather than by population.12 Until 1965, each of the province’s three counties – Prince, Queens, and

Kings – was allocated five dual-member ridings, and in 1966 an extra riding was added to

Queens County in order to compensate for the growing population in Charlottetown.13

The dual-member, county-based system institutionalized a vast over-representation of rural areas; in 1991, the three counties’ populations varied from 21,398 (Kings) to 62,584

(Queens), with Prince County at 45,165 residents.14 The least populated district (5th

11 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 2 Sept. 1943. 12 Elections PEI, “A Brief History of Electoral Reform on Prince Edward Island” available at: www.electionspei.ca. 13 Elections: PEI, Annual Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown: Elections: PEI, 2010), 4. 14 Department of Health, Census Population Prince Edward Island: By Health Region (Charlottetown: Department of Health, 2006), 1.

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Kings) had just 1,995 electors, while the most populous () was home to

12,681.15

Although most Islanders, not just those who continued to live in the countryside, remained tied to their rural roots, the province’s electoral map contributed to the endurance of traditional political culture. Yet MacKinnon v. Prince Edward Island et al. argued that the dual-member ridings were in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as votes were not given equal weight across the province. The success of

Donald MacKinnon’s case, and the mandate by the Prince Edward Island Supreme Court to draw new ridings based on population, institutionalized the province’s socio-economic transformation and forced the province to grapple with its demographic changes. In this process, a rural/urban tension emerged in the Island population, along with evidence of a growing urban undercurrent. Those who articulate the traditional political culture still speak loudest, but a quiet, gradual change appears to be afoot in the province.

* * *

In order to paint a full picture of the Island’s political culture, and the extent to which traditionalism has endured as a defining element, five eras of provincial politics since the Second World War are examined. Numerous methodologies are employed to tease out the nuances of culture, but the primary focus of these methods is on how political elites and Islanders have responded to specific crises that challenged the province’s traditional way of life, with the understanding that articulated threats bring normally subconscious assumptions about the political sphere and collective self-image to the surface. Academic literature on political culture and Prince Edward Island are first

15 Electoral Boundaries Commission, Report of the Election Act and the Electoral Boundaries Commission, Prince Edward Island: Changing the Political Landscape (Charlottetown: Government of Prince Edward Island, 1994), 5.

6 discussed, but the core of this thesis is a detailed examination of how political culture has been evidenced and evoked in the five eras.

In examining these eras, print media coverage served as the foundation for building an understanding of how events played out and were understood at the time.

These understandings were bolstered through the use of other primary sources: social statistics, government documents, radio and television broadcasts, personal correspondence and the memoirs of those involved in the events. Nuances were teased out through secondary sources, including documentaries and interviews with government members, civil servants, political activists, and historians. In addition, first-hand observations of current political activities in the province – question periods and general legislative proceedings, candidates’ debates and government press conferences – were undertaken by the author in order to gain a keener understanding of provincial politics and set historical events in context. From this cross-time analysis, pictures of the traditional political culture’s endurance, and Islanders’ present collective self-image can be drawn – along with speculations about incipient changes and the future of traditionalism in Prince Edward Island’s political sphere.

The government of J. Walter “Farmer” Jones (1943-1953), when “cacophony intruded on the [Island’s] pastoral symphony,”16 serves as the first era. It was under

Jones’ leadership that the outside world first threatened to undercut and uproot the

Island’s distinct way of life. Yet while the rest of Canada’s premiers embraced post-War developments and growth, the more the Island way of life was threatened by change, the harder Jones’ government fought to protect it – articulating the province’s political

16 Wayne MacKinnon, “Historical Trends in Prince Edward Island Agriculture,” in Agriculture on PEI: Sunset Industry or Economic Cornerstone? Institute of Island Studies (Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 1996), 13.

7 culture in the face of both outside violations of the norm and times of rapid global change. 17 Jones was forced to articulate what Islanders had always assumed about their province and its politics when their culture was under threat, and proved to be an unquestionable advocate for the Island way of life; he embodied Islanders’ collective view of themselves.

The next two eras, though, were marked by Premiers who actively sought to brand themselves as in accordance with elements of the garden myth. Rather than dealing with exclusively outside threats, they worked to prevent themselves from being seen as threats to the Island way of life. As premier, Alex Campbell (1966-1978) originally tried to release the Island’s political culture from the binds of tradition in the name of economic development, but was forced to retract his positions and underwent an ideological conversion – arguably, to ensure further electability. Despite his conversion,

Campbell was eventually challenged by Angus MacLean, Progressive Conservative (PC) leader, who articulated Campbell’s original position as a continued threat to the Island’s traditions and way of life – keeping culture high in the minds of Islanders. In the next era, Joe Ghiz (premier 1986-1993), as leader of the Liberal party, worked to rebrand himself as in step with traditional Island culture. Ghiz, a Harvard-trained lawyer of

Lebanese descent,18 strove to create an image of himself as an adherent of the elements of the garden myth before he could attract disfavour for his non-traditional background. In both instances, elections were infused with heavy doses of traditional rhetoric. Perceived as potential threats to tradition, Campbell and Ghiz had the effect of raising basic assumptions to the conscious level. Most other leaders, though, have naturally fit with

17 Holly Doans, producer, The Premiers: J. Walter Jones, 2009. 18 Ian Stewart and David K. Stewart, Conventional Choices: Maritime Leadership Elections (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 254.

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Islanders’ traditional political culture – or at least have not been perceived to threaten it – and were, therefore, subconsciously assumed by Islanders to have the predominant values and interests of the province at heart.

The two premiers in the fourth and fifth examined eras of Island politics were such leaders. As Catherine Callbeck (1993-1996) and Pat Binns (1996-2007) were not perceived to challenge the elements of the garden myth, they did not have to justify themselves as in accordance with Islanders’ basic assumptions during elections. Yet, in both of their governments, the Premiers were faced with the task of implementing electoral redistributions that threatened the rural nature of Island politics. In doing so, they were forced to articulate their thoughts about the province’s political culture and assumptions were brought to the surface. It has been argued that culture is best articulated when directly challenged,19 and in both cases a Supreme Court mandated decrease in the number of rural ridings threatened the core of the Island’s political culture. Under these threats, both governments overruled the original mandate for variance amongst riding populations, in order to protect the “important, rural nature of the province”20 – protecting rural areas even under the knowledge that their actions could invite further

Court challenges.

Yet, while both Callbeck and Binns articulated positions in accordance with the province’s traditional political culture, and acted to protect rural values and interests, both eras saw evidence of an emerging rural/urban tension, as urban Islanders began to voice their desire for a fair voice in the political sphere. That a distinctly urban undercurrent rose to the surface, despite being mitigated by the louder rural voice, indicated a small

19 David J. Elkins and Richard E. B. Simeon, “A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?” Comparative Politics 11(2) 1979, 134. 20 Callbeck, personal correspondence.

9 shift in the spectrum of the province’s political culture. Much of the post-redistribution era, under the governments of Pat Binns and (2007- ), has been without sufficient crisis to gain a clearer picture of this rural/urban tension; that it exists indicates an increasing complexity in the Island’s traditional political culture.

Therefore, while this thesis provides clear evidence that traditionalism has endured, the province’s dominant political culture has become increasingly complex in recent decades and will be further complicated in the future by an emerging rural/urban tension. “Traditional” may exist as a pervasive label for Prince Edward Island in political science literature, but it is no longer sufficient; traditions still speak loudly, and they have remained a defining aspect of the Island, but easy characterizations cannot capture the increasingly complex nuances and contours of the province’s political culture.

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2 The Study of Political Culture

If a political culture is to be effectively utilized – either in understanding its origins or evaluating its role in determining political behaviour and outcomes – it is imperative that its contours and nuances are first examined in full. There are many different approaches to the study of political culture, but this thesis will rely on a specific definition that will be applied to Prince Edward Island’s political sphere, evaluated against a historical summation of the Island’s political culture, and bolstered through a diverse methodological spectrum. The vast majority of political culture research is concerned with why political cultures have formed and what they can be used to explain, but this thesis seeks principally to tease out how a particular political culture is identified.

Political culture can be understood as distinct from political behaviour, as focused specifically on the political sphere, as holistic, understanding individual actions as reflections of a greater whole, and as constituted by values and assumptions that are enduring, rather than transitory.1 As such, it is the structure that gives meaning to politics; it is a “particular pattern of orientation to political action” and “encompasses both the political ideals and operating norms of a polity.”2 Yet beyond this broad understanding of political culture, it is important to use a specific definition that speaks to particular characteristics of Prince Edward Island – namely its homogeneity and geographic insularity – which can be understood as enabling a strong and pervasive dominant political culture.

1 Ian Stewart, “Vanishing Points: Three Paradoxes of Political Culture Research” in Citizen Politics: Research and Theory in Canadian Political Behaviour, ed. Johanna Everritt and Brenda O’Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24-30. 2 Lucian W. Pye, “Introduction” in Political Culture and Political Development ed. Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 7-10.

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In “A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?,”

David J. Elkins and Richard E. B. Simeon argue that political culture is a set of assumptions about the political world – that it “has the effect of limiting attention to less than a full range of alternative behaviors, problems, and solutions which are logically possible” – and that for most people this set of assumptions remains “below the threshold of consciousness,” as they rarely encounter individuals who hold a different set of assumptions within their political sphere.3 Political culture, then, is a collective, subconscious mindset; it is a predominant view for how individuals understand their political choices, and, therefore, affects the type of political rhetoric that a group responds to as well as the type of leadership it will find acceptable or inspiring.4 Yet culture itself is rarely articulated. As Elkins and Simeon argue, “cultural norms are likely to become explicit and debated openly in times of rapid change, spectacular violation of the norms, and the like.”5 Similarly, individuals are likely to become conscious of their assumptions only when they are challenged; if people operate within relatively homogeneous political groups, they rarely face such challenges – and therefore have little reason to reflect upon their own core beliefs.6 For this reason, Elkins and Simeon’s understanding of political culture can usefully be applied to study Prince Edward Island. PEI is Canada’s smallest province, and it is also one of its least diverse.7 With little internal diversity, particularly relative to the rest of Canada, and low in-migration rates, the province continues to be populated primarily by those who were raised within its own borders.

3 David J. Elkins and Richard E. B. Simeon, “A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?” Comparative Politics 11(2) 1979, 134. 4 Ibid., 133. 5 Ibid., 134-136. 6 Ibid., 137. 7 Statistics Canada, “Population by Selected Ethnic Origins, by Province and Territory,” and “Immigration by Place of Birth, by Province and Territory,” available at: www.statcan.ca

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Elkins and Simeon emphasize that comparative examination is critical for evaluating political culture. They primarily offer comparisons amongst nations, but note that culture can be used within one political group when a comparison is made over time.

They argue that the logic of comparison is maintained if “changes in the range of basic assumptions between one period and the next help account for other political changes,”8 but this thesis applies the logic in reverse – arguing that if the basic range of assumptions remains the same in the face of structural and institutional changes, it evidences the remarkably enduring power of a political culture.

Prince Edward Island’s borders also contribute to the appropriateness of employing Elkins and Simeon’s definition of political culture. As an island, PEI is an easily isolated political sphere. In their article, Elkins and Simeon discuss the “we-they” distinction as a means for understanding a political sphere and its culture. As they argue, the clarity of boundaries for “who belongs” to a political sphere has implications for the

9 strength of its culture. For Prince Edward Islanders, “we-they” is a natural conceptualization; Islanders easily self-identify as Islanders, or “we,” while all others are understood as “they.” Previously, governments went so far as to legally refer to non-

Islanders as “aliens.”10 This distinctiveness between PEI and “the rest” has traditionally been a defining characteristic of the province; at the subconscious level, Islanders believe themselves, and the way they operate, to be different from other .11 Therefore, non-Islanders are easily identified as “they” – meaning that Islanders are rarely forced to

8 Elkins and Simeon, “A Cause in Search of Its Effect,” 140. 9 Ibid.,132. 10 Margaret McCallum, “The Prince Edward Island Lands Protection Act: The Art of the Possible,” University of Law Journal (58) 2008, 148-166. 11 Ian Stewart and David K. Stewart, Conventional Choices: Maritime Leadership Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 144.

13 articulate their own self-identification and cultural assumptions. Although there is the belief amongst Islanders that they are different than those “from away,” the geographic distinction has the consequence of allowing them to identify “we-they” without reflecting on or articulating the cultural assumptions that colour this division. If those who operate outside the dominant political mindset can, frequently, be disregarded as “outsiders” on geographic grounds, it further enforces the idea that political culture is rarely raised to the conscious level, and has continued to endure subconsciously.

In order to evaluate the extent to which political culture has endured on Prince

Edward Island, despite structural and institutional changes, this thesis applies Elkins and

Simeon’s understanding of how, and when, culture is articulated. As they argue, culture is explicitly evoked and debated when under threat and in times of rapid change.

Although PEI has undergone constant change since the Second World War, it can be expected that culture would have been articulated in particularly heightened instances of threat and change – when the threats themselves were articulated. Yet it is not assumed that all Islanders subscribe to one political culture; to make this assumption would be to create a caricature of the province. Minority perspectives are assumed to exist, and are teased out when they present themselves through the varied measures of political culture, but it is the continued dominance of one collective self-image that speaks to the role of complex traditionalism in the Island’s political culture. By examining the assumptions of this mindset, and the extent of its dominance, the endurance of political culture in the face of socio-economic and political changes can be evaluated and understood – enabling subsequent research to look at the implications of this dominant culture for political behaviour and outcomes.

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In testing the endurance of Prince Edward Island’s traditional political culture, it is important to account for the stability of political cultures and the forces that are thought to erode them. A common criticism of political culture research is that “insofar as political culture is assumed to be an unchanging feature of the political system, the political culture approach ignores change.”12 This thesis, though, understands that shifts in political culture will occur over time and therefore seeks to test the extent of a traditional culture’s endurance. Three factors – immigration and emigration, formative events, and changes in socialization – are commonly identified as engendering shifts in political culture; in the case of Prince Edward Island, the three also speak to the relative stability of its political culture. As discussed above, PEI is one of the least diverse provinces in Canada, and those who do immigrate are easily dismissed by the “we-they” distinction, but high emigration rates could also provide stability – those who do not subscribe to the province’s dominant political culture may choose to look for economic or cultural opportunities off-Island. Second, while the province has been without true formative events – such as “revolution, major war, or other cataclysmic events”13 – since the Second World War, this thesis examines the reactions to events significant to the

Island. Issues of economic development planning, a fixed link to the mainland, and electoral redistribution may not constitute formative events at the national level, but each was understood as a direct threat to the traditional Island way of life, and could have created shifts in the province’s political culture. Finally, changes in socialization are understood to impact political cultures; using Karl Deutsch’s concept of social mobilization, shifts in political culture arise out of “a combination of social changes”

12 David V.J. Bell, “Political Culture in Canada,” in Canadian Politics in the 21st Century ed. Michael Whittington and Glen Williams (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2008), 248. 13 Ibid., 248-49

15 called “subprocesses of social mobilization” which include “education, urbanization, industrialization, increased literacy, growing wealth, and exposure to mass media” highlighting “the relationship between a shift in values and changing aspects of the social structure of a society.”14 Although the extent of social mobilization on Prince Edward

Island has been less than other areas of Canada, particularly in urbanization and industrialization, the province has still undergone great changes during the twentieth century, changes that could create new shifts or tensions in the traditional political culture. In order to test the endurance of Prince Edward Island’s political culture, in the face of these and other changes to Island society, an existing description of the Island’s political culture is used in the scrutiny of the five eras of provincial politics: David

Milne’s garden myth.

David Milne first characterized the political culture of Prince Edward Island as

“the myth of the garden” in his 1982 chapter “Politics in a Beleaguered Garden.” As stated previously, at the core of the myth, he argues, is Islanders’ view of themselves as an “independent agricultural people protected from the world in an unspoiled pastoral setting.”15 Within this view lie three key assumptions:

First, Islanders are understood to be farmers; other pursuits are legitimate only in so far as they advance agrarian interests. Second, the marriage of three centuries of small-scale human endeavours with the Island’s natural topography has produced a landscape of incomparable beauty. Third, there is virtue in being a geographic, economic, and cultural hinterland; isolation from the Canadian, continental and global mainstream has permitted the preservation of a distinctive and valuable Island way of life.16

14 Ibid., 249 15 David Milne, “Politics in a Beleagured Garden,” in The Garden Transformed: Prince Edward Island, 1944-1980, ed. Verner Smitheram, David Milne, and Satadal Dasgupta, 101-114 (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1982), 40. 16 Stewart and Stewart, Conventional Choices, 143.

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As Milne argues, these assumptions have historically coloured political life in the province. Rural rhetoric has infused leadership conventions, elections, and throne speeches, even as many of the “democratic sociological underpinnings” of the assumptions eroded during the twentieth century. 17 Yet, while Milne has touched on the continued erosion of the myth’s underpinnings in subsequent publications, as have others, his original summation had little evidential grounding.18 His characterization can be utilized in evaluating the Island, but it needs a methodological rigour absent in the majority of writings on the province’s political culture.

This absence of evidence highlights a traditional paradox of political culture that this thesis seeks to overcome: the acceptance paradox. As it has been argued, when an understanding of a particular political culture is pervasive in the literature, it “heightens the likelihood that this view is built on insecure foundations;” when an understanding of one political culture is pervasive, it becomes affirmed in the literature, rather than demonstrated.19 To a significant degree, Milne’s Garden Myth has become the pervasive understanding of Prince Edward Island’s political culture, but from its original conceptualization, it has been built on insufficient evidence. Therefore, this thesis utilizes a diverse spectrum of measures for evaluating Milne’s summation of the Island’s political culture.

By evaluating, rather than employing, the province’s political culture, the anchor paradox that usually pervades political culture research is also overcome. Multiple

17 Ibid., 144. 18 David Milne, "Prince Edward Island: Politics in a Beleaguered Garden," in The Provincial State: Politics in Canada's Provinces and Territories (Mississauga: Copp Clark Pitman, Ltd., 1992), David Milne, "Prince Edward Island: Politics in a Beleaguered Garden," in The Provincial State in Canada: Politics in the Provinces and Territories (Peterborough: Broadview Press LTD., 2001). 19 Stewart, “Vanishing Points,” 32.

17 measurements are needed to mitigate interpretive ambiguity and infer meaningful characterizations of a political culture, but the same indicators cannot be used to infer and to explain; as the number of measurements used to understand a political culture increases, the amount that is left to explain conversely declines.20 Yet as this thesis seeks to understand the contours of the Island’s political culture, rather than use them to explain political behaviour, it is not hindered by the anchor paradox; all the indicators available can be used in order to gain a fully nuanced understanding of the province’s political culture.

While the majority of political culture research is concerned with utilizing particular cultures, varied methodologies have been employed for understanding what the cultures themselves look like. Historical research, examinations of formative events, constitutions and institutions, patterns of political socialization,21 value and longitudinal surveys,22 content analysis, rhetoric, elite studies,23 leadership styles, elections data, symbols,24 interviews,25 public policy, and legislation26 have all been used as means for understanding political culture. Yet, while this thesis employs a diverse spectrum of such methodologies in order to overcome the anchor and acceptance paradoxes, the use of

Simeon and Elkins’ particular definition of political culture – a set of subconscious assumptions articulated when under threat or in times of rapid change – engenders an evidence paradox. If the absence of articulation indicates the strength of a particular

20 Ibid., 31-32. 21 Nelson Wiseman, In Search of Canadian Political Culture (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 18. 22 Gabriel A. Almond, “The Study of Political Culture,” in Culture and Politics: A Reader ed. Lane Crothers and Charles Lockhart (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 8. 23 Walter A. Rosenbaum, Political Culture (New York: Praeger, 1975), 198. 24 Stewart, “Vanishing Points,” 31-32. 25 Ailsa Henderson, Nunavut: Rethinking Political Culture (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 14. 26 David J. Elkins, “ as a State of Mind,” in Two Political Worlds: Parties and Voting in British Columbia ed. Donald E. Blake (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1985), 55.

18 orientation in the political sphere, traditional measurements for evaluating political culture are complicated. Therefore this thesis seeks to overcome the evidence paradox by looking at specific instance in which articulations of normally subconscious beliefs have been forced to the surface due to threats to the underpinnings of political culture’s basic assumptions. It is when the Island’s “way of life” is explicitly threatened that culture can be understood as best evidenced, and when measurements of political culture can be best utilized for evaluating the Islanders’ dominant collective self-image. How political elites, and citizens themselves, have responded – through legislation, public policy, elections, rhetoric, symbols, and leadership styles – to threats and explicit violations of norms can be understood as articulations of normally subconscious assumptions. By examining these articulations, a picture of the Island’s political culture can be painted.

