Charlottetown

I woke early to see Prince Edward Island emerge from morning mist — a gentle curve of red earth and green fields rising from steel-grey water. Our ship slid past the Confederation Bridge in the predawn light, that engineering marvel stretching 12.9 kilometers across the Northumberland Strait. By the time we docked at Charlottetown's waterfront, the sun had burned through the haze, and the capital of Canada's smallest province sparkled under a September sky so blue it seemed borrowed from a child's crayon box.

I'd come for Anne of Green Gables — who comes to PEI without her? But Charlottetown itself surprised me. The town is modest by cruise port standards, barely 36,000 souls, yet it carries a weight of history that larger cities would envy. It was here, in September 1864, that twenty-three men from the British North American colonies gathered in Province House and began the discussions that would create Canada. They arrived expecting to debate Maritime union; they left with the blueprint for a nation. That conference room still stands, preserved as it was when the Fathers of Confederation sat around its table and argued about railways and representation.

I walked from the cruise terminal along the waterfront in ten minutes flat — Charlottetown is that kind of manageable port. Victoria Row opened before me, a pedestrian street lined with red-brick buildings that house restaurants, galleries, and shops selling the inevitable Anne merchandise. But mixed among the tourist offerings were genuine Island businesses: Cows Ice Cream with its legendary flavors (I'd been told to try Wowie Cowie, and I did), local craft breweries, Maritime art galleries showing seascapes that actually look like the sea outside. The street was busy but not overwhelming, families and couples strolling at that unhurried pace that Island time seems to demand.

My breath caught when I stepped into Province House National Historic Site. This is where Canada was born, in this modest Georgian building that sits unassuming on Great George Street. I stood in the Confederation Chamber where those colonial delegates debated their uncertain future, where Sir John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier and Samuel Leonard Tilley argued and compromised and ultimately agreed to try something new. The original furniture remains. The portraits watch from their frames. A guide explained the three days of meetings, the evening balls, the champagne toasts aboard visiting ships. History happened in this small room, and somehow it still feels present rather than past.

From Province House, I walked to St. Dunstan's Basilica, its twin spires visible from most of downtown. The cathedral's Gothic Revival interior glowed with light filtering through stained glass, and I sat in a back pew for a quiet moment of reflection. PEI is predominantly Catholic, settled by Scottish and Irish immigrants who brought their faith across the Atlantic along with their farming skills. The Island's churches dot every crossroads, white clapboard chapels and stone parish buildings that anchor communities against the Atlantic wind. I lit a candle and thanked God for safe passage and small blessings — the kind of prayer that comes naturally in ports where the sea shapes everything.

After lunch at a waterfront restaurant serving the freshest mussels I've had anywhere (PEI mussels are famous for good reason), I joined a tour to Cavendish and Green Gables. The drive took about 45 minutes through rolling farmland — fields of potatoes, lupins blooming purple along the roadside, red soil that seemed to glow in the afternoon light. This is the landscape that shaped Lucy Maud Montgomery's imagination, that she transformed into Avonlea and immortalized in her 1908 novel about a red-haired orphan who talked too much and loved too deeply.

The moment that stays with me: walking the Haunted Wood trail behind Green Gables house, where sunlight filtered through birch leaves and every turn revealed another corner that Montgomery had described over a century ago. I'm not typically moved by literary tourism, but something about the quiet path, the quality of light, the smell of pine and damp earth — it brought the books alive in a way I hadn't expected. For the first time in years, I felt like a child again, half-expecting to see Anne herself come running down the path, braids flying, imagination spinning some elaborate fantasy about fairies or tragically beautiful princesses. That's what good literature does: it makes places sacred. Walking where Montgomery walked, seeing what she saw, I understood why her books have endured for over a hundred years.

The red sand beaches near Cavendish completed the afternoon. PEI's soil is rich in iron oxide, which gives everything — beaches, cliffs, dirt roads — that distinctive rusty-red color. I kicked off my shoes and walked the shore, cool sand between my toes, waves lapping gently at the island's edge. The cliffs rose behind me, striated in reds and oranges like geological layer cake. Children built sandcastles that would wash away with the tide. A man threw a ball for his golden retriever, who splashed joyfully through the shallows. It was all so perfectly, uncomplicatedly happy that I had to laugh. Sometimes a beach is just a beach, and that's enough.

Back in Charlottetown, I wandered the streets as evening approached. The Confederation Centre of the Arts was preparing for that night's performance of Anne of Green Gables — The Musical, which has run here every summer since 1965. I didn't have time to see it, but I watched families heading in, kids dressed in Anne costumes with red-yarn braids, and I thought about how stories create communities. Anne is everywhere on this island — on restaurant menus, shop signs, tour bus logos — yet she never feels exploited, only celebrated. The Islanders have made her their own, woven her into their identity alongside Confederation and lobster and fall harvest festivals.

What I learned from Charlottetown taught me something I didn't expect: small places can hold enormous significance. This tiny island, this modest capital, gave birth to one of the world's great democracies and one of literature's most beloved characters. The scale is intimate but the impact is vast. PEI reminded me that history doesn't require grand stages or imposing monuments — sometimes it happens in a two-story Georgian building on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, debated by men in waistcoats who couldn't have imagined the nation they were creating. And sometimes it happens in a green farmhouse where a lonely woman wrote stories about a lonely girl, and both of them found healing through imagination. That's the gift of this gentle place: the reassurance that ordinary settings can produce extraordinary things.