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3 The Farmer Premier: J. Walter Jones and Threats of Incipient Change

“From 1945, everything changed; nothing had ever changed before that.”1

As the Second World War drew to a close, and the farming community on Prince

Edward Island began to decline, the first premier to embrace a farmer’s persona and vocally advocate for agricultural interests came to power – a pairing which can be understood as more than coincidental. Prior to J. Walter “Farmer” Jones (1943-1953), no premier had taken an anti-farm line, but none had taken an explicitly pro-agricultural stance, either. Before the War, the predominance of agriculture was so fully assumed that no leader felt the need to advocate for it. As Island historian Ed MacDonald has reflected: “Up until the ‘40s and ‘50s, everyone knows that the population base, and thus the political base, is rural. So agricultural interests are going to be the dominant interests, without any kind of challenge or questioning. That Walter Jones has to frame himself as a protector of farm interests suggests that there’s an incipient sort of challenge.”2 For the first time, agriculture was under threat, and in standing against the tides of change,

Walter Jones was forced to evoke a belief in agriculture’s centrality that had been heretofore subconsciously assumed. Yet while Jones sought to preserve traditions, there proved to be a complexity in how he and Islanders understood their way of life. He was, arguably, the first to tackle what has become the central political question of the province: “How do we maintain a way of life in the face of modernization? How are we going to help move the province along in the process of modernization without undoing

1 Anonymous Islander, quoted in: Holly Doans, producer, The Premiers: J. Walter Jones, 2009. 2 Edward MacDonald, interview with the author, 10 May 2011.

20 our way of life?”3 But in doing so, Jones came to embody a passive stewardship of the province and engendered a disparity between Islanders’ collective self-image and socio- economic reality that has remained a key aspect of the Island’s political culture.

A Farmer Premier: Personifying Island Traditions

Walter Jones – agronomist, dairy farmer, silver fox rancher, and Member of the

Legislative Assembly (MLA) from 1935 – became Liberal leader and Premier in 1943, at the age of sixty-five, when resigned from the post to take an appointment to the Island Supreme Court.4 Although he was not the first farmer to be premier, he was the first to be known as the “Farmer Premier;” he identified strongly with the farm community and saw himself as its steward. As his biographers have reflected,

Jones privileged farm interests – but he did so because he sensed that they were under threat. The decade before Jones became premier was the first that saw the farm community decline in Prince Edward Island. Although this decrease – eight per cent in the farm population from 1931 and 1941 – was only a hint of what was to come,5 it has been argued that Jones foresaw the changes that would become more evident after his era. He sensed that the nature of agriculture would soon be in transition – “family farms waning, increasing monoculture, rapidly increasing size of farms, mechanization”6 – and embraced the persona of the “Farmer Premier,” to protect agricultural interests. As a

3 Wayne MacKinnon, interview with the author, 9 May 2011. 4 Jones held a B.A. from Acadia University, a degree from the Agricultural College, taught at the Hampton Agriculture Institute in Virginia, and was Superintendent of the U.S. Government Experimental Farm in Arlington, VA before returning to Prince Edward Island. He later introduced seed potatoes to the Island, published a comprehensive report on Fox Farming in Canada, and received King George V Medal as the best farmer in the province. Wayne MacKinnon, J. Walter Jones: The Farmer Premier (Summerside: Williams & Crue, 1974), 2-10. 5 In the following four decades, the rate of decline would increase to 8.2, 25.8, 39.5, and 40.5 per cents, per decade, respectively. Department of the Provincial Treasury, Province of Prince Edward Island: 36th Annual Statistical Review, 2009 (Charlottetown: Department of the Provincial Treasury, 2010), 38. 6 MacDonald, interview with the author.

21 farmer, but one far better educated than most, Jones was able to straddle the realities on the ground and the changes he believed would come. In doing so, he brought the views of his fellow farmers – and, arguably, most Islanders – to the surface as he fought to protect their way of life.

In framing himself as the “Farmer Premier,” and the protector of agricultural interests, Jones reflected the power of traditionalism in the Island’s political culture. He took the position that what was new was not necessarily better,7 but in doing so, became the defender of the status quo: “They stood alone; amid sweeping reforms in post-War

Canada, one province, under one Premier, resisted change.”8 And yet, while this resistance to change can be understood as an articulation of political culture when it was under outside threat, the reflection translated into little action; Jones’ stewardship was a reflection of Islanders’ belief in the province as an agrarian society, but his sense of protection was marked far more by inaction than policies or positions that truly sought to protect the farm community. As has been noted: “the Premier’s agrarianism seems in the end to have been more a matter of attitude than accomplishment. It is easy to mistake personality for policy, and, behind his flamboyance, Jones’ posture was essentially reactive and defensive.”9 Prince Edward Island’s political culture did not embrace change, but, at least at this time, it did not actively fight it either. Only the most spectacular violations of norms – and the most clearly articulated threats to the agriculture community – would spur the Jones’ government to action.

7 Doans, The Premiers. 8 Ibid. 9 Edward MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century,” (Unpublished draft, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, 2000), 235.

22

Strikes and Breaks: J. Walter Jones and the Labour Movement

One such threat that Jones identified, and therefore sought to mitigate, was the labour movement and its connection to the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation

(CCF). As sweeping labour reforms gripped other areas of the Dominion,10 and the CCF was swept to power in Saskatchewan in 1944,11 Jones railed against the party’s platform, stating that the party had “no place in [the Island’s] rural economy.”12 For Jones, trade unions and labour movements were seen as direct threats to the farm community and its work ethic; “If union members don’t like to pitch in like the big majority of our people here,” he stated, “let them go somewhere else.”13 While Jones’ vocal stance against labour movements and the CCF can be understood as a reflection of the dominant political culture, what his government did not implement speaks as loudly as what it did undertake and accomplish. As has been summarized: “The Farmer’s Island was the last province to introduce the minimum wage, or the forty hour work week, or universal pensions … it was the last to get daylight savings time, [ because Jones] didn’t want to disrupt the farmers.”14 The Premier, acting on behalf of his province, sought to protect the agriculture community whatever the cost to other sectors of the Island economy.

Although labour movements continued to gain power beyond the Island’s shores,

Premier Jones repeatedly emphasized that they did not belong on PEI; in his view, they threatened agriculture, and therefore were a threat to the province as a whole. In the 1946

Speech from the Throne, his government argued that the lack of an “effective labour

10 Craig Heron, The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History (Toronto: Lormier, 1996), 76-80. 11 Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists, “Saskatchewan’s 1944 CCF Election,” available at: http://scaa.usask.ca/ 12 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 17 September 1943. 13 Doans, The Premiers. 14 Ibid.

23 organization” on Prince Edward Island should be seen as an advantage, stating that one would be unsavoury for the province’s primary producers. Yet, despite his strong rhetorical stance, his government’s passivity can also be understood as a feature of the

Island’s political culture. In another Throne Speech, he stated: “Collective bargaining, minimum wages, hours of work, vacations with pay, and other regulations may eventually be legislated, but my Government feels these should be national in scope and that a small province such as ours should not attempt to legislate these things at this time.”15 Moreover, he “fully expected that a national labour code may eventually be established,”16 but in reality only a small portion of workers would be covered under federal labour legislation; primarily, the responsibility to ensure workers rights fell at the provincial level. It is unclear if Jones misunderstood the province’s role on labour issues or saw the federal government as a scapegoat for his government’s inaction, but, either way, PEI lagged behind the other provinces on workers’ rights.17 Jones did not fight federal regulations, but in his own jurisdiction, he did not enact provincial equivalents either.

Despite this passive stewardship, the Jones government was spurred to action by some perceived threats to the Island way of life, namely labour strikes. In 1947, when a strike occurred at a Canada Packers meatpacking plant, the government seized the plant and employed strikebreakers to protect farm interests. In his government’s next Speech from the Throne, Jones addressed the issue, stating:

15 Government of Prince Edward Island, Journal of the Legislative Assembly: 1946 (Charlottetown: The Irwin Printing Company, 1946), 10. 16 Ibid., 10. 17 Prince Edward Island was the last province to enact a minimum wage, legislating one for women in 1959, and one for men and women in 1960. ’s had been the last of the other eight provinces, enacted in 1937. Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, “Minimum Wage Laws: Historical Background” available at: http://srv116.services.gc.ca/.

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An interruption in the important industry of meatpacking occurred in the past year, and one of the large plants catering to our farmers was closed for six weeks. Due to the prompt action of my government, the local plant was kept open and hog raisers experience little or no loss due to an extra bonus on overweight hogs paid by my government. Legislation to prevent a similar occurrence will be submitted.18

Such legislation – An Act to Amend the Trade Union Act – was introduced in the following session of the legislation. In debate he proclaimed: “If we get our backs up, we may pass a law outlawing all unions in this province,”19 – and effectively did. The legislation outlawed all trade union affiliations with national and international unions, while giving the Provincial Secretary the discretionary power to license trade unions within the province.20

The legislation was in place for less than a year before the Jones government bowed to pressure from the federal government to repeal it,21 but in addressing the issue,

Jones articulated how he saw Prince Edward Island as distinct from the rest of Canada.

While labour movements and trade unions were gaining strength across the country, PEI sought to stand apart. In the same Throne Speech, one aspect of this distinction was highlighted: “Throughout Canada nearly twice as many are engaged in manufacturing as

18 Government of Prince Edward Island, Journal of the Legislative Assembly: 1948 (Charlottetown: The Irwin Printing Company, 1948), 13. 19 Wayne MacKinnon, Life of the Party: A History of the Liberal Party in Prince Edward Island (Summerside: Willams & Crue, 1973), 115. 20 MacDonald, “Stronghearted,” 231. 21 The federal government used the threat of disallowance to pressure the province. As J.R. Mallory has summarized: “Disallowance is one of several constitutional methods of defending the central citadel of federal power against invasion by provincial governments. These assaults have taken place when provinces have been captured by interest groups on whom the effect of the national policy is so adverse that they must insulate themselves against it. The instances of disallowance reveal the vita interests which the federal government has felt it necessary to protect against local particularism at all costs.” By 1949, the use of disallowance had fallen into disfavour; it had last been used in 1943 and would not be used again. Still, while the federal government did not utilize disallowance to overturn PEI’s Trade Union Act, the power of its existence, and the implied threat that it could be used, was enough for the province to be pressured into repealing its legislation. In the next session of the government passed “a much modified statute which removed most of the clauses to which the trade union organizations had objected.” J.R Mallory, Social Credit and the Federal Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954), 169-79.

25 farming, but in our Province more than sixty per cent are still engaged in farming, which remains the chief investment of our citizens.”22 Whereas his predecessors had always assumed agriculture’s predominance, it was under Jones’ leadership that the province had to confront a threat to the agricultural industry in the form of labour movements.

In 1950, the Jones government was faced with another strike, this time by employees of the Canadian National Railways. Again, Jones evaluated the strike in relation to the farm community – it prevented crops from reaching outside markets. After the strike, Jones reflected:

A damaging railway strike took place in the past year. My Government adopted the position that the strike was illegal and improper when it found that the crews of the ferry boats on the Borden-Tormentine route were organized among the strikers. The strongest protests were made and the ferry resumed operations before the strike was over. A clause in the Agreement between the employees and the Canadian National Railways was violated and my Government intends to insist that the ferry employees be refused an agreement by the Railway hereafter, and that the Government Vessels Discipline Act and the confederation pact insuring [sic.] ‘continuous communication’ be honoured always.23

Jones had little time for the trade unions because he saw them as direct threats to the agricultural community, which for Jones – and arguably most Islanders themselves – was synonymous with the Island community.

While the labour movement had little resonance on the Island, particularly relative to the rest of Canada and North America, the fact that strikes did occur and the CCF received some votes, no matter how few, indicates that cracks did exist in the Island’s political culture. In 1943, the CCF first ran candidates in the Prince Edward Island provincial election – for nine of the thirty seats in the Legislature. Even though, as Jones

22 Government of Prince Edward Island, Journal: 1948, 11. 23 Government of Prince Edward Island, Journal of the Legislative Assembly: 1951 (Charlottetown: The Irwin Printing Company, 1951), 11-12.

26 boasted following his 1943 victory, most of the CCF candidates lost their deposits – only two received more than 200 votes24 – that they did garner votes can be understood as an indication that not all in the province subscribed to Jones’ belief that the CCF and labour movements did not have a place in Prince Edward Island’s economy and politics. Still, the party’s relative weak support, and Islanders’ continued support for a government that broke strikes and outlawed trade unions, can be understood as an indication of a dominant belief in a farming PEI, where agricultural interests were synonymous with

Island interests – where its values were distinct from the rest of Canada.

Yet it has been speculated that the Canada Packers’ strikebreaking may have contributed to the Liberals’ loss of one of the two Charlottetown seats in the

Legislature,25 again indicating that not all residents held the same values and assumptions as the dominant group of rural Islanders – a distinction with which Jones himself would have agreed..26 Wayne MacKinnon has also argued that Jones regarded people who lived and worked in town as “not really imbued with the same kind of ethic of hard work and responsibility for their own affairs [as farmers].”27 In a province where the majority of citizens still lived on farms – and where Charlottetown held only four of thirty seats in the Legislative Assembly – this view resonated with the population, and with voters.

Although there is no reason to doubt that Jones’ political stances were reflections of his own beliefs, his daughter has acknowledged: “He was, after all, a politician – [his persona] worked well with farmers.” Not all in the province shared Jones’ view on the

24 Elections PEI, “1943 Results,” available at: http://www.electionspei.ca/ 25 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 235. Noted as speculated by Wayne MacKinnon. 26 As quoted on p. 4, in 1949, Jones told the Maritime Board of Trade that “the heart of the province is in its agriculture districts and the cities are only places where people can meet and do their business. If farmers all go foolish like the people in the towns, good-bye Prince Edward IslandWayne MacKinnon, “The Farmer Premier: J. Walter Jones and His Vision of Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine, 35 (Spring/Summer, 1994), 8. 27 Doans, The Premiers.

27 disparity between rural and urban Islanders, but his wide popularity suggests that his was representative of the dominant perspective.

Jones railed against the CCF in all three elections he fought as Liberal leader and premier – highlighting what he perceived as the disparity between the party’s values and

Islanders’ values. In 1947, Jones employed the strategy of pinning labour interests as

“outside interests.” As The Guardian summarized: “Towering over all was [the] claim and insistence by Premier Jones and his supporters that the paramount issue was whether or not agricultural interests should be sacrificed to policies brought in from the outside.

Shall the farmers rule their own house, or should they submit to outside dictation?”28

Jones sought to delegitimize any resonance that the CCF might find amongst Island voters.

While the CCF increased the number of ridings it contested following its 1943 foray into PEI provincial elections, fielding sixteen candidates in 1947,29 the number fell to five by 1951.30 In every instance, CCF candidates placed third to Liberal and

Progressive Conservative candidates, and always by significant margins. Meanwhile,

Jones increased his government from twenty of thirty seats in 1943 to twenty-six in 1947 and 1951,31 indicating his continued support amongst Islanders as he faced threats that forced him to articulate his vision of the province.

Despite his strong views, and occasional swift action on the issue of labour movements, Jones governed primarily through passive stewardship. Much of his governing was marked by what he did not do – seeing the legislative changes that other

28 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 12 December 1947. 29 Elections PEI, “1947 Results,” available at: http://www.electionspei.ca/ 30 Elections PEI, “1951 Results,” available at: http://www.electionspei.ca/ 31 Ibid.

28 premiers embraced as beyond his domain and making the province the last to bring in most labour regulations. But where trade unions were seen as imminent threats to the agricultural community, he acted swiftly to mitigate their impact and protect farmers’ interests above all others. In this way, Jones was forced to articulate a belief in the unparalleled place of the agricultural community within the provincial sphere; a belief that had, arguably, always been assumed. Jones was the first premier to deal with such explicit threats from outside forces, and the subconscious assumptions of Islanders were brought to the surface through his leadership.

Passive Paradoxes: Government Handouts and Moving Forward

The complexity of Jones’ stewardship, and the role of traditionalism in the

Island’s political culture, was also highlighted by another issue first brought to the province in the 1940s: government handouts. Whereas Islanders did not experience the same degree of difficulty during the great depression as those in other parts of Canada –

“Islanders knew neither affluence nor desperate poverty”32 – few had ever received a government cheque prior to the 1945 federal baby bonus. Many had to open their first bank accounts in order to cash them; previously, most in the province had been both self- sufficient and economically insular. 33

Yet, while Jones saw the federal baby bonus as beyond his domain, and passively allowed the change of government handouts to come to the Island, he did not initiate any such change at the provincial level. When representatives from the Federation of

Agriculture approached him for support, he articulated a belief in self-sufficiency, telling them: “No good farmer would take any handout. If you were real farmers, you could

32 Doans, The Premiers. 33 CBC, “‘Baby Bonus’ Unveiled,” 22 March 1945.

29 hardly afford to be away from the place.”34 He would not fight the change brought about by a federal initiative, but he also would not initiate a parallel program at the provincial level.

On handouts, as with the labour movement, Jones indicated a complexity in his stewardship of the province and a passiveness in his belief that Islanders were, and should remain, an agricultural people distinct from the rest of Canada. His government did legislate some agricultural protections – passing a provincial ban on the sale of margarine immediately after the federal government repealed its own35 – but on many issues, inaction by the Jones’ government can be understood as the strongest reflection of political culture. He mandated that teachers would not receive a raise until farmers’ could afford to give them one.36 Jones made few steps towards two of the hallmarks of rural development: electrification and pavement. While subsequent premiers –in the name of helping farmers – would bring about these changes, Jones guarded the old ways.

Jones recognized that changes would come to the Island, that within Confederation he could not mitigate all threats to a way of life that he and Islanders believed in, but he would not actively embrace or implement them. Where it was possible, he would guard against them.

While the threats to agriculture would not be fully articulated until later, it can be argued that Jones sensed and understood the changes afoot, and articulated Islanders’ shared belief in a pastoral, agricultural, independent Island that had marked the province and constituted its political culture because he saw them to be under threat. As has been stated: “Afterward, they would say his era drew to a close the old Island customs that had

34 Doans, The Premiers. 35 MacDonald, “Stronghearted,” 230. The courts would later rule the provincial ban ultra vires. 36 MacDonald, interview with the author.

30 been a way of life.”37 And yet, Jones’ passive stewardship was both an articulation of the dominant political culture and an indication of how subsequent premiers would continue to govern in the face of evolving threats to the Island way of life. Traditionalism was complex, and passivity marked a sense of stewardship, but in the face of changes that would undercut the tenets of political culture, the culture itself would prove to have significant endurance. Still, despite Jones’ stewardship – or perhaps because of its passive nature – changes did come to the Island during his ten years as premier, changes that would only escalate after he left provincial politics for an appointment to the

Senate.38 These changes came because they were beyond Jones’ control, but due to his resistance many were mitigated or slowed. For his province, Jones championed tradition and plain living when others in Canada demanded more.39

Yet, perhaps because the strongest threats garnered the most attention – and caused Jones to articulate an adherence to the traditional way of life, one that can be understood as reflective of Islanders’ belief in it – creeping changes did come to the

Island during his era, slipping into the province without much reflection or introspection.

As another premier, Alex Campbell, later reflected: “Unconsciously, people, by adopting modern methods, were in fact waving good-bye to much of their past.”40 Where major threats to the Island way of life were being mitigated – both rhetorically, and through both passive and active public policy – more subtle changes crept into the Island and the disparity between political culture and socio-economic reality continued to grow.

37 Doans, The Premiers. 38 , “Parliamentarian File: Jones, The Hon. John Walter,” available at: http://www.parl.gc.ca/ 39 Doans, The Premiers. 40 Parliament of Canada, “Parliamentarian File: Jones, The Hon. John Walter.”

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4 Challenge Defeated: Alex Campbell, Angus MacLean, and the Comprehensive Development Plan

"Sunny afternoon we drive a rusted highway our parents haunted. Government paved it through night; a civilized gift that we never wanted."1

Walter Jones had sought to mitigate the disparity between political culture and socio-economic realities by opposing change and emphasizing adherence to tradition.

His two immediate successors – Alexander W. Matheson (Liberal, premier 1953-1959) and Walter R. Shaw (Progressive Conservative, 1959-1966) – shared his mindset, even though the programs they undertook in the name of protecting rural interests actually exacerbated the disparity; Matheson brought electrification and pavement to rural areas, 2 while Shaw’s government initiated the province’s first development projects.3 In seeking to balance tradition and modernization, each prioritized the former; in seeking to answer the Island’s perennial political question – how to modernize without undoing the traditional way of life – both undertook changes to the provincial sphere with an eye on how they could preserve and protect the family farm, even if these changes were, in reality, eroding the traditional foundations of the Island way of life. It took a young

1 Two Hours Traffic, “Great Migration,” CBC Radio 2’s Song Quest: Road Songs (CBC Radio, 2010). 2 Edward MacDonald, interview with the author, 10 May 2011. 3 In 1961, Walter Shaw named a Director of Industrial Development to seek investment opportunities that would improve the provincial economy. Under Shaw’s guidance, “development” was piecemeal and ad hoc – limited by the fiscal and human resources of the province. These attempts coincided with the federal government’s first forays into regional development planning of programs that “meant to fight regional disparity by building ‘capacity’ [through] large doses of federal dollars.” In 1965, Premier Shaw signed a five-year agreement with the federal government empowering Acres Research and Planning Ltd. of Toronto to create “a whole new series of sectoral studies with an eye to recruiting more federal funding.” This initial foray into federally-funded projects was met with resistance by Islanders who saw the studies as “forced” or “unwanted” development, but explicit emphasis was placed on the Island’s core industries. Rather that infusing the province with new sectors, Shaw outlined the agreement as “a modern spin on what the Island already did well.” Edward MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century,” (Unpublished draft, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, 2000), 265-68.

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Liberal leader to challenge this mindset of governance; in attempting to overcome the disparity between culture and socio-economic realities, Alex Campbell attempted to bring culture into closer step with the present, in order to better prepare for the future.

Although Alexander B. Campbell (Liberal, premier 1966-1978) ultimately failed to overcome this disparity – and was arguably overcome by an adherence to traditionalism himself – in his failure, the Island’s dominant political culture was brought to the surface by a perceived threat created within the Island’s own borders: the

Comprehensive Development Plan. Alex Campbell was the first, and perhaps only, premier in the province’s history who did not want to be bound by the past, but in this way he varied from the majority of Islanders who saw the past not only as something to be valued, but also to be protected. Alex Campbell never rejected the past, he did not aspire to break from it, but he also was not going to be bound by it.4 Whereas Jones,

Matheson, and Shaw tried to preserve, Alex Campbell was willing to change – but he pushed Islanders beyond a level of change that they were comfortable with or ready to accept.

By the end of Campbell’s era, Islanders, exhausted from a decade in the crux of change, retreated to a premier – Angus MacLean (PC, 1979-1981) – who spoke and governed in the manner of Walter Jones. In trying to break too quickly and too completely from the Island’s dominant political culture, Campbell ensured its continuation; in the face of threats, Islanders articulated their beliefs and sought to protect them. Still, even as traditional culture was evoked, its sociological underpinnings continued to erode – widening the disparity between political culture and socio-economic

4 MacDonald, interview with the author.

33 realities beyond where it had been when Campbell first sought to bridge and overcome the gap.

Economic Despair; Cultural Disparity

Although agriculture on Prince Edward Island began to decline in the 1930s, by the mid-1960s it was in the throes of change. In the twenty years following the Second

World War, a “cacophony intruded on the pastoral symphony.” 5 In 1931, 1.2 million of the Island’s 1.4 million acres6 were cultivated on 12,865 farms,7 and the farm population of 55,478 accounted for sixty-three percent of Islanders.8 Yet following the Second

World War, the industry struggled to modernize. Agricultural incomes failed to increase at the pace of other occupations,9 and by 1966, the number of farms had dropped to

5,061,10 with a population of 31,041 – only 28.6 percent of the provincial total.11

Between 1946 and 1969, the Department of Agriculture’s expenditures increased tenfold, and, while farming cash receipts tripled in the same time period, net farm income barely grew. In fact, “when inflation was factored in, farmers had lost ground, despite the fact that farm earnings were … divided among half as many farmers as at the end of the

5 Wayne MacKinnon, “Historical Trends in Prince Edward Island Agriculture,” in Agriculture on PEI: Sunset Industry or Economic Cornerstone? Institute of Island Studies (Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 1996), 13. 6 John McClellan, “Changing Patterns of Land Use,” in The Garden Transformed: Prince Edward Island, 1944-1980, ed. Verner Smitheram, David Milne, and Satadal Dasgupta (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1982), 104. 7 Statistics Canada, “Prince Edward Island’s Farm Population: Changes Over a Lifetime,” available at: www.statscan.gc.ca 8 Department of the Provincial Treasury, Province of Prince Edward Island: 36th Annual Statistical Review, 2009 (Charlottetown: Department of the Provincial Treasury, 2010), 38. 9 Ibid., 13. 10 Statistics Canada, “Prince Edward Island’s Farm Population: Changes Over a Lifetime.” 11 Annual Statistical Review, 2009.

34 war.”12 For a province where most had been self-sufficient only a few decades prior, farmers struggled in an increasingly globalized market.

Yet as farmers left their land in record numbers, Alex Campbell made the critical mistake of misunderstanding Islanders’ sentiments about this trend – a misunderstanding that would not be recognized by Islanders until after he was elected premier. Where there were low-income, low performing farms, Campbell believed there were individuals who wanted a way off their land – while the vast majority of these farmers, despite their economic hardships, still believed in the family farm and wanted a way to stay on their land. What they sought, and initially believed Campbell would give them, was a way to do so. Whereas Campbell believed that Islanders should not be bound by their pasts, and sought an Island that would actively embrace the future, most Islanders proved to have a strong attachment to a way of life that was slipping away from them. Jones had brought the Island’s dominant political culture to the surface as he recognized incipient changes that would come about from outside forces, but in the Campbell era, Islanders became conscious of their assumptions due to threats brought about by their own premier. It was this disparity, and the conversion it brought about in Alex Campbell, that would mark the era.

On the Cusp of Change: The 1966 Election

For a province largely marked by passive stewardship and an adherence to tradition, the 1966 election between Walter Shaw’s Progressive Conservatives and Alex

Campbell’s Liberals stood in stark contrast. Rhetoric had typically been infused with pastoral images, but in 1966 both leaders spoke of development plans and economic

12 Edward MacDonald. If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century (Charlottetown: Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, 2000), 296.

35 progress. And yet, while the election was noticeably different from those that preceded it, Islanders could not have anticipated the extent of changes that would come with

Liberal victory. Subtle differences did appear in the campaigns, and symbolically the thirty-two year-old Campbell embodied a spirit of change against Shaw’s seventy-nine years, but their platforms offered few differences. Due to the economic hardships of the

Island’s agricultural community, there was a sense amongst Islanders that something needed to be done to curb the industry’s erosion, and both the Liberals and Conservatives offered similar, but remarkably vague, promises.

After seven years in power, the Tories employed the slogan “The Shaw

Government … Building an Island of Opportunity,” and campaigned on the concept of improving “what the Island already did well.” 13 They proposed a Rural Development

Authority that would carry out “the most massive rural development project ever undertaken in Canada,”14 but Shaw also appealed to the power of traditional identity, framing himself as “a man who as much as anyone can, personifies the typical

Islander.”15 In their platform, the Liberals offered little contrast from the PCs – but their image was a sharp break from traditional rhetoric. Their Liberal Program of Action16 was aimed at “improving the lagging economic conditions of [the] province, and bringing

[Islanders] into closer step with the other Atlantic provinces and with the onward march of Canadians generally”17 and, despite promising “the greatest emphasis put on agriculture in Island history,”18 the slogan “Go Forward to a Better Future: Go Liberal –

13 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 20 May 1966. 14 Ibid., 14 May 1966. 15 Ibid., 27 May 1966. 16 Ibid., 27 May 1966. 17 Ibid., 11 May 1966. 18 Ibid., 18 May 1966.

36

Go Ahead,”19 marked a more stark contrast to the traditional rhetoric of preserving the

Island way of life. As Campbell stated during the campaign, “The Liberal Party of

Canada does not consider tradition to be an essential element in its approaches to policy.

The Liberal Party is more concerned with the concept of new ideas than with the concept of old traditions.”20 Although never explicitly stated in the context of agriculture, it could have been surmised that a Campbell government would approach the industry through modernization, rather than preserving the family farm as a way of life.

It is important to note, though, the vagueness of both parties on what development for Prince Edward Island would look like. Shaw’s government had set a precedent by signing a 1965 federal-provincial agreement,21 but during the 1966 election, Islanders were given few details on how agricultural development would be approached or achieved in future development planning. Campbell’s Liberals were ultimately given a mandate to govern, but with a margin of only two seats.22 While there was the recognition amongst Islanders that something must be implemented to stabilize and improve conditions in the province,23 it can seriously be questioned if Islanders, or even the parties themselves, could have anticipated the vast, institutionalized changes to the industry that would occur under the sweeping reform of economic development.

Desperate for stability, Islanders empowered Campbell to enact changes, but when these changes proved largely to disregard their way of life, Islanders’ assumptions about how they viewed their province and political sphere were brought to the surface – a continued

19 Ibid., 9 July 9 1966. 20 Ibid., 11 May 1966. 21 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 267. 22 Elections PEI, “Official General Election Results. Election Date: 30 May 1966 and in First Kings a By- election Date: 11 July 1966,” www.electionspei.ca 23 Edward MacDonald. “Orchestrating Change: The Comprehensive Development Plan, 1969-1984.” 20th Century PEI. University of Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown.10 March 2010.

37 adherence to traditionalism even in the face of vast socio-economic changes was evidenced. Although the Comprehensive Development Plan sought to affect all aspects of Island life, the plans for agriculture broke sharply with the past – and caused great outcry from Islanders. Additionally, while other initiatives– school consolidation, the merger of Prince of Wales College and St. Dunstan’s University24 – proved controversial, it was the Plan’s intentions for farming that struck at the core of Islanders’ self-image and identity. By examining how The Plan was created, implemented, and mitigated, the

Island’s dominant political culture can be better understood.

The Plan’s Formation

In 1967, under the new Liberal government, the province established a crown corporation, the Economic Improvement Corporation (EIC), to plan and implement a development strategy for Prince Edward Island.25 Premier Campbell appointed Del

Gallagher, a former New Brunswick economic advisor, as its head and empowered him to build a team of planners and draft a plan for development.26 Gallagher and his planners – almost entirely “from away” – worked in secret, had little concern for

24 The merger of Prince of Wales College “publically owned and non-denominational” and St. Dunstan’s University “church owned and Roman Catholic” was a forced changed that proved tumultuous. Initiated by the Campbell Government, in order to integrate Protestant and Catholic communities, it became a fight between the two institutions, the provincial government, and the Bishop of Charlottetown. In the debate the religious tensions and “two centuries of turbulent church-state politics” that had been kept relatively quiet throughout the province’s history were brought to the surface, but the University of Prince Edward Island was created in 1969. Frank MaKinnon, Church Politics & Education in Canada: The P.E.I. Experience (Calgary: Detselig, 2005). 25 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 307. 26 Ibid., 307.

38 tradition,27 and “approached [Prince Edward Island] as they would a Third World nation: with a mixture of good will and condescension.”28

In May 1968, after some principles were drafted, negotiations to iron out the details began. The EIC’s secrecy and Gallagher’s blatant disregard for Island traditions became serious liabilities for the Premier. Additionally, the drafted plan was a “top- down creation,” and many in caucus felt that Campbell had given away too much control to the crown corporation.29 Campbell himself was largely ignored in negotiations, as evidenced by his appeal to , Federal Minister of Forestry and Rural

Development:30 “I must emphasize that we feel considerably handicapped in these negotiations, since there is little, if any, prior consultation on the main issues.”31

Although Campbell, along with his caucus and many ordinary Islanders, felt limited in their influence on the Plan,32 the EIC did give the appearance of catering to agricultural needs during negotiations. Regard for the family farm as a way of life was largely ignored in the formulation of the Plan, but in meeting with Island groups, planners gave extra attention to agricultural concerns. When briefing Hector Horty, Federal Plan

Administrator, for a meeting with the heads of Island Credit Unions, Del Gallagher advised: “It may be that you should take about twenty minutes or so and tell them about

27 Del Gallagher, interview with Wayne MacKinnon, in Wayne MacKinnon: “The Politics of Planning: A Case Study of the Prince Edward Island Development Plan” (M.A. Thesis: , Halifax, 1972), 129. 28 MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, 298. 29 Ibid., 297-98. 30 Parliament of Canada, “MARCHAND, The Hon. Jean, P.C., C.C., LL.D,” available at: www2.parl.gc/ca/parlinfo 31 MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, 298. 32 Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. A History of the Prince Edward Island Comprehensive Development Plan (Halifax: Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, 1980), 17.

39 the agriculture program, in more detail than the rest of the Plan.”33 In the meeting that followed, Horty summarized the Plan as: “In all of this, we have one basic objective – and that is to create economically viable farms.”34 Yet, the negotiations were largely symbolic; “for [the Plan’s] architects, ‘public participation’ meant people signing up for programs, not helping to design them.”35 Planners believed they knew what was best for the province, and therefore did not seek citizens’ input; discussions were merely to placate Islanders as the Plan was developed.

Despite reservations about the lack of provincial influence in the EIC’s negotiations, Premier Campbell remained publicly steadfast in his belief that the Island needed to achieve economic modernization and reach national standards through comprehensive development. He continued to use the language of his 1966 campaign, telling audiences: “We must be prepared, perhaps with nostalgia, to release some of our ties with the past – and in their place, take up the reins of the future.”36 Yet he also recognized that the Plan needed to be sold to voters, and privately pushed Ottawa and the

EIC to soften the Plan’s language – to make it more palatable and easily acceptable to the

Island public.37 As he wrote to the Deputy Minister of Forestry and Rural Development,

Tom Kent, in October 1968:

We feel that we should de-emphasize the “controlled” society in favour of programs for people and programs for progress. Suggest you remove the notion of viable human beings. I suggest … that you read any three pages of the program guide emphasizing where they appear such words as “dictate,” “determine,” “control,” “mismanage,” “severe,” “outmoded,” “ineffectual,” “viable,” “negative,” “role,” in place of these select a

33 Roger Hart, director, The Prince Edward Island Development Plan, Part 1: Ten Days in September (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1969). 34 Ibid. 35 MacDonald, If You’re Stronghearted, 306. 36 Hart, The Prince Edward Island Development Plan, Part 1: Ten Days in September. 37 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 309.

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language which will warm the cockles of all Island hearts and will inspire their efforts to renew, restore, revitalize the Island they love so much.38

None of the Premier’s editing suggestions were incorporated.39

After nearly a year of failing to influence the Plan’s scope or language, Campbell finally signed the agreement. Despite his private concerns, his public commitment did not waver, and on 8 March 1969, the Comprehensive Development Plan came into force, unveiling a new social and economic blueprint40 and ushering in a new era of agriculture on Prince Edward Island – one that aimed to harness change in the name of development, rather than save a way of life.

The Comprehensive Development Plan, Phase I (1969-1975): A Break with The Past

Phase I of the Comprehensive Development Plan approached agriculture in purely economic terms and sought to implement “the structural and social adjustments required to use the Island’s agricultural resources more fully.” 41 All structural adjustments and planning goals for the industry were based upon the idea that production and economic growth could be best realized with 2,500 farm units province-wide – a reduction of more than fifty-percent from when Campbell was elected. Labelled a “resource base,” the

2,500 farm units were to be commercialized through “a process of structural change and reorientation to markets” – envisaged with no subsidies.42

To achieve structural readjustment, the Plan laid out a five-part strategy for creating a decreased number of commercial farm units with a doubled net value by 1976:

38 A.B. Campbell to Tom Kent, 9 October 1968, A.B. Campbell Papers, PARO RG 25.36, 1968-69/1137. 39 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 309 – cited as Andrew Wells, interview with the Author, Hazel Grove, 9 December 1999. 40 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 310 41 Minister of Regional Economic Development, Agreement Covering Development Plan for Prince Edward Island (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer for Canada, 1969), 33. 42 Ibid., 34.

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(1) Reorganize and strengthen the Provincial Department of Agriculture, and, in particular, strengthen the capacity to provide high quality extension services; (2) Provide education and management training to farmers, with commercial and potentially commercial farms; (3) Encourage local participation both of individuals and local organizations and associations through extension, counselling and adult basic education; (4) Assist farm enlargement through land consolidation, clearing, and other land improvements and improve the operation of the credit markets to enable farmers to exploit fully the opportunities available to them; (5) Encourage and assist farmers to adapt their mix of products in response to market opportunities, as indicated through the market and product development activities to be provided in program 3.5 (Credit Resource Industries).43

Although the Plan did not define which farmers would get to stay on their land nor those who would be retrained for work in other sectors, the planners assumed that low-income farmers were looking for a way off their land, and therefore would readily sell their farms, while the most productive farmers would continue their operations as economic endeavours. 44 Under this mindset, the details of the proposed implementation were offered under three categories: Training and Extension, Agricultural Research, and Land

Consolidation and Improvement.45

In Training and Extension, the Plan pinpointed the professionalization of the provincial Department of Agriculture as “a key requirement in implementing the strategy,” with “a much strengthened extension and market research service.”46 To achieve the commercialization of farm units, a second key requirement was the implementation of an agricultural education program, aimed at increasing the number of

43 Ibid., 34. 44 Ibid., 35-37. 45 Ibid., 33-38. 46 Ibid., 34.

42 young farmers with farm management and operational skills training.47 For those already working the land, the Plan proposed to offer 600 to 900 farmers “the opportunity to participate in extensive group agricultural training sessions conducted by farm management specialists, technicians and argologists from the extension service of the

Department of Agriculture.”48 Through group instruction on “farm management techniques, credit planning and decision making,” and on-the-job training, farmers would be better equipped to modernize and commercialize their farms through the adoption of new technologies. 49

Under Agricultural Research, the Plan aimed to overcome the province’s reliance on the research of the Canada Department of Agriculture and the other regions’

Centralized Research Development Programs by directing “significant research efforts” to agricultural problems specific to the Island. Through the Fund for Rural Economic

Development, the Plan proposed $3,375,000 for research over a fifteen-year period, utilized through Maritime agricultural facilities for “the greater benefit of the region as a whole.”50

Finally, in Land Consolidation and Improvement, the Plan aimed to facilitate the transition to fewer, commercialized farms by empowering the province to act as an intermediary in land transactions through the establishment of a crown corporation – the

Land Development Corporation. To both consolidate and enlarge farms, the Corporation would “enable those who wish to leave farming to release their land when they wish,” and “allow those who want to expand their holdings to acquire such land when they and

47 Ibid., 34. 48 Ibid., 35. 49 Ibid., 35. 50 Ibid., 38.

43 as they are able to manage it.”51 As discussed above, the Comprehensive Development

Plan also equated those who wanted to sell their land and those who were operating low- income farms; it aimed to perpetuate the success of high-income farm operations, while channelling the owners of less stable farms into other operations – offering no strategy for turning the province’s low-income farms into stable operations. 52

Social Reaction, Political Response – Cultural Articulation

Islanders, through the election of Alex Campbell’s government, had sought to stabilize “the backbone of the province,” but the Comprehensive Development Plan they received sought to institutionalize the decline of farm units – with no regard to the Island way of life. Although Islanders wanted to save their farms, and had not asked to be poor, they had not asked to be “developed,” either. By 1970, a survey found that more than two-thirds of Islanders objected to the Plan having been prepared in secret by

“outsiders.”53 Del Gallagher did remain resolute that the Plan would work – but only if

Islanders were prepared to work “damn hard” at it.54 Yet, due to their suspicions of outsiders and secrecy in the planning process, and anger over the Plan’s attempted institutionalization of farm decline, “ordinary Islanders were reluctant participants in the grand design they had not sought.”55 In not consulting Islanders, Gallagher had given them a plan that, on the whole, they would not work to actualize.

51 Ibid., 35-36. 52 Ibid., 35-37. 53 Wayne MacKinnon: “The Politics of Planning: A Case Study of the Prince Edward Island Development Plan” (M.A. Thesis, Dalhousie University, Halifax, 1972), 205. 54 Del Gallagher, interview with Wayne E. MacKinnon, in MacKinnon, “The Politics of Planning,” 94. 55 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 317.

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By stating that “the historical pattern of land ownership in Prince Edward Island

[was] badly adapted to the needs of modern technology for agriculture,”56 development planners had “shrugged aside two hundred years of Island history, with its defining struggle for control over the land and its defining image of the small family farm.”57

These family farmers “walked the fields of the Comprehensive Development Plan – sowing discontent.”58 The Plan took a long-term, strictly economic approach to agriculture, while Island farmers’ economic problems were immediate, and their attachment to the family farm as a way of life was strong. Low-income farmers, in large part, did not want a way off their land – they wanted a way to remain on it. As one wrote to Premier Campbell: “The next time you have occasion to speak on T.V., will you please tell us what you intend doing for the ordinary farmer & how you think he should pay his bills and keep going? … We would like you to tell us how we can survive on 80 cents a bag for graded No. 1 potatoes … When is this better deal for farmers going into effect?”59

Farmers’ discontent with the Plan’s long-term view of the industry was significantly heightened by the industry’s disastrous year in 1971.60 The number of farms had fallen to 4,543, and the industry’s net income, when divided amongst the 21,300 members of the Island’s farm families, resulted in a personal per capita income of just

$227 – the worst since 1934, without factoring in inflation, and only seven per cent of the average net income for Canadians.61 That same year, members of the National Farmers

Union “demonstrated their frustration by driving their tractors with deliberate, traffic-

56 Minister of Regional Economic Development, Agreement Covering Development Plan, 31. 57 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 320. 58 Ibid., 320. 59 Undated, unsigned letter to A. B. Campbell, A.B. Campbell Papers, PARO RG 25.36, 1966-67/1037. 60 Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, A History, 64. 61 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 321-322.

45 snarling slowness down the main tourist arteries” at the height of the tourism season.62

Pressure built for the Liberal caucus to “do something” to help small farmers.

This pressure forced recognition by the governing Liberals that “the family farm was more important as a social unit than as an economic one,”63 and in the Spring of

1972, a “Family Farm Program” was designed to provide farmers will small capital grants. The program represented a fundamental shift in the Plan’s approach to agriculture. Its objective of increasing and stabilizing net farm incomes would now be met “while still preserving as much as possible the traditional rural values in Prince

Edward Island, i.e. maintenance of the family farm as the backbone of Island agriculture.”64 In fact, “more than any word or gesture, [the Family Farm Program] suggested how much the Development Plan’s agricultural strategy had been compromised.” 65

That same Spring, the entire Speech from the Throne was devoted to agriculture and marked a sea-change in the rhetoric of Alex Campbell’s government. It promised that the government would “do everything in its power to stem the tide which [was] eroding away the family farm,”66 and appealed to Islanders’ sense of identity, stating that

“the very nature and character of this province is built upon the nature and character of our farm community. No citizen of this province would have it any other way.”67 The

Campbell government was now employing the rhetoric and sentiments of its predecessors. As well, the Speech marked a watershed moment in the discourse of the

62 Ibid., 322. 63 Ibid., 322. 64 Keith Wornell, Office of Secretary of the Treasury Board, to T. E. Hickey, Minister of Finance, 16 June 1971, A.B. Campbell Papers, PARO RG 25.36 1971/1073. 65 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 323. 66 Government of Prince Edward Island, Speech from the Throne, 1972 (Charlottetown: Government of Prince Edward Island, 1972), 15. 67 Ibid., 11.

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Comprehensive Development Plan, as the government first spoke of agriculture’s importance beyond strict economic measurements. Although still largely couched in the economic terms – “the importance of the agricultural community cannot be measured simply by the direct monetary returns that agriculture and the sale of agricultural products provides to Prince Edward Island. The indirect economic benefits to this province are almost incalculable” – the Speech did venture to say that family farm contributed to the province in ways that “can never be calculated in monetary terms.”68

Farmers were significantly more open to the Family Farm Program, which was created under their pressure, than the Development Plan’s “complicated schemes for farm consolidation, modernization, and training, which demanded much and guaranteed little”69 – and which they had not asked for. Although the grants came with the stipulation of creating five-year plans for their farms, under the guidance of agricultural extension workers,70 the Family Farm Capital Grants Program disbursed over $865,000 to 1,200 applicants in its first year; by 1977, more than $6 million had been spent.71

Beyond changes in rhetoric and discourse, the Family Farm Program marked a shift in the Plan’s approach to the agricultural industry. The Comprehensive

Development Plan’s original text explicitly envisaged no subsidies, but only three years into the fifteen-year strategy, a subsidy-based program had been created. Additionally, the new program countered the Plan’s foundational goal of reducing the number of Island farm units. The Development Plan had sought to rationalize the number of farms, but the

Family Farm Program sought to “encourage [the family farm’s] continued existence and

68 Ibid., 12. 69 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 323. 70 Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, A History, 64. 71 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 323.

47 increasing viability.”72 Farmers had no input into the original goal of farm rationalization, but under their pressure, the government began “backing away from the more provoking components of its agricultural policy.”73 Islanders were not readily giving up their way of life and the many of the lowest-income farmers were fighting to stay on their land – the original assumptions of federal planners and bureaucrats had not been realized, but the Island’s dominant political culture became clear.

Yet, whereas traditionalists on Prince Edward Island had historically been marked by a passive nature, where they saw active violations of their political culture, some countered with active responses and demonstrations. In 1973, the Brothers and Sisters of

Cornelius Howatt (BS-CH) put further pressure on Alex Campbell’s government.

Although created by young historian-activists Harry Baglole and David Weale to provide a “satirical counterpoint” to the provincial Centennial celebrations, the group’s serious subtext was to target the Development Plan; their stated belief was that “‘the Island’s unique cultural character, based as it is on the family farm as the main component of the economy’ should be preserved and encouraged.”74 Critical of the Plan’s pursuit of

“national standards,” the BS-CH pushed their emphatic belief that “economic prosperity is not the solution to all our human ills, and that the quality of life does not automatically rise and fall with the consumer index or the gross national project.”75 Baglole and Weale provided “an intellectual gloss on Islanders’ instinctive resistance to imposed changed,” and, although the group “self-destructed” after one year, its critical evaluations of the

72 Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, A History, 64. 73 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 323. 74 Ryan O’Connor, “Angus MacLean and the ‘Rural Renaissance’: Shadow or Substance?” Oral History FORUM d’historie orale 23 (2003), 63. 75 Harry Baglole and David Weale, Cornelius Howatt: Superstar! (Belfast, PE: Williams and Crue, 1974), 77.

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Development Plan persisted.76 Islanders now had articulated examples of how economic growth for its own sake challenged their way of life, and these ideas only strengthened pressure on the Campbell government to help preserve agriculture as the backbone of the

Island.

Under this heightened pressure, Premier Campbell called an election for April

1974.77 The 1970 election had proved to be a paradox, albeit a quiet one, in which the

Development Plan had already been released, but neither the Progressive Conservatives nor the public made significant mention of the Plan’s controversial elements that would later become the rallying points for protest and outcries. There are two plausible explanations for this situation. The first is that the gravity of the Development Plan had not settled on Islanders, despite its release a year prior. The second speaks to a historical trend in Prince Edward Island elections: “friends at court.” As Ian Stewart has explained, throughout much of the twentieth century, there was “a striking tendency for Prince

Edward Island voters to elect provincial administrations of the same party stripe as the federal government … In 16 of the 21 elections between 1905 and 1984, Islanders ensured that the partisan complexion of the incoming provincial administration would conform to that of the existing federal government.”78 As a province heavily dependent on Ottawa, Islanders had a keen sense of the benefits that could flow from positive federal-provincial relations, which were more likely to occur when the two governments were of the same political stripe. In this way, it could be expected that some Islanders would have felt the benefits of matching the Trudeau government would outweigh the

76 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 335. 77 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 4 April 1974. 78 Ian Stewart, “Friends at Court: Federalism and Provincial Elections on Prince Edward Island,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 19(1) 1986, 127-150.

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Development Plan’s negatives; at a time when the agricultural industry was in desperate condition, farmers may have sought all the help they could get.

It is likely that both factors contributed to the Campbell’s government renewed, and increased, mandate in 1970,79 but from the outcry that followed, the 1974 election looked remarkably different. In a drastic break from the original Plan, the Liberals promoted the family farm as the basis of the Island way of life, and proposed to “extend the Family Farm Program to assist part-time farmers to become full-time farmers and to help farm youth establish their own farms.”80 Beyond an extension of the Family Farm

Program, the Liberals proposed to increase the number of young farmers through a Farm

Settlement Program, create a Land Bank, eliminate taxes on family-owned farmland, improve and strengthen agricultural marketing, and help ensure the financial stability of producers.81 Although the Progressive Conservatives’ campaign literature drew explicit attention to the Plan’s original intention of reducing the number of Island farms to 2,500, they offered no concrete details as to how they would help agriculture.

Ultimately, the Campbell Liberals’ promise to “preserve [Islanders’] way of life and work for improved standard of living,”82 resonated with voters who placed a high value on culture, but also recognized that the struggling agricultural industry needed help.

Additionally, the sense of political empowerment farmers received from the implementation of the Family Farm Program helped propel the Liberals to a third straight

79 Campbell’s Liberals won 27 of 32 seats. Elections PEI, “1970 Results,” available at: www.electionspei.ca. 80 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 13 April 1974. 81 Ibid., 13 April 1974. 82 Ibid., 22 April 1974.

50 term in office.83 Under this renewed mandate, Premier Campbell began negotiations with planners and federal bureaucrats to draft the second phase of the Development Plan.

Signed on 23 October 1975, the Phase II of the Development Plan had the explicit aim of helping PEI reach its “full economic potential by creating conditions that [would] foster that development.”84 The Plan still evaluated progress in economic terms, stating that “development for the economy [was] far from complete,” but it softened both its language and programs on agriculture; the political response to social protest during the

Plan’s first phase had been, at least partially, entrenched.

For the second phase, the Plan proposed three key points for agriculture: (1) Integrated packages of financial assistance, technical guidance and extension support services will be offered to individual farmers; (2) Improvements in stabilization schemes, local processing, storage facilities and distribution will help to overcome marketing problems; (3) Comprehensive assistance will be offered to new farmers entering agriculture.85 86

Additionally, a Land Management Centre would be established to complete surveying and mapping of the province’s “most valuable resource,” and the less radical proposals of the Plan’s first phase expanded, including “construction of new agricultural research facilities,” and “special research efforts to examine Island agricultural problems.”87 The second phase made no mention of rationalizing the industry, but the hand of economists and federal planners lay heavy in the Phase II – even if an element of cultural importance had been brought into the discourse.

83 Again, the Liberals won 27 seats in the 32 seat Legislature. Elections PEI, “1974 Results,” available at: www.electionspei.ca 84 Chris Wells and Jean Caron, “Notes for an address by the Hon. Marcel Lessard, Minister of Regional Economic Expansion on the occasion of the signing of Phase II of the Comprehensive Development Plan” (Charlottetown: Regional Economic Expansion, 23 October 1975), 2. 85 Including an extension of the capital grants created under the Family Farm Program. 86 Island Information Service, “The Comprehensive Development Plan: Documents Relating to Phase II” (Charlottetown: Island Information Service, 1975), 4. 87 Ibid., 7.

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A Return to Passive Stewardship: The Rise of Angus MacLean

Although Phase II built on the retraction of the Plan’s most radical elements, there was little visible change to the industry under the new agreement. Island farmers used the Family Farm Program in increasing numbers, but the number of family farms continued to decline. By 1976, the number of farms had fallen to 3,677,88 and a spreading recession was obscuring the Plan’s efforts to stabilize the industry. Under these conditions, the familiarity of “development” began to breed contempt.89 Still, when

Alex Campbell called an election for 24 April 1978, his Liberals again campaigned on the Development Plan, as they had successfully done in 1970 and 1974. This time, though, the Progressive Conservatives had a new leader – and with him, a persuasive platform.90

Angus MacLean, a widely popular and recently retired Member of Parliament, became leader of the PCs in 1976,91 and brought in David Weale and Harry Baglole, founders of the Brothers and Sisters of Cornelius Howatt, to help formulate the party’s platform and manage its campaign.92 For years, Conservatives had bemoaned the influence of Ottawa, but they finally had the leadership to articulate concerns over control

“from away” – and Islanders were ready to listen.93 During the 1978 campaign, MacLean railed against the Liberal policy of telling Islanders “government should be allowed to do everything for them,” stating that “people must have the freedom and the right to live

88 Statistics Canada, “Prince Edward Island’s Farm Population: Changes Over a Lifetime.” 89 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 365. 90 Ibid., 365. 91 Angus MacLean, Making It Home: Memoirs of J. Angus MacLean (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1998), 220. 92 Harry Baglole, interview with the author, 19 July 2010. 93 MacLean, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 365.

52 their own lives.”94 He promised that a PC government would restore a democratic system, and argued that it was “time the future direction of the Island be decided by the people.”95 In addition to a return of democratic self-determination, MacLean also sought to “create a political climate which [would] cultivate pride and a sense of identity in

Islanders” – the identity he believed the Development Plan had eroded.96

Under Weale and Baglole’s guidance, the PCs’ platform “knit together philosophical objections to the Development Plan and many ordinary Islanders’ instinctive resistance to radical change,”97 and offered ten principles to revitalize and renew rural Prince Edward Island. These included “making the Island more self-reliant,”

“revitalizing the rural economy by developing primary resources,” and “creating more jobs by working with the private sector to establish industries appropriate to the

Island.”98 MacLean still sought to “develop” PEI, but “in a way which [was] sensitive to its history, its resources, and the needs of its people.”99 Like Jones, he saw himself as a steward of the Island’s traditions and way of life.

The Liberals pushed that their government “must be re-elected in order to continue its plans for the province”100 and spoke to their “record of action,” yet offered few new innovations or assurances for the agricultural sector.101 Campbell highlighted the Family Farm Program and boasted of Liberals’ commitment to the family farm as

94 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 11 April 1978. 95 Ibid., 11 April 1978. 96 Ibid., 11 April 1978. 97 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 366. 98 MacLean, Making It Home, 230. 99 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 1 April 1978. 100 Ibid., 1 April 1978. 101 Ibid., 8 April 1978.

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“the cornerstone of Island agricultural life,”102 but he did not exude rural identity and values. As Ed MacDonald has summarized:

Superficially, the election pitted the handsome, still youthful Campbell, apostle of progress, against the grandfatherly MacLean, steward of tradition. In hindsight, the campaign contrasted a careworn leader atop an aging platform with a party that had taken Islanders’ inchoate resentment, anxiety, and guilty aversion to change, and shaped it into a seductive policy that seemed to look both ways at once.103

Ultimately, the Liberals edged out the PCs, recording a fourth straight mandate, but lost eight seats in the Legislative Assembly.104 Physically and mentally exhausted from “twelve years in the crucible of change,” Campbell resigned five months into his fourth term.105 With his resignation, new Liberal leader, , was left with a technical majority of one in the Legislative Assembly, but without one at all if he appointed a speaker; shortly after Alex Campbell’s departure, he called an election for 23

April 1979.106

In this campaign, MacLean’s Conservatives ran on the same platform of a return to traditions and identity while, under Bennett Campbell’s leadership, the Liberals promised a new relationship between government and Islanders. They also challenged the Development Plan’s historical reliance on knowledge “from away,” stating that any development plans should come from Islanders: “We don’t need others do it for us – we have the skills, the resourcefulness, the resources, the dedication and the commitment to

102 Ibid., 1 April 1978. 103 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 366. 104 Elections PEI, “General Election Statistics from 1966 to 2007,” available at: www.electionspei.ca. 105 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 366. 106 Elections PEI, “General Election Statistics from 1966 to 2007.”

54 do it together.”107 And yet, Campbell had difficulty distinguishing himself from his predecessor.

This time, Islanders gave MacLean a mandate of twenty-one seats. It was under this new government that the Development Plan effectively died in the mind of Islanders.

Although, officially, it lasted for five more years, “by 1979 [the Plan] had spent its momentum, its idealism, and its ideas.”108 Perhaps pushed by MacLean’s articulation of their sentiments, Islanders had grown tired of “development,” and the rhetoric of

MacLean marked a key change in the development discourse on Prince Edward Island.

Although he did not back away from the need for financial stability or an infusion of federal subsidies, he did not equate wealth for its own sake with progress. Instead,

MacLean took the view that federal transfers should be used to ensure that Islanders had

“the basic necessities,” so they could then choose their own future direction – one that took into consideration the Island’s heritage, identity, and values.109

Rhetorical Activism, Legislative Passivity: The MacLean Government

Although the election of Angus MacLean marked change in Island politics – as the province returned to a leader who governed in the style of Walter Jones – little changed during his time in government. Like Jones before him, MacLean’s premiership was marked more by what he prevented than what he enacted. While conscious attention was focused on Angus MacLean’s “Rural Renaissance,” legislative passivity meant that culture’s underpinnings continued to erode – and the disparity between political culture and socio-economic realities widened.

107 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 21 March 1979. 108 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 367. 109 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 11 April 1978.

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Although MacLean would later articulate a belief that his government had raised the morale of rural Islanders by protecting their interests,110 the latter part of this statement can be called into serious question. In contrast to Campbell’s early intentions of freeing the Island from the binds of the past, MacLean positioned himself as the champion of rural life. In doing so, he reinforced the value of rural life, but his government took few actual steps in protecting the same. Like Jones, MacLean’s stance was to protect rather than to change – even if change was in the name of protecting the family farm and rural interests. MacLean sought to protect what he believed had slipped away during the Comprehensive Development Plan. He was not a defender of the status quo, but of a status quo bygone. Never the less, he was not willing to take the steps necessary to reclaim this fading way of life.

MacLean was also like Jones in that his stewardship was largely symbolic. As such, little was accomplished in protecting the traditional way of life – whereas socio- economic changes continued to come to the Island. From the outset of his tenure, Angus

MacLean’s premiership was marked by the fact that he would rush not into any drastic action;111 he wanted to protect rural PEI, but this protection was both slow and largely passive: “Angus MacLean did not proactively execute his rural renaissance program.”112

His brief time in the premier’s office was marked by only two achievements in concert with his image as the Island’s steward. The first was a moratorium on shopping malls –

“The Act to Control the Development of Shopping Centres and Retail Stores” – which was passed in order to protect Island businesses from an influx of regional and national

110 MacLean, Making it Home, 248. 111 O’Connor, “Angus MacLean,” 63. 112 MacDonald, interview with the author.

56 chain stores,113 enacting, “a two year halt to the creation or expansion of any retail outlet with a gross floor area beyond six thousand square metres.”114 While the initiative proved MacLean’s willingness to legislate against outside influences, its limit of two years made the act largely symbolic. It was the second major action of his government – the Lands Protection Act – started under his government, later passed by his successor

Jim Lee, which would go furthest in actualizing his goal of protecting rural Prince

Edward Island.

As family farms were understood to be the lynchpin of the Island way of life – and Islanders understood themselves to be different than the rest of Canadians – the high rate of the province’s land passing into the hands of non-residents was understood by the

MacLean government as a direct and explicit threat to the Island’s culture and interests.

Although this was technically a rearguard action – Alex Campbell had implemented a

Real Property Act in 1972 that “forbade the transfer of tracts of land greater than ten acres to non-residents without the permission of government”115 – it was MacLean who made this legislation effective with his Lands Protection Act. Prior to his tenure, the vast majority of applications to override the Real Property Act had been granted.116 While this ineffectuality had been noted previously, the subsequent legislation has been credited to one particular incident: MacLean was approached by the Irving-owned Cavendish

Farms for permission to purchase 6,000 acres of farmland, in addition to the 3,000 acres they already held117 – which potato farmers feared would make their small, family-owned

113 O’Connor, “Angus MacLean,” 68-69. 114 Government of Prince Edward Island, Acts of the General Assembly of Prince Edward Island: 1979 (Charlottetown: Queen’s Printer, 1979), 34-35. 115 O’Connor, “Angus MacLean,” 71. 116 The Journal-Pioneer (Summerside), 21 March 1973. 117 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 350.

57 operations unable to compete against the corporation. In reaction to this fear, and general unease about the original Real Property Act’s ineffectualness, the Lands Protection Act set maximum land holdings at five acres for non-residents, 1,000 acres for individual residents, and 3,000 acres for corporations.118 Yet as O’Connor has noted, “legal loopholes soon mitigated the legislation’s strictures, but the act did make a strong philosophical statement.”119

MacLean was largely passive in his stewardship, and even where he did take action – in stalling the expansion of shopping centres and enacting land ownership legislation – his actions were rendered primarily symbolic; “it could easily be argued that the rural renewal was important symbolically more so than for any concrete legacy it may have left.” Despite its relative ineffectiveness, MacLean’s time in office, particularly at the close of the Development Plan era, can be understood as reflective of the Island’s dominant political culture. Islanders’ assumptions about their political sphere had been brought to the conscious level by Alex Campbell and the Comprehensive Development

Plan; they forced his conversion to “small is beautiful,” and were articulated in Angus

MacLean’s rhetorical and symbolic reactions to the decline in rural Prince Edward Island.

Throughout the era, Islanders demonstrated a continued belief in the traditional elements of their political culture.

Setting the Stage: The Development Plan Era and Future Leaders

This emphasis on tradition proved complex, though. As Wayne MacKinnon has argued, many Islanders later recognized that many of the changes brought about the by

Development Plan were necessary, but it was the over-emphasis on change in balancing

118 Government of Prince Edward Island, Acts 1979, 45. 119 O’Connor, “Angus MacLean,” 72.

58 the perennial challenge of protecting traditions in the face of modernization which had caused an outcry.120 Campbell had attempted to free the Island from the binds of its past, but in his failure and Angus MacLean’s election, the stage was set for future leaders to ensure that they were seen as in step with traditional Island values; future leaders would embody passive stewardship and strive to reflect the Island’s dominant political culture.

This need to reflect the Island’s traditional, dominant political culture was evidenced in the next era of the Island’s political sphere as Lebanese-descended,

Harvard-trained, Charlottetown lawyer Joe Ghiz would position himself as “an Islander with Island values” – Island values that he stressed were synonymous with the province’s rural areas. Campbell’s ambitions of change had been subsumed by the Island’s dominant political culture, as expressed through the pressure of voters. Joe Ghiz would voluntarily paint himself with the province’s traditional colours in order to gain voters support.

Additionally, while the conversion of Alex Campbell and the election of Angus

MacLean would set the stage for subsequent premiers to be in step with the Island’s traditional political culture, this traditionalism would become more complex, at least symbolically, as the century drew to a close. The 1980s and 1990s on Prince Edward

Island were marked by four premiers of symbolic change: Jim Lee (1981-1986), the first elected Catholic premier in a century;121 Joe Ghiz (1986-1993), the first premier of non-

European descent elected in Canada; Catherine Callbeck (1993-1996), the first woman; and Pat Binns, the first premier born out-of-province since Confederation. And yet, little

120 Wayne MacKinnon, interview with the author, 9 May 2011. 121 Both William J.P. MacMillan and Aubin-Edmond Arsenault were Catholic and served as premiers – from 1933 to 1935 and 1917 to 1919, respectively – after their predecessors left office, but each saw their government defeated in the subsequent provincial election. Government of Prince Edward Island, Dr. William J.P. MacMillan and Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, available at: www.gov.pe.ca.

59 in the political sphere changed under their leadership. These milestones can be understood as an indication that the province’s political culture was opening, but in how they governed, the four differed little from most of their predecessors, as each evidenced and evoked a belief in the Island’s traditional political culture. Jim Lee saw the province as something to be managed, and did not believe he should take an active approach to governing; Pat Binns was a passive steward of the Island, reflecting the leadership style of Walter Jones and Angus MacLean. Although Joe Ghiz had a much stronger national profile than any Island premier before him – punching far above his weight in the debates surrounding The Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords – he governed with a light and passive hand on provincial matters, while explicitly highlighting himself as an Islander with traditional values at heart. Finally, Catherine Callbeck was neither progressive nor a feminist – and would not have been elected if she had been. A conservative Islander and leader by nature, she was forced to grapple with mandated changes to the Island’s political institutions – namely the loss of rural representation in the provincial legislature

– but did so with a keen eye towards mitigating the continued erosion of the Island’s way of life. By examining these four leaders – along with Joe Ghiz’s son Robert, who became premier in 2007 – their administrations show that tradition still lies at the centre of the province’s dominant political culture, even as it has become more complex in the face of socio-economic, political, and demographic changes.

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5 Images, Links, and Negotiations: The Joe Ghiz Era

“Seeing Joe Ghiz by the door, Mulroney shook his hand and said: ‘You’re quite a Canadian, Joe Ghiz.’”1

When Angus MacLean announced his retirement, and Bennett Campbell resigned as Leader of the Opposition to run in a federal by-election, both the Progressive

Conservatives and Liberals were faced with leadership elections in the Fall of 1981. On

November 7th, the PCs selected Jim Lee as their new leader, and the Island’s new premier, on a third ballot2 – while the Liberals had given Joe Ghiz, who would become premier in 1986, a decisive mandate on a single ballot just two weeks prior.3 With these results, a new era in provincial politics dawned – albeit one in which the lessons of the

Development Plan echoed loudly. Although the two new leaders possessed remarkably different leadership styles – Lee understood himself as a manager of the province, while

Ghiz has been described as a “masterful politician” – their governments were both largely without incident; “neither Jim Lee nor Joe Ghiz consciously tried to leave their imprint on Prince Edward Island, and there wasn’t sufficient crisis, provincially, to require them to express their subconscious ideology.”4 And yet, while neither was faced with the same direct threats to the Island’s traditional way of life as the premiers who came before and after them, three events did bring the Island’s political culture to the surface in the decade

1 Andrew Cohen, A Deal Undone: The Making and Breaking of the (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1991), 116. 2 Lee ran against three of his fellow cabinet members, all of whom also promised to uphold Angus MacLean’s mandate and commitment to rural values. There was no clear leader prior to the convention, but Lee held a solid lead after the first ballot, and increased his numbers in the two that followed. Ian Stewart and David K. Stewart, Conventional Choices: Maritime Leadership Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 247-249. 3 The Liberal contest “crystallized as a clash over style rather than substance.” Ghiz was able to capitalize on his charisma and the belief that the party needed a new face against a new Liberal leader; his only opponent was and former cabinet minister . Ibid., 254-255. 4 Edward MacDonald, interview with the author, 10 May 2011.

61 that followed the Development Plan era. The first event, Joe Ghiz’s rebranding as an average Islander, despite his ethnic and educational background, highlighted the continued power of rural values amongst voters. The second, the “fixed link” referendum, was marked by masterful reserve and ambivalence by Ghiz, but saw

Islanders evoke strong, but complex and varied, responses to the possibility of a permanent connection to the mainland. Finally, it was Ghiz’s active role in the Meech

Lake and Charlottetown Accords that indicated the most notable change in how Islanders understood and approached the role of their premier and their province within

Confederation. By examining these three events, a clearer picture of the Island’s dominant political culture can be painted.

The Rebranding of Joe Ghiz

When he entered the Liberal leadership race in 1981, it was evident that Joe Ghiz,

“of Lebanese extraction and possessing a Harvard law degree,”5 was not a natural fit with

Islanders’ collective self-image. In both his ethnic and educational backgrounds, Ghiz was an atypical Islander, but he was one who took great pains to paint himself as a protector and proponent of traditional Island values. Although this articulation brought about public consciousness of political culture in a different way than the Development

Plan and Alex Campbell’s subsequent conversion, both evidenced its continued power in the face of articulated threats. From the moment he announced his candidacy for party leadership, Ghiz aimed to mitigate public perception that he was out-of-step with dominant values and assumptions. He engaged in an “array of stereotypical Island activities,” and “bragged about picking potatoes, attending barn dances, and even, while

5 Stewart and Stewart, Conventional Choices, 254.

62 lobster fishing, eating at sea those ‘small ones’ that could not legally be landed.”6 In this rebranding, Ghiz capitalized on his similarities to Alex Campbell’s strengths – charisma, youth, vigour – but strove to prove that, unlike Campbell, he would not operate outside the dominant cultural norms. It was clear that the Liberal Party, and Joe Ghiz in particular, had learned from the errors of the Development Plan’s era. As such, he was elected Liberal leader on a decisive first ballot.7

As new Liberal leader, Ghiz continued his rebranding as the province went into a

Spring, 1982 election. To prevent accusations that he did not understand or represent rural values, he infused his rhetoric with traditional images, emphasizing that “the farms of P.E.I. and the communities that grow up around them provide Islanders with a quality of life unequalled anywhere else in the world, and that without them the very essence of the province would disappear.”8 Premier Jim Lee had promised to carry out Angus

MacLean’s mandate, but did not possess his charisma; Ghiz, on the other hand, ran a campaign of image as he repackaged himself as an “ordinary Islander.”

Ultimately, the PCs were given a renewed mandate, but Ghiz and eleven other

Liberals were elected to the Legislative Assembly.9 As Leader of the Opposition, Ghiz continued to refine his image, a transformation that was noted by local media when the next election was called in 1986:

Bib overalls and gimme hats make up politics on the Island, and in 1981, when Ghiz was elected leader of the Opposition Liberals, he looked more suited to the cut and thrust of big-city Toronto politics rather than kitchen debates in places like Little Pond and Sturgeon. The transformation has taken a couple of years, but it appears Ghiz has finally managed to shake

6 Ibid., 254. 7 Ibid., 254-255. 8 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 13 September 1982. 9 Elections PEI, “Official Provincial General Election Results: 17 September 1982,” available at: www.electionspei.ca.

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his upscale, young professional image for the down-east, good ol’ boy package more acceptable in these parts.10

With his image cemented, Ghiz ran an effective campaign that promised a renewed commitment to rural Prince Edward Island.11 Employing the slogan “Joe Ghiz, an

Islander dedicated to Island values,”12 he committed to putting the Island’s farming industry “back on its feet,”13 and emphasized that a Liberal government would not forget that farming was “number one.”14 Campaign videos showed him walking through potato fields and along harbours.

As a CBC special on the election noted, “Ghiz is selling tradition. Island values.

The Island way of life. A return to the roots which he says decayed under years of Tory rule.”15 Jim Lee, not burdened with the need to prove himself as a “real Islander,” strove for a balance of modernization and tradition. Although he was by no means radical in his image or his views, he did take a more forward-thinking approach than Ghiz, or even than himself in 1982. Lee spoke of economic diversity – of other industries and opportunities, other ways to make a living. When Litton Industries, a defence contractor, announced its plan to open a plant on Prince Edward Island just prior to the 1986 election, it became a symbol of change – one that many Islanders did not readily embrace.16 With this issue, Ghiz was able to position himself as the protector of rural

PEI; throughout the campaign, he emphasized that under Lee rural communities had failed to prosper, agriculture had declined, fisheries had been ignored, and job opportunities had failed to materialize. Where Lee pointed to Litton, Ghiz stressed the

10 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 05 April 1986. 11 Ibid., 05 April 1986. 12 CBC, “Joe Ghiz and Jim Lee Campaign for Votes,” 18 April 1986. 13 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 09 April 1986. 14 Ibid., 10 April 1986. 15 CBC, “Joe Ghiz and Jim Lee Campaign for Votes.” 16 Ibid.

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Island needed jobs appropriate to its culture and traditions, jobs built on its agricultural foundations.17

This time, Ghiz and the Liberals were swept to power, winning twenty-one of thirty-two seats. 18 As the Island press noted, the rural emphasis of their campaign was a major factor: “Mr. Ghiz ran his campaign in rural Prince Edward Island and obviously that tactic paid off. He stressed that when rural P.E.I. does well, urban P.E.I. does well.

‘That’s where the wealth is created,’ he said.”19 During the campaign, Liberals stressed their commitment to agriculture using traditional rhetoric, repeatedly calling it the “vital

Island industry,” and promising its revival.

The rebranding of Joe Ghiz, and the traditional rhetoric that inflused two subsequent provincial elections, demonstrated the power of political culture in the face of a perceived threat to the Island way of life. Due to his background, Ghiz did not fit with

Islanders’ collective self-image, but through effective reimaging and campaigning, he was able to convince Islanders of his commitment to rural PEI. His actions, and the positive public response to his participation in “Island” activities and use of rural rhetoric, evidenced the continued power of the Island’s traditional political culture.

While the election results were an indication that “traditional still spoke loudly on the Island,”20 the fact that Joe Ghiz became premier did speak to an opening of the province’s dominant political culture. Although Ghiz’s articulated beliefs were in line with his predecessors – and he actively emphasized this fact – it also true that, despite his

17 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 23 April 1986. 18 Elections PEI, “Official Provincial General Election Results: 21 April 1986,” available at: www.electionspei.ca. 19 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 22 April 1986. 20 CBC, “Joe Ghiz and Jim Lee Campaign for Votes.” Exact quotation: “Tradition still speaks loudly on this Island.”

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Island values, he would not have been elected to the Legislative Assembly, much less become premier, in decades prior.21 In this, a new openness amongst Islanders was seen.

Tradition was still important, as the rhetoric Ghiz employed made clear, but his success indicated an opening in Island society, and a complexity in traditionalism that had not been there in earlier eras of provincial politics. “He embodied a new tolerance for diversity on Prince Edward Island … a Prince Edward Island where the son of a

Lebanese immigrant could not only become premier, but one of the most well-liked premiers of his era.”22 When their core values would be protected, Islanders showed a willingness to accept other changes in their political sphere.

Despite his active campaign, Joe Ghiz would lead a government marked by passivity at the provincial level. Throughout his time as premier, he spoke to traditional values, using Speeches from the Throne to re-state his government’s commitment to rural

Prince Edward Island: “Our Province is an agricultural community. The family farm is the pulse of our rural communities.”23 Ghiz worked to assure voters of his belief in traditionalism, lest he be seen as out of step with the dominant political culture. On the major issue of his era – the fixed link referendum – Ghiz neither supported nor spoke against the possibility of a permanent connection with the mainland. Although it was revealed a decade later, after his untimely death, that Ghiz had voted against the link,24 his choice to allow the referendum to move forward can be understood as an indication not only of his passive stewardship, but also of his keen intelligence and understanding of

21 MacDonald, interview with the author. 22 Ibid. 23 Government of Prince Edward Island, Journal of the Legislative Assembly: 1986 (Charlottetown: Government of Prince Edward Island, 1986), 3. 24 Macleans, “ PEI’s Fix Link Opens,” 2 June 1997.

66 the Island’s political sphere. Despite Ghiz’s strategic ambivalence on this issue, the

Island’s political culture was still apparent in the debate surrounding the referendum.

An Island Debate: The Fixed link Referendum

Although the idea of a fixed link to the mainland had been an on-again, off-again issue on the Island since Confederation, and would span four premiers from the 1988 referendum to its completion in 1997, Joe Ghiz remains the premier most closely associated with the issue – despite never publically committing to either side of the debate. He recognized that Islanders were split on the issue, and along neither clear nor easy lines, so he straddled both sides; his government never came out as in favour of, or against a fixed link – it simply set the stipulation that, if the referendum passed, then certain economic and environmental conditions had to be met before construction could proceed.25 From this, Ghiz could be understood as a reflection of the province’s political culture in that the issue evoked complex and varied responses from Islanders. In addition, that he felt the need to be cautious on the issue highlighted the continued power of tradition – Ghiz would not be seen as actively embracing change, yet he did not stand firmly against it.

The referendum, held in January 1988, did not firmly commit Islanders to a fixed link if it passed, but it would effectively close the issue for the foreseeable future if it failed. For most in the province, the plebiscite became the major issue during the Ghiz era. Many of the concerns raised were very pragmatic – the loss of ferry jobs, the

25 Ghiz released ten principles – which came to be known as “Joe’s Ten Commandments” – that set stipulations for the federal government if the plebiscite passed. They were touched expressed concerns about job losses, tolls, the Wood Islands ferry, and ecological impacts. Ghiz also reassured Islanders that a fixed link would not be built without provincial approval. The Guardian (Charlottetown), 9 January 1988.

67 possible impact on the fisheries, ecological effects, and so on – but there was a cultural element to the debate. The division did not fall along the lines of tradition vs. modernization, but these did colour discussions. In eastern PEI, there was a concern that the Wood Islands ferry would close;26 in the town of Borden, where the ferry docked, the main concern was how the loss of jobs would impact the town. 27 Many potato producers believed a fixed link would strengthen their presence in outside markets, by decreasing the cost and time required to get crops off Island, while others feared that the easier access to the province would drive up tourism – at the expense of agriculture.28 In addition, some farmers noted that “a number of things that [had] been touted as progressive did not turn out that way in the end” and they “could not see where a fixed link would help potato producers.”29 Yes and No were the two sides of the plebiscite, but the reasons, opinions, and individuals who fell within those two sides varied greatly.

It has been suggested that the more than forty-per cent of Islanders who voted against the fixed link did so because “they thought it was going to destroy their way of life,”30 and while that was an element of the debate, the issue proved to be more complex.

Emphatic pleas for preserving the Island as an island were made – “If we lose (the ferry) we might as well move to Moncton”31 – while others who were conservative and traditional by nature, simply did not like the inconvenience of waiting for the ferry. No easy lines could be drawn between the pro- and anti-fixed link groups,32 although two

26 MacDonald, interview with the author. 27 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 6 January 1988. 28 Ibid., 6 January 1988. 29 Ibid., 8 January 1988. 30 Wayne MacKinnon, interview with the author, 9 May 2011. 31 Ibid. 6 January 1988. 32 Edward MacDonald, “Bridge Over Troubled Waters: The Fixed Link Debate on Prince Edward Island, 1885-1997” in Bridging Islands: The Impact of Fixed Links ed. Godfrey Baldacchino (Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 2007), 12.

68 groups – Islanders for a Better Tomorrow and Friends of the Island – came to represent the two sides.33 Each group capitalized on a strategy they believed would work best, but amongst their ranks were many who joined along the lines of “we’re opposed [or in favour], and if that’s a strategy that will work, then we’re on board that ship.”34 For those opposed, led by Friends of the Island, the core strategy was the environment; feared environmental impacts – later springs, ice jams, easier invasive species migrations, altered bird migration patterns35 – took centre stage in the debate, but a myriad of economic, cultural, and societal concerns were expressed by those opposed.

Although those in favour of a fixed link constituted a wide spectrum of opinions,

Islanders for a Better Tomorrow’s argument – “A YES vote means improvement in our future way of life. Island voices are expressing their desire for a link to our future” 36 – spoke to a more progressive approach to the balance between tradition and modernization. While this did not mean that all supporters of a fixed link were progressive themselves, that the slogan was palatable to many Islanders could be understood as a crack in the Island’s dominant political culture. Whereas forty years prior, under the leadership of Walter Jones, Islanders stood firmly against the tide of change, there was now an eye firmly on the future amongst a significant portion of the population. Although they were not ready or willing to disregard tradition and culture in the name of progress, in seeking a balance between modernization and tradition, the scales were tipping – however slightly – towards the future.

33 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 9 January 1988. 34 MacDonald, interview with the author. 35 Ibid. 36 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 8 January 1988.

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Additionally, many Islanders were bolstering the disparity between political culture and socio-economic realities with their arguments in favour of a fixed link. Those who touted a permanent connection to the mainland as a way to drive up tourism numbers in the province were inherently threatening what they sought to sell. As one farmer argued, “there is a basic contradiction between selling the province as a pastoral retreat and promoting the sort of development that will destroy that way of life. It’s like running a bordello at the same time that they’re trying to operate a daily Bible school.”37

The balance between tradition and modernization would prove to be precarious.

It is also interesting that Pat Binns – who would later approach the Island with passive stewardship as premier – spoke out in favour of a fixed link. An MP at the time, he addressed the House of Commons to highlight the lengthy ferry wait times, and the tunnel and bridge technologies that could remedy the problem. Still, his belief in the importance of tradition did become clear. When reporting on the speech, The Guardian summarized: “Mr. Binns said he is concerned about the impact of a fixed crossing on the

Island way of life, but expressed doubts that P.E.I. will lose its identity if a link to the mainland is put in place. He noted, for example, that Cape Breton didn’t lose its cultural identity by linking up with Nova Scotia.”38

Although the fixed link brought the question of cultural identity, and its possible loss, to the surface, elements of culture were being lost by other changes in Island society. Isolation from the mainland was a focal point in the debate, but more abstract concepts of connectivity did not garner significant attention, even though they had major impacts on Island culture. As Ed MacDonald has reflected:

37 Macleans, “PEI’s Fixed Link Opens.” 38 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 12 January 1988.

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About the integrity of Prince Edward Islandness, in terms of cultural identity, I can’t help but think that the relative physical isolation, which had been considerably reduced by 1997, even before the fixed link opened, was also mitigated, quite considerably, by the fact that, whether you physically got on and off the Island had less importance to cultural exchange and cultural integration than television, radio, the internet. All of those have had a much deeper effect on the distinctiveness of Islanders’ identity and a wearing down of the distinctiveness. They have a bigger effect than whether or not you wait for a boat or drive across a bridge.39

When political culture was brought to the conscious level by the fixed link referendum,

Islanders articulated a continued belief in the elements of their traditional culture; modernization was considered with a keen eye to preserving the Island way of life. The most articulated threats to tradition evoked articulated responses, yet, on the more subtle issues, where attention was not paid, changes continued to come to the Island. In a province where most were without electricity only a few decades prior, Islanders now had access to outside cultures and ideas through developing forms of media. In addition, this access was both more tangible and frequent than through print media; even if physical isolation remained, the degree of information and cultural isolation had been greatly reduced through technological developments. The fixed link debate indicated that tradition was still important, that “the Island way of life” was an ideal that politicians and interest groups both naturally reflected and consciously catered to, but Islanders’ relationship with their past, and their relationship with the socio-economic realities of the provinces, were increasingly complex.

Ultimately, on 18 January 1988, 54.9 per cent of voters answered in the affirmative to the question: “Are you in favor of the fixed link crossing between Prince

39 MacDonald, interview with the author.

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Edward Island and New Brunswick?,”40 though the debate would continue, particularly until construction began on in the 1990s. Premier Ghiz did not actively embrace change, and did not support a fixed link personally, but he was masterful enough to recognize that the issue was divisive, and it would prove highly unpopular if he stopped a referendum from occurring, so he did not voice his own opinion and allowed the vote to go forward. There was little crisis during his time in office, but it has also been suggested that Ghiz was far more interested in politics than he was in the day-to-day governing of the province.41 This interest, perhaps, set the stage for Ghiz’s involvement at the federal level.

A Canadian Premier: Joe Ghiz and the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords

While Ghiz left the issue of the fixed link in the hands of voters, effectively removing himself from the debate, he was actively engaged in the Canadian constitutional crises surrounding the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. On both,

Joe Ghiz took a strong stance in favour of a more unified Canada, and punched far above his weight in their formations – creating a national persona for himself. As Andrew

Cohen reflected in A Deal Undone: The Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord:

Ghiz brought to Meech Lake a sharp mind, abundant energy and a familiarity with constitutional law. Although he came from the smallest province in Canada, he showed that, in this exercise, personality counted more than geography. It had been a while since anyone had taken a premier of Prince Edward Island seriously. Ghiz had stature. His colleagues knew who he was, where he came from, and what he stood for.42

40 Curiously, voter turnout was considerably lower than in provincial elections. In the referendum, fewer than 56,000 Islanders cast a ballot, compared to 74,830 in the 1986 provincial election and 70,870 in 1989.40 Elections PEI, “History of Prince Edward Island Plebiscites” and “General Election Statistics from 1966 to 2007,” www.electionspei.ca. 41 MacDonald, interview with the author. 42 Cohen, A Deal Undone, 45.

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Although the degree of Ghiz’s influence has been contested,43 that he wanted to play a role, and that Islanders showed strong support for his involvement did indicate a change in the Island’s political culture. While Walter Jones had not sought a national platform and did not receive one when meeting with the prime minister and other premiers,44 and

Angus MacLean famously quipped to that he was “an Islander first, a

Maritimer second, and a Canadian third,”45 Joe Ghiz showed a fierce belief in, and loyalty to, Canada – and was admired by Islanders for his sentiments and his actions.

Ghiz still framed the Island as a distinct place. His government’s Throne Speeches routinely included lines such as: “Islanders enjoy an unsurpassed quality of life. We are the envy of many Canadians.”46 He fought for the rights of small provinces in the Meech

Lake and Charlottetown negotiations, explicitly protecting PEI’s interests and championing “the governing principle of Meech Lake: the equality of provinces.”47 And yet, in negotiations, he also heralded himself as a son of Canada and he fought for the ideal of Canada in which he believed so strongly. As debates on multiculturalism became heated, Andrew Cohen summarizes:

Joe Ghiz interjected with what [Ontario Premier David] Peterson called the best speech of the week. He took dead aim at the Canada clause, which would have protected multicultural rights. He pointed a finger at [Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Clyde] Wells and said, “Are you trying to tell me, , the son of an immigrant who came to this country without a penny in his pocket and had to sell dry goods in order to survive, are you trying to tell me, someone of Lebanese origin who became premier of a province, and the proudest person in Canada, that, in

43 In Meech Lake: The Inside Story, Patrick Monahan argues that “the Harvard-educated Ghiz was a keen student of federal-provincial relations but, as premier of Canada’s smallest province, had neither the political nor the economic weight to play a decisive role in the negotiations.” Patrick Monahan, Meech Lake: The Inside Story (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 45. 44 Doans, The Premiers: J. Walter Jones. 45 The Globe and Mail, 7 May 2011. 46 Government of Prince Edward Island, Journal of the Legislative Assembly: 1986, 3-4. 47 Cohen, A Deal Undone, 46.

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Canada, I have got to have a provision in the constitution to protect my rights?48

From this, it is important to note that Ghiz evoked his ethnic and educational backgrounds throughout the negotiations, despite actively mitigating them in the provincial sphere. In addition, he was quick to remind premiers that spoke down to him that he had gone “to a place called Harvard” to receive his law degree.49

Still, Islanders were aware of Ghiz’s actions in negotiations; “Islanders might be insular but they are not ignorant.”50 When Ghiz fought on the national stage, not just for the Island’s interests, but also for Canada, and was beloved for it by Islanders, there was an indication that, while tradition still spoke loudly on the Island, it was increasingly complex. Day-to-day, passive stewardship still dominated at Province House, but the

Ghiz era proved that when they felt their core beliefs and assumptions were protected,

Islanders were willing to accept some changes.

The disparity between political culture and socio-economic realities continued, but would severely test Ghiz’s successor. While Ghiz had been able to move through his two terms with relative ease and without sufficient crises to force a full articulation of his beliefs, Catherine Callbeck, both conservative and traditional by nature, would be forced to grapple with mandated changes – namely electoral redistribution – that threatened the core of the Island’s political culture. Whereas rural areas had been overrepresented in the

Legislative Assembly for a century, the decline of rural areas now had to be dealt with, bringing the political sphere into closer step with the societal and demographic realities of the province. In the face of such challenges, Callbeck and the majority of Islanders

48 Ibid., 243-44. 49 Ibid., 113. 50 Ibid., 45.

74 would evoke a strong adherence to traditionalism and the continued dominance of rural values in the Island’s political culture, even as subcultures seen in the debate.

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6 Mitigating Mandated Change: Catherine Callbeck and Electoral Redistribution

“After lagging behind social change for decades, politics became its barometer during the 1990s.”1

Electoral redistribution was, by no means, the only controversial issue Catherine

Callbeck had to tackle during her brief time as premier (Liberal, 1993-1996). Chief amongst the problems her government faced was a financial crisis that resulted from a mounting provincial deficit and decreased federal transfer payments. While this did highlight the disparity between the province’s sense of independence and its economic dependency on Ottawa, it was electoral redistribution that brought about the clearest articulations of the Island’s dominant political culture – and the cracks that existed within the provincial political sphere. All steps in the redistribution process – from the demographic changes that brought it about, to the City of Charlottetown’s court challenge which argued that the final riding map did not go far enough to remedy historical inequalities – saw Islanders evoke their assumptions about what the province’s political sphere should look like, and what it was meant to protect. Island politics had lagged behind social and demographic changes for decades, but bringing political institutions into closer step with the provincial realties would now be thrust upon the government.

Institutionalized Disparity: Prince Edward Island’s Dual-Member Ridings

Catherine Callbeck was not a leader comfortable with change, yet her government was forced to sanction sweeping changes to the province’s Legislative Assembly.

1 Edward MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century,” (Unpublished draft, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, 2000), 387.

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Conservative by nature – she once resigned from the Confederation Centre of the Art’s board because one of its plays used swear-words – Callbeck was caught up in the times, and presided over the province with a cautious hand.2 It has been argued that “if she had been premier at a different time … she would not have been the architect of a reordering of the electoral landscape on Prince Edward Island.”3 Still, it was during her time in office that the province was forced to confront its antiquated electoral system.

By 1993, the Island’s electoral system was unique to Canada. Like other colonies, PEI had once been home to a legislative branch with two chambers: a

Legislative Assembly and a Legislative Council. When the Island entered Confederation in 1873, both the Assembly and the Council were retained. As other provinces began to eliminate their Legislative Councils, transitioning to unicameral legislatures, the Island reluctantly followed suit. In 1893, “after years of prolonged and sometimes acrimonious debate,” the Assembly and Council merged to form one chamber.4 In order to pacify concerns about the merger:

The new Legislative Assembly incorporated features of both parent institutions. Like the pre-1893 Assembly, the new Assembly consisted of 30 members who were to be elected in 15 dual member ridings. There were 5 ridings assigned to each of the 3 counties. The two MLAs in each riding were designated as Assemblyman and Councillor, with each position to be contested separately. The Assembly was to be elected by popular franchise (ie. males of voting age) and the Councillor by property franchise (ie. males of voting age but with minimum property qualifications). This distinction between Assemblyman and Councillor recognized the practice prior to 1893 whereby the Legislative Assembly was elected by popular franchise and Legislative Council by property franchise.5

2 Edward MacDonald, interview with the author, 10 May 2011. 3 Ibid. 4 Government of Prince Edward Island, Changing the Political Landscape: Report of the Election Act and Electoral Boundaries Commission Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown: Government of Prince Edward Island, 1994), 3. 5 Ibid., 3.

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After this change, electoral boundaries and the electoral system remained “largely untouched” for decades.6

Although this by-county distribution had entrenched a measure of inequality amongst ridings since its inception – in the 1897 election only 802 were votes cast in 5th

Kings versus 2,068 votes in 5th Queens – the disparity between ridings was exacerbated over time as the province experienced a gradual migration from rural to urban areas.7

While the province remained the most rural in Canada, by 1993, the variance between ridings was startling. The average per district stood at 5,759 electors, but the number ranged from 1,995 in and 12,681 in 5th Queens; variances of -65.4 and + 120.2 per cent, respectively. In addition, only one riding, , had a variance of less than thirty per cent.8

While this wide disparity existed, Island governments had been quite content to keep the distribution of ridings as they were. The issue was seen to be a minefield: “No government had dared to tamper with the old riding system which had remained virtually unchanged for a century.”9 As Ed MacDonald has explained:

The Island’s system of dual-ridings had been to modern politics what the tailbone is to human evolution, the vestigial remnant of something that has long since vanished, in this case, the Island’s old bicameral legislature. The dual constituencies had persisted at first mainly because they made it easier to avoid religious confrontations in electoral contests, and in the end, because they entrenched the political influence of rural areas.10

6 The property franchise for Councillors was abolished in 1963, and both Councillors and Assemblymen were elected by popular franchise which had been extended to women in 1921. Elections PEI, “A Brief History of Electoral Reform on Prince Edward Island,” available at: www.electionspei.ca 7 Ibid., 7. 8 5th Prince had 5,759 electors; the closest numbers of electors above and below were 7,741 () and 3,492 (). Ibid., 7. 9 The Evening Patriot (Charlottetown), 18 March 1994. 10 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 399.

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This entrenched influence of rural areas, and its place in the Island’s dominant political culture, would be seen in the debate surrounding mandated electoral redistribution.

Historical Inequalities, Mandated Changes

Although redistribution was forced on Catherine Callbeck’s government,11 it was not an issue new to the province. As inequality between ridings grew rapidly following the Second World War, Island newspapers began to publish letters to the editor that pointed out Charlottetown’s underrepresentation, typically following provincial elections.

In 1957, the Charlottetown and District Labour Council sent a legislative brief to the

Matheson government, stating: “We request that the Election Act be revised to give fairer representation to the heavier populated areas. This could be accomplished by an increase in the seats in these constituencies or a redistribution of seats.”12 Minor action to address this inequality was taken in the early 1960s:

In 1961, the provincial government appointed a Royal Commission on Electoral Reform. The Commission reported in 1962 and made several recommendations. These included the elimination of the constituency of 5th Kings [and] the creation of an additional dual member riding in the Charlottetown area … This proposal was greeted by strong resistance from the residents of 5th Kings, who felt they were being deprived of representation. The Legislature, in the end, opted to maintain 5th Kings as an electoral district and create an additional riding in the Charlottetown area thus increasing the Legislative Assembly to 32 members.13

The issue was revisited in 1975 when a legislative Electoral Boundaries Committee was established. Amongst the Committee’s recommendations was that “the present

11 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 12 Charlottetown and District Labour Council, “Legislative Brief,” in The Premier Fonds: Jones, John Water 1978-1954 AC 3570/27 (Charlottetown: Provincial Archives, 1957), 1. 13 Government of Prince Edward Island, Changing the Political Landscape, 4.

79 constituency boundaries be rearranged to provide better geographic and population representation,”14 but the Legislative Assembly took no action on this point.

By the early 1990s, emboldened by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, legal precedent,15 and the ever-starker disparity between rural and urban ridings, the Prince

Edward Island Election Act was challenged in the provincial Supreme Court:

Don MacKinnon, then a private resident of Charlottetown, was the Applicant, while the Respondent was the government of PEI. The city of Charlottetown acted as the Intervenor (sic.) on the issue, and sided with Mr. MacKinnon. The case was heard in the Supreme Court of PEI, and the applicant challenged that the Election Act R.S. P.E.I. 1998 (sic.) Chapter E-1 sections 147-151 were inconsistent with Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.16

The five sections of the Election Act that MacKinnon challenged established sixteen electoral districts, defined the boundaries of each county’s districts, and established the dual-member system.17

Ultimately, on 16 February 1993, Justice DeRoches confirmed MacKinnon’s claim, stating that five named sections of the provincial Election Act did violate the

14 Donald MacKinnon v. Government of Prince Edward Island and the City of Charlottetown, [1993] 1.P.E.I.R. 216 (P.E.I.S.C.T.D), 392. 15 Prior to Donald MacKinnon’s case, Section 3 of the Charter had been focal point of two other cases that dealt with the distribution of ridings and their variances: Dixon v. British Columbia (Attorney General) (1989), 59 D.L.R. (4th) 247, settled in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and Reference re Provincial Electoral Boundaries [1991] 2 S.C.R. 158, (1991) D.L.R. (4th) 16, which was settled in the Supreme Court of Canada. The latter dealt with the constitutionality of Saskatchewan’s electoral boundaries legislation, which “fixed the variance in the size of voter population among constituencies and the distribution of those constituencies among rural, urban, and northern ridings.” Writing for the majority, Madam Justice MacLachlin concluded: “… the purpose of the right to vote enshrined in s.3 of the Charter is not equality of voting power per se, but the right to ‘effective representation’. Ours is a representative democracy. Each citizen is entitled to be represented in government. Representation comprehends the idea of having a voice in the deliberations of government as well as the idea of the right to bring one’s grievances and concerns to the attention of one’s government representative.” The following conditions of effective representation were set out: 1. “The first condition of effective representation is relative parity of voting power,” 2. “Absolute parity is impossible and such relative parity as may be possible of achievement may prove undesirable because it has the effect of detracting from the primary goal of effective representation,” 3. “Deviation from voter parity may be admitted but must be justified.” Government of Prince Edward Island, Changing the Political Landscape, 9-10. 16 Daniel M. Gallant, “Electoral Reform on Prince Edward Island,” (M.A. Thesis: Dalhousie University, Halifax, 2003), 32-33. 17 Ibid., 33.

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Charter.18 Both the Ghiz and Callbeck governments fought the case, but electoral redistribution was now mandated; disputes would arise out of what new ridings would look like and how they were to be distributed, but the fact was that the ridings had to change from their historical boundaries. Yet in delivering his verdict, Justice DesRoches raised two points that would come to encapsulate the debate: the rural nature of Prince

Edward Island’s political culture and the suggested variance between riding populations.

In his verdict, DesRoches noted that “the importance of the rural economy cannot be overestimated and the rural nature of the Island should continue to be reflected in the composition of the legislature.”19 Despite this emphasis on rural representation, he suggested a small variance between ridings: plus or minus ten per cent – a variance that would result in dramatic gains in Charlottetown’s representation in the Legislative

Assembly. In drawing a new electoral map, the Callbeck government would have to balance this tension of rural identity and fair representation for the province’s urban areas.

Public Input and the Articulation of a Rural/Urban Division

Following the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island’s mandate that provincial ridings be redrawn to ensure greater voter parity, Catherine Callbeck intended to send the task of creating a new electoral map to a legislature committee of MLAs. By August of

1993, though, she bowed to public pressure and formed an eight-person commission, of five politicians and three private citizens,20 and charged them with “drawing up a rough

18 Donald MacKinnon v. Government of Prince Edward Island and the City of Charlottetown, 106. 19 Ibid., 256. 20 The eight members: Lynwood MacPherson, MLA, Belfast, Chairman; Paul Connolly, MLA, Charlottetown; Frederick L. Driscoll, Sherwood; Elizabeth Hubley, MLA, Kensington; Hourable Patricia Mella, MLA and Leader of the Official Opposition, Southport; Honourable George Mullally, Souris;

81 draft of P.E.I.’s new electoral map.”21 The Electoral Boundaries Commission held nine public hearings across the Island with three in each county;22 the symbolism of equal county distribution remained strong, even as the Commission was mandated to overturn the historical precedent. In total, fifty-three groups and individuals made presentations; the Commission also received ten letters that voiced opinions on the matter. Although the spectrum of arguments presented was wide, and the Commission sought to avoid any direct confrontations, a rural/urban divide quickly arose amongst presenters and in the general public. Thus, the Island’s dominant, traditional political culture was evoked, but cracks in the culture were also evidenced.

An editorial in The Evening Patriot summarized an important aspect of the rural argument: “Changes are sure to encounter stiff opposition from rural Prince Edward

Island which already feels that too much of the power and opportunity already exists in

Charlottetown and Summerside. These rural voters feel that without their disproportionate influence in the legislature, the voice of rural P.E.I. will be lost.”23 Just a few decades prior, their voice had unquestionably dominated the political sphere, but now rural Islanders were arguing that the voice of rural PEI was not only being stifled, but was in danger of being lost entirely. Even if this fear did not match reality, the fact that it existed indicated that rural Islanders were forced to confront the socio-economic and political realities of the time.

As the Commission proceeded with public hearings, fears about the loss of rural

PEI’s voice were repeatedly evoked. A Liberal MLA from the province’s smallest

Allan Shaw, Bloomfield; and Roger Soloman, MLA, Souris. Government of Prince Edward Island, Changing the Political Landscape, 1. 21 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 12 August 1993. 22 Government of Prince Edward Island, Changing the Political Landscape, 1. 23 The Evening Patriot (Charlottetown), 12 August 1993.

82 riding, 5th Kings, argued the changes would result in the province losing much of its

“distinctively rural identity and character.”24 Others stated that PEI was a “special case” where “the needs of the rural areas need special attention to maintain the sacred trust called ‘the Island way of life.’”25 Even though most Islanders still lived in rural areas, there was the fear that “the collective voice of the greater Charlottetown area [would have] the power to drown out the whisper of the individual ridings across the province.”26

The arguments made to protect rural P.E.I. were not just along the line that the province itself was rural in nature, but that rural areas were inherently different from the province’s urban centres. Individuals and groups argued that rural citizens had greater needs, and a need for greater representation, than those who lived within close proximity to government resources: “Rural areas need strong representation but that is not possible with a system based on representation by population. Charlottetown already benefits from being home to most government departments.”27

Kings County, which stood to lose the most representation in redistribution, provided many of the strongest pleas for maintaining the status quo, even though the status quo could not be upheld. Ralph Billard, chairman of the Southern Kings and

Queens Community Advisory Board, stated: “The distribution of members across the

Island should be equal, otherwise the rural country will get a licking.”28 Others, such as

Eastern Kings Community Advisory Board representative Alan MacPhee argued “the judge’s decision was just another example of rural P.E.I., particularly Kings County,

24 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 12 November 1993. 25 The Evening Patriot (Charlottetown), 12 August 1993. 26 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside) 5 November 1993. 27 Ibid., 5 November 1993. 28 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 17 November 1993.

83 getting the shaft from Charlottetown and the province.”29 There may have been a dominant belief that rural PEI should hold an unparalleled place in the political sphere, but it become clear that many rural Islanders no longer felt that was the reality.

Understandably, urban residents also felt that they were underrepresented, that their voices had been drowned out by rural dominance – and they had significant data to support their claims. Charlottetown Mayor Ian “Tex” MacDonald quipped that the province was finally “getting government for the 1990s instead of the 1890s.” At the city’s public hearing, “all seven presenters … criticized the status quo, calling it unfair, obsolete, against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and even against nature.”30

Presenters argued that nothing could justify under-representation of Charlottetown citizens; equal representation was their constitutional right. “On-the-street” interviews with city residents showed that many firmly supported an increased voice in provincial affairs.31

It is important to note that while urban residents wanted an equal voice, they also sought to mitigate the rural-urban divide and frame themselves as similar to rural

Islanders. Alderman Frank Gillian, in his presentation to the Commission, strongly supported a ten per cent limit on riding variance, but noted: “We’re certainly not here to go to war with the rural districts of Prince Edward Island. Most people in the city are from rural areas and have respect for the lifeblood of the province.” 32 At the same public hearing, lawyer Eugene Rossiter made a point of stating that “there is little difference between rural areas and urban areas” and therefore, “fairness between ridings and

29 Ibid., 3 December 1993. 30 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside), 18 November 1993. 31 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 17 November 1993. 32 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside), 18 November 1993.

84 representation by population should be the guiding posts of reforms.”33 Charlottetown residents could have framed their argument for equal representation along the lines that they had distinct views and values that needed to be heard in the Legislative Assembly, and while some did, many approached the debate by reassuring rural Islanders that they should not fear greater urban representation because urban Islanders were, at heart, still rural themselves. This strategy – even if it was only a strategy, and not a genuine belief – spoke to the continued power and scope of the Island’s dominant political culture.

In the end, though, as The Guardian was quick to remind its readers, change had to occur: “That aspect is out of the politicians’ hands. The P.E.I. Supreme Court has ordered that the electoral map be redrawn to reflect the population shifts. P.E.I. has undergone considerable changes over the past 100 years.”34 In the four months that followed the public hearings, the Commission worked to craft an electoral map that would meet the legal mandate and rectify historical inequalities, with Justice DesRoche’s suggested ten per cent variance in mind, while seeking to mitigate the deep articulated division between rural and urban Prince Edward Island that had arisen.

Two Proposed Maps: The Commission Report and The Ross Young Bill

In March 1994, the Election Act and Electoral Boundaries Commission released its official report and suggested electoral map. They were met with cautious support from urban areas, and outraged cries from Kings County MLAs and citizens. The proposed map adopted a variance of plus or minus fifteen per cent and proposed thirty single-member ridings: ten in Prince County, fifteen in Queens County (including six in

Charlottetown), and five in Kings County. Although the suggested ridings pushed

33 Ibid. 34 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 16 November 1994.

85 beyond the suggested variance, Charlottetown Alderman Frank Gillan admitted that it went “a long way in correcting the inequalities that existed in electoral boundaries.” 35

Still, speaking immediately after the map’s release, he cautioned that the city would have to undertake further studies before determining if it went “far enough.”36

In contrast to Charlottetown’s calm caution, Kings County quickly responded to the announcement with outrage. The entire province would lose two ridings under the

Commission’s proposed map, but Queens County would gain three MLAs and Prince

County’s representation would remain the same, while Kings County’s stood to lose half its seats. Immediately 1st-Kings County MLA Roger Soloman stated that he would amend the proposal, calling it a “beating” for the county.37 As a new proposal was in the works, the media remained sceptical that the majority of MLAs would override the

Commissions proposed report, particularly because Queens and Prince Counties faired relatively well under it; “unless [Kings County MLAs] can use the spectre of swelling urban influence in Island affairs to enlist the support of rural MLAs to the west, [their] amendment isn’t likely to get far.”38 Many of the concerns expressed echoed the arguments presented during public hearings. In the Legislature, Soloman wondered aloud “whether the concerns of rural areas [would] carry as much weight in government circles,” and argued: “without a strong rural base, you can’t have a strong urban base.”39

It was his colleague, Ross Young, though, who would introduce a private member’s bill that proposed a new map to give Kings County a stronger voice.

35 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 18 March 1994. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 18 March 1994. 38 Ibid., 23 March 1994. 39 Ibid. 22 April 1994.

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The Ross Young Bill, as it came to be known, proposed 27 single-member districts, with a variance as high as plus or minus 21.5 per cent. It kept the Commission’s suggestion of five seats for Kings County, but within a smaller Legislature, its voice would be louder. Prince County would lose one seat from its pre-redistribution number and the Commission proposal, but it would have the same percentage of seats as the latter and more than in the historical distribution. Queens County, however, would lose two seats from the Commission’s proposal – and would bear the brunt of the widened variance. 40 Young hoped that Islanders would support a smaller Legislature,41 and one with a stronger rural voice,42 but Charlottetown City Council responded in anger.

Immediately, two councillors threatened to take the provincial government to court if

Ross Young’s bill became law; Councillor Cliff Lee did not hide his dissatisfaction: “The

Ross Young bill does not give the citizens of this area fair representation. Let’s not play around here. I suggest we take legal action in the Courts. If the bill is passed, there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll end up back on Water Street in court.”43 The Council, emboldened by its successful support of David MacKinnon’s suit, felt confident in its promise to challenge and overturn the new proposed map. Others in the province, though, were sceptical of Charlottetown’s claim, particularly because other provinces had legally-upheld variances of plus or minus twenty-five per cent. Charlottetown MLAs spoke against the increased variance, noting that it would be at the detriment to urban

40 Government of Prince Edward Island, A New Electoral Map for Prince Edward Island: A Private Member’s Proposal to the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown: Government of Prince Edward Island, 1994), 56-57. 41 Provincial newspapers were quick to highlight a general feeling amongst Islanders that they were, on the whole, over-governed. At the time of redistribution, there were 32 MLAs for only 92,151 electors. Government of Prince Edward Island, Changing the Political Landscape, 5. 42 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside), 7 May 1994. 43 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 10 May 1994.

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PEI,44 and Charlottetown Mayor Ian MacDonald called an emergency council meeting to officially decide if the city would take up the legal battle.45

In the midst of the debate surrounding Ross Young’s bill, it did pass in the

Legislative Assembly in a close, free vote of 17-13.46 All Charlottetown and

Summerside MLAs voted against the bill, along with 5th-Kings MLA Gilbert Clements, who simply stated: “I won’t vote for this bill or any bill that reduces [our county] … I’m ag’in it, and that’s all.”47 Although it was a free vote, both Premier Callbeck and

Opposition Leader, , the only PC MLA, voted in favour of the bill. Perhaps surprisingly, it was the vote of Pat Mella that Ian MacDonald initially singled out: “the

Opposition leader is mandated to represent the entire province equally. She is well aware of the variance and also the electoral inequalities that exist in many ridings.”48 In 1996, though, he would enter the Liberal leadership race, changing his political stripe to do so.49

In The Guardian, Councillor Michael Tweel announced that “The Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island will be petitioned in the not-too-distant future by the city of

Charlottetown and the surrounding local governments. The court will be asked to strike down the deceitful private member’s bill which passed in an extremely close vote.”50

Within a month, the city voted to launch a court challenge,51 and was soon joined by

44 Ibid., 11 May 1994. 45 Ibid., 14 May 1994. 46 Ibid., 18 May 1994. 47 Ibid., 11 May 1994. 48 Ibid., 19 May 1994. 49 Ian Stewart and David K. Stewart, Conventional Choices: Maritime Leadership Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 16-18. 50 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 21 May 1994. 51 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside), 14 June 1994.

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Parkdale, West Royalty and Hillsborough Park as co-applicants.52 Initially East Royalty and Sherwood bowed out of the fight. The Sherwood chairman noted “most members of his council had no problem with the Young proposal when the matter [had been] discussed at [their] monthly meeting,” but cited financial constraints as the core of their decision.53 Eventually both went back on their initial decisions, and voted unanimously to join the lawsuit against the provincial government,54 followed two months later by the

City of Summerside.55

A notice of intent was filed with the Provincial Affairs Minister on 28 October

1994, stating that a lawsuit would be filed the following week. Although the Ross Young

Bill was eventually upheld,56 the case itself, and the debates that surrounded it, evidenced a tension in the Island’s traditional political culture. Rural interests had been upheld, but a fairer balance between the rural and urban areas of the province had been conceded. As

Catherine Callbeck would later reflect:

There has been a longstanding belief in Prince Edward Island that rural areas, because of their economic importance, diversity of needs, and the lack of local government, needed to be represented effectively in the Legislative Assembly. There is recognition among Islanders of the contributions of rural communities to the economy and to the way of life, and strong support to maintain healthy rural communities within the context of a strong and healthy province. However, with roughly forty- five per cent of voters living in urban areas of the province, there was also recognition of the need to balance rural and urban representation. I believe the reforms we undertook achieved that balance.57

52 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 15 July 1994. 53 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside), 24 May 1994. 54 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 11 August 1994. 55 The Journal Pioneer (Summerside), 18 October 1994. 56 By the next provincial election, in November 1996, a decision on the court case had not yet been reached in the Supreme Court, but voting was undertaken in the 27 districts designated in the Ross Young Bill. CBC, “Electoral Boundaries in P.E.I.” 15 November 1996. 57 Catherine Callbeck, personal correspondence with the author, 20 July 2010.

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Half a century prior, Walter Jones had seen urban Islanders as foolish, and openly argued that urban interests threatened the province’s values and way of life. Now, albeit through a mandated change, Catherine Callbeck recognized that urban interests needed a voice.

This recognition, though, was still couched in an articulated belief that rural PEI remained the foundation of the province.

In addition, the arguments of those who wanted to challenge rural-representation, who fought to ensure a fair voice for urban PEI, also demonstrated the dominant power of the Island’s traditional political culture, even though they could be understood as cracks in the foundation. Charlottetown Councillor Michael Tweel’s editorials called on

Charlottetown residents to break from their passive nature – “We seem to take an extremely passive approach to politics”58 – and city aldermen framed themselves as holding traditional values at heart, and calling rural areas the “lifeblood” of the province.

Although this could have been a strategy to mitigate rural fears about increased urban representation, it is likely that many did feel this continued affinity for their traditional, rural roots. Changes had been coming to the Island through the twentieth century, but as they had come more slowly, and been met with more reluctance and resistance,

“Islanders were a great deal closer to their roots than many other North Americans.”59

Many of the urban Islanders had grown up in rural areas; even if they no longer lived there, these home communities constituted the foundations of their lives.

Nevertheless, even if urban Islanders held the same values as their rural counterparts, they would constitute a more significant portion in future caucuses and cabinets. The extent and dominance of the Island’s traditional political culture, and its

58 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 2 April 1994. 59 MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted,” 393.

90 ability to endure in the face of socio-economic and now political changes, would be tested in future elections and governments. And yet, in the post-redistribution period, the province would be led by a new premier, Pat Binns, who possessed a traditional, agricultural persona, governed in the manner of Walter Jones and Angus MacLean, and proved to be widely popular amongst Islanders. Institutions had been brought into step with the province’s socio-economic and demographic realities, but culture remained tied to the Island’s past.

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7Traditionalism in the Post-Redistribution Era: Pat Binns & Beyond

“We were doing it to protect rural P.E.I.”1

In the Spring of 1996, rural Islanders were coming to grips with the results of electoral redistribution while a provincial election, the first that would use the new twenty-seven single-member ridings, loomed on the horizon. And yet, in both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative leadership conventions held prior to that election, the continued power of the Island’s traditional political culture was evidenced – along with an increasingly tense rural/urban division in the provincial political sphere. The two conventions, and the election that followed, highlighted the continued power of the

Island’s dominant political culture despite the diminished voice of rural PEI, but there was also clear evidence of an emerging urban undercurrent. Perhaps emboldened by their increased representation, urban Islanders propelled distinctly Charlottetown candidates to second place in both leadership races. The rural, traditional voice still spoke loudest, but an urban voice could now be heard; this added a new element to the Island’s political culture, one that has continued to grow in the post-redistribution era. Although there are inherent difficulties in drawing conclusions about recent history, it is important to examine these events in order to understand the immediate implications of electoral redistribution and tease out the indications of an emerging rural/urban tension in Prince

Edward Island politics.

1 , interview with the author, 20 July 2010.

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Tension Conventions: Rural/Urban Articulations in the 1996 Leadership Elections

Islanders expected that the post-redistribution era would officially begin with a

June 1996 election, but when polls indicated that Catherine Callbeck’s controversial premiership had resulted in increasing unpopularity for the Liberal Party, she took the province to the cusp of an election, but ultimately stepped back at the eleventh hour. Two months later, she announced her retirement, and set the stage for a Fall leadership convention. Although four candidates entered the race, two frontrunners quickly emerged, who, when compared, personified the province’s emerging rural/urban tension.

Due to their many similarities, their differences were perhaps exaggerated: “The résumés of the two-front running candidates, and Wayne Cheverie, manifested some obvious similarities. Both were forty-six years old, both had at least a decade of experience in the provincial legislature, and both had held prominent cabinet posts in the

Ghiz and Callbeck administrations. … What differentiated Cheverie from Milligan were matters of style.”2 These matters of style reflected their backgrounds, their personas, and their degree of perceived attachment to traditional Island values.

The rural/urban tension that had been swirling around the province during the redistribution process settled on the frontrunners’ shoulders:

As a silver fox rancher from Prince County, Milligan could successfully pander to the anti-Charlottetown sentiments harboured by many rural Islanders. Indeed, the “fervent, agrarian, anti-bureaucrat, anti-intellectual” edge to the Milligan campaign caused some to liken it to a low-key Island version of the Khmer Rouge.”3 … Charlottetown lawyer Cheverie presented quite a different image. Unlike Milligan, he did not seem to be particularly attached to the image of the Island as a pastoral ideal; at one point, he made the politically dangerous observation that “there’s a

2 Ian Stewart and David K. Stewart, Conventional Choices: Maritime Leadership Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 17. 3 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 7 October 1996.

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balance that has to be struck here between those who farm and everyone else.”4

Whereas a candidate with Cheverie’s persona might have been immediately dismissed as a viable candidate in prior decades, he received considerable support amongst party elites

– garnering four times the support amongst cabinet ministers as Milligan. Yet it was

Milligan’s ability to resonate with rural Islanders, perhaps eager to prove their power following redistribution, that led him to victory on a close first ballot; he received 2,237 votes to Cheverie’s 1,836.5 Charlottetown would have a louder voice after the imminent election, but the Liberal Party would be led a distinctly rural Islander. Under Milligan’s guidance, it could be expected that traditional values would continue to dominate.

The Liberals were not alone in their rural surge, though. Five months prior, the

PC Party had held its own leadership convention in the lead up to the expected June election. The Tory convention pitted Kings County bean farmer, and former MLA and

MP, Pat Binns against Charlottetown businessman Wes MacAleer and Prince County

Veterinarian Gary Morgan. Although Binns had been born off-Island, moving from his native Saskatchewan to PEI in the late 1960s, he effectively portrayed himself as a protector of traditional Island values. Characterized as “a conservative in the tradition of

Angus MacLean,”6 Binns earned a decisive first ballot victory.7 As such, regardless of which party won the upcoming provincial election, the Island would have a premier who prioritized rural interests and personified the traditional political culture; Charlottetown would have an increased presence in the Legislative Assembly, but under a rural premier.

4 Stewart and Stewart, Conventional Choices, 17. Cited as The Guardian (Charlottetown), 19 September 1996. 5 Ibid., 18. 6 David Milne, “Binns, Patrick George,” available at: www.thecanadianenclyclopedia.com 7 Stewart and Stewart, Conventional Choices, 18.

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Passivity Personified: The Election and Governing of Pat Binns

Pat Binns and Keith Milligan held remarkably similar values, and both sought to protect the Island’s traditions and rural nature, but in the 1996 election, Milligan was hindered by Liberal unpopularity. In addition to Catherine Callbeck’s tumultuous premiership, there was a sentiment amongst Islanders that the Liberal Party had been in power for too long; “Binns’ biggest asset in 1996 was that he was not a Liberal.”8 In addition, Binns ran a campaign that “strongly committed to the preservation and enhancement of rural Island community life,” and created a platform based on the protection of rural schools, creating jobs that were based on the province’s “primary industries” of agriculture and fisheries, and prioritizing small business growth over corporate investments in the province.9 Milligan and the Liberals fought along similar lines, but saw their popularity decline during the election cycle.

Ultimately, after being presented with strikingly similar platforms, Islanders elected eighteen Tories, eight Liberals, and, setting a historical precedent, one member of the NDP10 to the first twenty-seven member Legislative Assembly. The relatively strong opposition, particularly for the Island, created lively debates in the Legislature, but Binns led a passive government. Like Walter Jones and Angus MacLean, amongst many others, before him, his time as premier was marked more by what it did not do than what it accomplished; Binns believed in “the integrity of rural life and the essentialness of it,

8 Edward MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century,” (Unpublished draft, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, 2000), 400. 9 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 18 November 1996. 10 Although Herb Dickinson’s election as the first NDP set historical precedent, and perhaps indicated a crack in the Island’s political culture, he ran on an effectively single-issue campaign: the protection of rural hospitals. While many Islanders recognized the NDP’s presence in the Legislature as beneficial to debate, Dickinson was soundly defeated in the subsequent election. CBC, “Painting PEI Blue and Redrawing the Map,” 18 November 1996. CBC, “Ron MacKinley: The Lone Liberal,” 23 July 2001.

95 but his government was not particularly pro-active in trying to promote and preserve the rural life … it fought a kind of rearguard action. It didn’t do things that would harm rural life, more often than it did things that would reinvent, re-energize, or preserve the rural way of life.”11 In government, Binns personified passive stewardship.

In addition, despite Charlottetown’s increased voice in the Legislative Assembly, the Binns government continued to privilege rural interests. Rural development officers were employed under its mandate to protect rural communities, but pressing needs in urban centres, particularly infrastructure needs, were not given sufficient attention.12 The government’s Speeches from the Throne were infused with rural rhetoric: “The family farm is the basic unit of Island agriculture and the cornerstone of many rural communities across the Island.”13 When Binns spoke of the future, it was framed by the values of the

Island’s traditional political culture:

My Government will continue to build a vibrant, prosperous society and economy. It will do so through a strategic approach which differs sharply from the “bigger is better” path of previous governments and of other jurisdictions. This approach has caused centralization, rural and community decline, relentless increases in farm size, dependency on commodity and mass markets, instability and vulnerability to external forces. PEI will lead the way down a better path – a path to the future, not the past – a path which takes account of the forces which will shape growth, development, and prosperity in the 21st century.14

The “affable, easy-going bean farmer” promised a strategic approach, but in reality offered little – beyond “small is beautiful” rhetoric – that would bolster or revitalize rural communities. Where Binns did act, it mirrored Catherine Callbeck’s own rearguard actions: mitigating the degree of mandated electoral redistribution in order to ensure a

11 Edward MacDonald, interview with the author, 10 May 2011. 12 Wayne MacKinnon, interview with the author, 9 May 2011. 13 Government of Prince Edward Island, “Sixtieth General Assembly, First Session: Speech from the Throne,” available at: www.assembly.pe.ca. 14 Ibid.

96 disproportionately strong rural voice.

Beyond the Boundaries: Pat Binns and the 2006 Redistribution

Pat Binns’ passive stewardship proved to be popular amongst Islanders.

Following his eighteen-seat government in 1996, he pushed his majority to twenty-six of the Legislature’s twenty-seven seats in the 2000 provincial election. In 2003 he carried another large majority, twenty-three seats, but lost three seats in the Charlottetown region to the Liberal Party.15 His personification of rural values ensured him a third mandate, but this change amongst Charlottetown voters indicated a crack in the province’s dominant political culture: urban Islanders were willing to demonstrate dissatisfaction with a government they that they felt did not give sufficient attention to their needs and interests at the polls.

And yet, because Binns had been elected to a third term, a redrawing the province’s electoral map to reflect demographic changes would fall during his time in the premier’s office. Following Donald MacKinnon’s court case, the Prince Edward Island

Election Act had been changed to include a mandate that a remapping of legislative ridings would occur after every third provincial election, as a safeguard against future variances between ridings that could be considered unconstitutional. During the process, though, in the name of protecting rural Prince Edward Island, the Binns government would override an independent commission; push beyond the mandated boundary, creating ridings with variances greater than plus or minus twenty-five per cent; and open the province up to constitutional challenge. Although these actions proved controversial, and an urban undercurrent was seen, the process of redistribution proved that the rural

15 Elections PEI, “2003 Results,” available at: www.electionspei.ca.

97 voice still spoke loudest on the Island.

In order to carry out the Election Act’s mandate, an Electoral Boundaries

Commission was appointed to examine the province’s existing boundaries and draft a proposed map for the imminent electoral redistribution in 2004. Public hearings were held, with sixty people making presentations and another fifty Islanders contributing written submissions.16 The Commission, chaired by Justice John McQuaid, tabled an initial report in June 2005, but the province requested further work. In October of that year, when a final report was released, the government immediately voiced concerns.

Although the protection of rural interests would come out as the chief issue,17 the government initially adopted the position that the report would “divide up communities”18 – an argument they perhaps hoped would be more palatable to a wide

Island audience and could minimize rural/urban tensions.

Following the release of the McQuaid report, Pat Binns appointed a Special

Committee on Prince Edward Island’s Political Boundaries to review it and the map drawn by Elections PEI that it contained. Four Tory MLAs, chaired by Minister of

Agriculture of Jim Bagnall, sat on the Committee; the Liberal refused to sit on the

Committee, “charging the Conservatives of trying to manipulate the political system for their benefit.”19 By May of 2006, the Committee declared that the McQuaid report

16 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 5 May 2006. 17 Jim Bagnall, interview. “[We] stepped in and kind went over and above the Committee report as a government. We weren’t happy with it, to the effect that we were losing too many rural seats. So as a government, we tinkered with it, which probably we shouldn’t have done, but we felt that in order to keep rural ridings represented, that we had to move the seats around a little bit and deal with it … There was a lot of people felt that we interfered with the system, and it probably hurt us as a government, but in the same thing, we were doing it to protect rural PEI.” 18 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 5 May 2006. 19 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 5 May 2006.

98 should be scrapped and asked Elections PEI to draw a new map20 – a decision that was met with outrage by urban Islanders and the Liberal Party. Whereas Opposition Leader

Pat Mella had worked in conjunction with Catherine Callbeck’s government to draft an electoral map, and voted in favour of the Ross Young Bill, “Opposition Leader Robert

Ghiz called the decision to throw out the political map asinine.”21 He accused Binns of prioritizing electoral consequences at the expense of “doing what’s right for Islanders.”22

And yet, while the Binns government tried to frame the issue as one of “keeping communities together,” the province’s rural/urban tension quickly arose in the debate. As an editorial in The Guardian summarized:

The political problem represented by the map is a problem of fact, not of opinion. P.E.I. is becoming more urbanized. As citizens move from the country to the cities, democracy demands that representation follow that population. That’s an uncomfortable prospect for those who remain in rural P.E.I., but courts have made it clear that equal voting rights are an important principle. When Elections P.E.I. comes back with a new map, it will inevitably have some of the political problems evident since the first attempt at redistribution.23

An acknowledgement of the tension by politicians quickly followed suit. In Question

Period, Premier Binns argued that rural Islanders deserved more political clout than their urban neighbours, citing the province’s disproportionate representation in the House of

Commons: “We accept that there are variances in this country, that everyone is not the same. P.E.I. should have four senators and rural P.E.I. should have a right to have representation that is different from urban P.E.I.”24 When the Liberals spoke against

Binns’ decision to overrule an independent commission, the Tories were quick to

20 Ibid., 6 May 2006. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 11 May 2006.

99 characterize Robert Ghiz and the Liberals as anti-rural.25 The party, which held three of its four seats in Charlottetown, but would need to gain support in the province’s rural areas if it wanted to form a government in the next election, was forced to toe a careful line.

As the debate continued, editorials predicted minimal changes in a new map:

“Electoral boundaries cannot be drawn to favour rural voters. In the Island case – the continued over-representation of rural voters west of Summerside and in eastern P.E.I. – cannot continue. To say otherwise is to grossly misinterpret previous court cases on voting rights and electoral boundaries from both Island and Canadian courts.” Although the variance of +/- twenty-five per cent had been used in the three previous elections, it was not a number officially upheld by the Courts. Although the trial judge “dismissed the [City of Charlottetown’s] application and held the appellant had not established an infringement of s.3 of the Charter,”26 +/- fifteen per cent was the number that remained on the books. On this issue, the McQuaid Report had been clear:

The courts have [never] accepted that the purpose of the variance of plus or minus 25 per cent is to allow for the over-representation of citizens who live outside the four large municipalities. In our respectful opinion if this was the intent of the legislature, if this is the purpose of the variance and if this is the plain meaning of the section, it is unconstitutional.27

To many, particularly in urban areas, the issue’s outcome seemed clear: “any map that does not have seven seats for Charlottetown, three seats for Summerside, one each for

Cornwall and Stratford will be thrown out by the courts.”28 This expectation, however,

25 Ibid. 26 Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island, “Province of Prince Edward Island in the Supreme Court – Appeals Division: Between City of Charlottetown, Appellant, and The Government of Prince Edward Island, respondent,” available at: www.electoralboundaries.pe.ca. 27 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 11 May 2006. 28 Ibid.

100 was not met.

In late June, the Legislative Assembly was called into a rare Summer session to consider two more proposed maps, one from Elections PEI and one drawn by retired chief electoral officer Merrill Wigginton, which had been created for the Conservative caucus and introduced by MLA Cletus Dunn as a private member’s bill.29 The Elections

PEI map did push beyond a +/- fifteen per cent variance, from +8.87 per cent in District

12 to -18.82 per cent in District 24, but would still result in a loss of rural representation.30 The Wigginton map, however, would not. By creating new districts in the Charlottetown and Summerside areas that would have a mix of rural and urban voters,

MLA Cletus Dunn explained, “there will be no seat loss in eastern and western P.E.I.”31

Binns tried to frame the new map as a balance of rural and urban interests, “What I want here at the end of the day is for both urban and rural areas to feel adequately represented and that’s what we have to strive for.”32 Nevertheless, the Charlottetown City Council met behind closed doors at its next meeting in order to formulate an official position on the Wigginton map and explore the possibility of legal action should it pass.33

The Liberal caucus had a stronger reaction – they walked out of the Legislature in protest. Calling the process “tainted by politics” and “a blatant attack on democracy,” the four Liberal MLAs walked out of the chamber minutes after a bill was introduced to enact the Elections PEI map. Although it was widely expected that the Elections PEI map would fail, it was put forward for debate, and defeat, as a formality. It was this that

29 Ibid., 26 June 2006. 30 Elections PEI, “Elections P.E.I. Report of the Descriptions and Maps for the 27 Proposed Electoral Districts for Prince Edward Island,” available at: www.electionspei.ca. 31 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 26 June 2006. 32 Ibid., 26 June, 2006. 33 Ibid., 26 June 2006.

101 the Liberal caucus took issue with, but Binns immediately made anti-rural accusations:

“This will be remembered as the day that the Liberal party, led by Robert Ghiz, abandoned rural Prince Edward Island.” 34 Still, the willingness of the Liberals to take this symbolic action indicated a new tension in the Island’s political sphere. Previous leaders actively avoided any actions that would portray them as out-of-step with rural

PEI, but the Liberal Party was willing to shoulder Binns’ anti-rural accusations – and would earn a decisive majority just a year later. When the Liberal MLAs returned to the

Legislature, the two party leaders passionately debated the issue; Binns called a loss of rural clout “unacceptable,” while Ghiz remained steadfast in his argument that the electoral map should be out of the hands of politicians.35 36

The Wigginton map did pass, but in the free vote, a rural/urban division was clearly evidenced: six Tory MLAs from the Charlottetown area voted against the bill.

Although MLA Cletus Dunn, who had introduced it was pleased with the result, “I think this is a map that’s going to represent rural Prince Edward Island and that was my intent right from the start, that we need more rural representation in Prince Edward Island,” it was clear that not all in the province shared his view.37 The press characterized the map as “deeply divisive,” and Charlottetown Councillor Philip Brown immediately spoke in favour of a legal challenge to the new map. An informal poll on The Guardian’s website

34 Ibid., 28 June 2006. 35 Interestingly, Robert Ghiz evoked views reminiscent of his late father, Premier Joe Ghiz, during the debate: “I want all members to think of these terms: Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Constitution, independence from self-interest, a higher democracy that represents what we believe in. These are terms that define what I believe is the greatest country in the world – Canada – and the greatest province in our country – Prince Edward Island. I urge all members in this legislative assembly, do not throw out what the rest of [the] world envies of us – a chance to have a higher democracy, a change to make sure everyone is equal … Do what is right, and remove yourself from the redrawing of any map that is going to take place.” The Guardian (Charlottetown), 28 June 2006. 36 Ibid., 28 June 2006. 37 Ibid., 29 June 2006.

102 showed that sixty-five per cent of respondents had supported the Liberals’ decision to walk out of the Legislature. The next week, following a Charlottetown City Council meeting, Councillor Michael Tweel stated that legal options were being considered: “This map compromises the city’s MLAs and waters down their resolve. A lot of people in the city are very upset that the 35,000 people in Charlottetown have been treated this way.”38

Letters to the editor called the new map a “colossal display of arrogance,” claimed shock at the “Conservative ploy;”39 they argued: “let voters map and government fix roads.”40

The continued dominance of rural Prince Edward Island had been demonstrated in the previous elections of Pat Binns, and he bolstered their voice through electoral redistribution, but there was now a clear urban undercurrent – an alternative to the province’s traditional political culture.

While this traditional dominance had ensured a disproportionate rural voice, one that was open to a constitutional challenge, the bill that passed was a double-edged sword: it overrepresented rural areas, but only temporarily.

In addition to a new map, MLAs approved changes which will see the political boundaries reviewed after every two elections. But MLAs won’t have to worry about going through the wrangling they went through this time around. MLAs have made changes to the legislation which will make an independent commission’s recommendations law, without debate – something which could have happened this time around but was rejected by Premier Pat Binns.41

The province’s urban undercurrent, and the rural/urban tension that accompanies it, have grown in recent decades; they have been simultaneously emboldened by electoral redistribution, and quieted by the Callbeck and Binns governments decisions to mitigate

38 Ibid., 1 July 2006. 39 Ibid, 1 July 2006. 40 Ibid., 6 July 2006. 41 Ibid., 29 July 2006.

103 changes to the rural composition of the Legislative Assembly. It will not be long, though, until this strong, institutionalized disparity will come to an end, and the province’s political sphere will be in closer step with its demographic realities.

In the interim, politicians will have to balance the continued inflation of rural interests and the knowledge that the composition of the Legislature will soon look quite different. This knowledge has already created a very real fear amongst rural Islanders.

As Jim Bagnall has articulated:

After the next election, there’ll be another review, and what’s going to happen is, and I can tell you right now, that Kings County, or east of the Hillsborough Bridge, will lose two seats. West of Summerside will lose two seats. So there’s four seats that are going to be gobbled up from rural PEI and brought into the urban centres. So what’s going to happen is the province is going to be run from Charlottetown and Summerside, because there’s not going to be enough rural seats to keep an even flow on what’s taken place. So an actual fact is Charlottetown and Summerside will dictate what happens straight across the province.42

Rural Islanders believe that their values should hold an unparalleled place in the province’s political sphere and culture, but there is a growing recognition that this may not always be the case.

Beyond Binns: Passivity in the Second Ghiz Era

As the Island has proceeded since this second, tumultuous electoral redistribution, it has largely been without sufficient crises to force an articulation of political culture or the emerging rural/urban tension. Robert Ghiz and the Liberals swept Pat Binns’ Tories from power in 2007, but the change was primarily attributed to a sense that, after three terms and eleven years in government, the PCs had simply been in power “long enough.”

In fact, despite the tension of redistribution, the Tories were expected to win as the

42 Bagnall, interview with the author.

104 campaign began. And yet, the Island had always been a province that regularly alternated between the two political parties; in PEI’s history, only one premier, Alex Campbell, had been elected to four terms, and by 1978 his majority had decreased considerably. Few

Islanders articulated ill will towards the “affable, easy-going” Binns, and the election was characterized as “uneventful,”43 but as it progressed, a feeling that one party should only govern “for so long,” and that it was “time for a change,” grew amongst the population.44

Although Ghiz, like his father, was not a natural fit with Islanders’ traditional collective self-image, it perhaps speaks to a quiet shift in the province’s political culture that he did not have to undertake the same rebranding to gain leadership of the Liberal party or a majority government. Certainly, rural interests were part of the 2007 campaign

– both parties opposed Sunday shopping on the line that it would not be right for rural communities, and Ghiz promised to bring more physicians to the countryside – but in the end, as University of Prince Edward Island political science professor Peter McKenna summarized, “(Binns) simply stayed too long. Governments often defeat themselves and

… that is what happened in this case.”45 The election spoke to common sentiments and trends in Island politics, but little to the actual contours of its political culture.

In the quiet election, the province’s rural/urban tension, that had been clearly evidenced just a year earlier, stayed primarily below the surface. However, this can be understood as an indication that the rural/urban tension, while having grown in the past two decades, continues to be quite small – and the spectrum of political culture in the province remains quite narrow. Urban Islanders have begun to demand a fair voice in provincial politics, but, in general, they are not making radical or uniquely urban

43 The Journal Pionieer (Summerside), 29 May 2007. 44 The Guardian (Charlottetown), 29 May 2007. 45 Ibid., 29 May 2007.

105 demands on the province. Active in their desire for equal representation, urban Islanders

– like their rural counterparts – have allowed quiet, uneventful elections to be held, and passive governments to continue.

This latter element has been particularly true in Robert Ghiz’s first government.

He was not brought to power on a mandate for action, and his time in office has been relatively uneventful – particularly compared to the crises that faced many of his predecessors. His government has been “roundly criticized for its lack of attention to the needs of rural Prince Edward Island,”46 but in reality he has followed the same passive style of governance of Pat Binns; like Binns, he has been content to avoid actions that would harm the province’s rural areas, rather than adopt proactive policies or stances.

Although accusations of anti-rural sentiments are perhaps easier to assign to Ghiz, who by no means exudes a farmer persona, little has actually changed in the day-to-day governing of the province over the course of the post-redistribution era.

When future crises arise, though, whether under Robert Ghiz’s leadership, or that of his successors, premiers will have to face the growing fear amongst rural Islanders that they may lose their dominant voice in the provincial political sphere, to the emerging urban undercurrent. Prince Edward Island remains a remains a place where tradition speaks loudly, but this sense of traditionalism has become increasingly complex and will be tested by rural/urban tensions as the province grapples with the continued disparity between its political culture and socio-economic realities. Yet, as the governments of Pat

Binns and Robert Ghiz have shown, while change has come to the Island throughout the twentieth century, it is the approach to this change – the passive stewardship that so many

46 MacKinnon, interview with the author.

106 premiers have embodied – that has remained constant as a reflection of the Island’s traditional political culture.

107

8 Conclusion

That Prince Edward Island’s traditional political culture has endured for so long, and to such a degree, is remarkable. In the face of dramatic socio-economic, demographic, and political changes since the Second World War, PEI has remained a place where rural values, the ideal of the family farm, and a sense of isolation and distinctiveness constitute the foundations of the dominant political culture. But to turn a blind eye to the evidence of incipient changes, the emerging urban undercurrent, and the growing rural/urban tension that have appeared the past two decades would be to rob the province and its political culture of the careful consideration that they deserve. Political scientists have been quick to characterize the Island as traditional, and, relative to other provinces, it is, but there is an increasing complexity to this traditionalism that should be recognized, and must be considered if politics in the province are to be fully understood.

The rural voice still speaks loudly on Prince Edward Island, but it is no longer the only voice that exists. In addition, the continued dominance of the Island’s traditional political culture is not inevitable, although it is unlikely that it will be swept away or completely lost in a rapid fashion. A sea change in the province’s political culture may be afoot, as the rural/urban tension continues to grow, but in a place where change has always come slowly, and been met with resistance, it can be expected that shifts in the political culture will come in a gradual fashion.

* * *

Prince Edward Island has, without question, changed dramatically over the past seven decades. These changes have come with a degree of inevitability and challenged

108 the core of Islanders’ collective self-identity and traditional way of life, but it is the way in which these changes have been understood and dealt with that has remained a constant feature in the Island’s political culture. Where particularly rapid changes and spectacular violations of the norm have occasionally forced Islanders to articulate their basic assumptions about the political sphere; otherwise a sense of passive stewardship has been seen again and again. In seeking to answer the province’s perennial political question, how to balance tradition and modernization, Island premiers have privileged the former.

In addition, with few exceptions, they have been unwilling to take dramatic or proactive steps to ensure the continued viability and vibrancy of rural communities. This, perhaps, is the most traditional, and most enduring, element of the Island’s political culture.

When premiers have taken action to protect traditionalism – from Walter Jones’ anti-union legislation, to Angus MacLean’s moratorium on shopping malls, to the

Callbeck and Binns government’s involvement in mandated electoral redistributions – they have been reactionary and rearguard in nature. With the exception of Alex

Campbell’s first six years as premier, all have addressed the disparity between political culture and socio-economic realities by minimizing the progression of social and economic changes. Where Campbell first sought to bring political culture into closer step with the province’s realities through active and comprehensive development planning,

Islanders reacted in outrage. In the Jones era, Islanders, led by their premier, stood firmly but quietly against the sea of change; yet, when a tide of reform was led by their own premier, normally passive Islanders were spurred to action – and the traditional form of steward governance returned to the province.

109

As PEI transitioned out of the Development Plan, the era’s lesson still echoed loudly; future leaders would reflect the traditional and passive nature of the Island’s political culture, and where they could be seen as out-of-step with dominant values, as was the case with Joe Ghiz, there were explicit attempts to reassure rural Islanders that they held traditional values at heart. And yet, while the styles and personas of political leaders in the post-Development Plan era have continued to reflect an adherence to traditional ideals and endurance of passive stewardship, there has been a growing complexity in this traditionalism.

Electoral redistribution brought the province’s rural/urban tension to the forefront of political debate, arguably for the first time in the Island’s history. Although the issue was thrust upon the Callbeck government through a Supreme Court ruling, it brought the extent of rural overrepresentation, which had bolstered the endurance of traditionalism, to light. Emboldened by the mandated change, urban Islanders voiced their desire for a fair voice in provincial politics; yet, while they were no longer willing to sit idly by as premiers diminished them, the framing for their arguments for fair representation indicated that many still hold a belief in the province’s rural and distinctive nature, even if they did not live within that collective self-image. Rural areas would flex their power in the 1996 Liberal and PC leadership conventions, and in the three mandates they gave to Pat Binns, but when the issue of redistribution resurfaced, an even stronger rural/urban tension was evident. While traditional stewardship again trumped urban concerns, the future of this rural-overrepresentation is limited: after the next provincial election, independent electoral maps that more closely reflect demographic realities will become

110 law – and subsequent Island governments will be forced to balance rural and urban concerns, interests, and values more carefully.

* * *

Both the continued dominance of the Island’s traditional political culture, and the growing urban undercurrent that threatens it, shed important light on the nature of Prince

Edward Island and political culture more generally. Political cultures are slow to change, and PEI’s has been particularly so. The Island is relatively homogenous and is characterized by a strong emphasis on tradition; even where cracks exist from the growing urban undercurrent, the range of assumptions about the province’s political sphere is quite narrow, especially when compared to Canada or even the other Maritime provinces. Although the province’s political culture has, indeed, become more complex in recent decades, the degree to which it has remained the same is spectacular. It speaks to the remarkably enduring nature of political cultures in the face of socio-economic, demographic, and political changes.

And yet, to simply focus on what has remained the same in the province’s political culture, would do an injustice to the province. Unfortunately, this has often been the case. In broad Canadian political science literature, Prince Edward Island is typically assigned the label of traditional; “it is often cast as a conservative monolith or an economic backwater that needs to change.”1 While this thesis had highlighted the enduring traditionalism of the Island’s political culture, it has become far more complex than easy characterizations or stereotypes suggest. In addition, there has been clear evidence of a growing rural/urban division in recent decades, a division that indicates

1 Stephen G. Tomblin, Ottawa and the Outer Provinces: The Challenge of Regional Integration in Canada (Toronto: James Lormer & Company, 1995), 16.

111 incipient changes in the province’s political sphere. The province’s traditional political culture still dominates, but there are now clear cracks from an urban undercurrent.

Beyond Prince Edward Island, this thesis highlights serious limitations of labels and easy characterizations in political culture. The label “traditional” proves insufficient for Prince Edward Island, even though it is the most homogenous, most rural, and, arguably, the most traditional province in Canada. Yet this label cannot capture the full nuances, contours, and complexities of the Island’s political culture; there is a level of detail that must accompany descriptions of political cultures if they are to be effectively applied or accurately utilized to understand political behaviour and outcomes.

* * *

Just as changes have come to the Island through the twentieth century, it is inevitable that further changes will come. Historically these changes have been met with resistance, and while there is no reason to expect a sudden break from this defining feature of the Island’s political culture, it appears that a gradual, creeping shift in the province’s political sphere is afoot. If the Island’s emerging rural/urban tension continues to grow, the ability of elites to remain passive stewards will be tested, particularly if urban Islanders move from pushing for a fair voice to pushing for uniquely urban interests and concerns. The traditional culture has been marked by a resistance to change, even if these changes would renew or revitalize rural communities. Therefore, premiers have been defined more by the actions that they have not taken, in order to mitigate harm to rural areas, than by any proactive policies or ideas. It remains to be seen if the province’s urban undercurrent will have a stronger acceptance, or even expectation, of changes and actions to meet their needs.

112

In the interim, governments will continue to serve the narrow traditional band of the Island’s political culture, although alternative views do exist. The range of the province’s political culture has expanded in recent decades, as many Islanders have moved further away from their rural roots. At the present, most who engage in the province’s political sphere are more closely attached to rural traditions than is the average

Islander. Amongst the older generations, most of those who presently live in urban centres grew up in rural areas and have a very real connection to the province’s countryside. Yet there are now those who have grown up in the post-Development Plan era; even if they are adherents to the Island’s dominant political culture, many lack their parents’ and grandparents’ genuine experiences with its foundations:

A whole generation of Islanders has now been raised within the post- Development Plan world, a generation which, for the first time in two hundred years, has virtually no contact with, or experience of, its inherited culture, except through what they learn in school and the fragmented memories of their parents. The cultural storyline that gives a society its uniqueness is at risk. Identity is not built on cultural amnesia. If it has no roots, it will be compelled to invent them.2

This is not to say that younger Islanders necessarily lack an appreciation for their province’s and ancestors’ traditional roots, but it can be expected that when they come to have a larger presence in the political sphere, and more traditional Islanders are lost to time, there will be a shift in political culture. While the full spectrum of assumptions remains quite narrow, and most Islanders remain tied to their collective past, it can be expected that a shift in culture will occur if the political sphere is expanded to include the emerging urban undercurrent as it grapples with the rising rural/urban tension.

* * *

2 Edward MacDonald, “If You’re Stronghearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century,” (Unpublished draft, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, 2000), 416.

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As this thesis has shown, even where political cultures are traditional and enduring, it is of critical importance to update and re-examine their contours to capture recent and incipient changes. A rural/urban division has appeared amongst Islanders in past two decades, but, as the incidents that have caused its articulation have been few, the dominant political culture has been relatively effective in mitigating it, and its actual impact on provincial politics has been limited. Yet, as the divisive tension between the province’s rural and urban areas continues to grow, and the Legislative Assembly moves to be in closer step with demographic realities, it will be important to study how this shift will include both the province’s political sphere and its political culture. Will the urban undercurrent remain an alternative to the traditional political culture, or if it will gradually pull Islanders’ collective self-image towards assumptions that reflect an element of urban identity?

In addition, it remains unclear what role passive stewardship will play in future governments; this characteristic, embodied in most provincial premiers, can be understood as a reflection of the political culture’s traditional nature. Yet it may be challenged by heightened attention to urban areas, although future leaders could adopt an element of passivity in dealing with both rural and urban concerns. Reactionary governance has marked the province throughout its history, but there is the possibility that leaders could remain quite passive even if rural interests are not privileged to the same extent. Urban residents are beginning to demand a fair voice in provincial politics, but it remains unseen whether they will prove themselves as unique from their rural counterparts in demanding an active government. Most urban Islanders have rural roots, but the strength of these roots, particularly as time progresses, will be important to test.

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Change, however gradual, is afoot in Prince Edward Island, and it will be important to update and re-evaluate the Island’s political culture as these changes progress.

Political cultures are slow to change, certainly Prince Edward Island has exemplified this, but understandings of their contours must stay current if they are to be accurately employed to explain political behaviours and outcomes. Yet political culture research should be cautious not to overemphasize changes when they do arise. Although there has been a slight shift in the province’s political sphere in recent decades, one that foreshadows further changes, the Island still remains a remarkably traditional place – a place where the past speaks loudly, rural values are both widely held and considerably privileged, and leaders embody passive stewardship. In the face of vast socio-economic, demographic, and political changes, traditionalism has endured as a defining culture of the province’s dominant political culture. Yet it is critically important to note that this traditionalism, despite its remarkable strength and endurance, has become increasingly complex and that it will be further challenged by the rising rural/urban tension in the province’s political sphere.

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