North Cape Coastal Drive

Today required an early start in order to do the North Cape Coastal Drive. Our first stop was Summerside ? where I had to reprimand them for not having a detailed map of the region. We had to make do with what we had, a rather inadequate simplified one which I blame for us getting lost a number of times.

We stopped at Mont-Carmel Roman Catholic Church, a rather imposing edifice on the south coast of this region.

This is the Acadian part of the island where the inhabitants all speak French. The Acadians came to this area in the early 19th century. In 1896 Father Pierre Paul Arsenault arrived in the parish Grand-Ruisseau (now called Mont-Carmel) where the parishioners were trying to decide whether to build their church using wood or bricks. Fr. Arsenault decided on brick. The first Mass was celebrated on January 1, 1899. The parishioners were really proud of their beautiful huge brick church and, in time, it became the community's main tourist attraction.

In 1902 Father Arsenault and his parish decided to construct this Church Rectory. Then they built arched structures, one in front of the church, one between the church and the cemetery and the third in front of the cemetery.

When Father Pierre Paul Arsenault died in 1927 the parish of Mont Carmel wanted to construct a special monument in his memory because he played such an important role in the parish. A small brick chapel was constructed above his grave and its purpose was to provide a safe and sacred space for those who died during the winter months and were awaiting burial in the spring.

As you can see, the cemetery stretches down to the sea where there are the usual red sandy cliffs.

The inside of the church is very ornate and the Acadians advertise their roots with the Acadian flag.

There are a lot of big Catholic churches in this area of PEI. In fact there are a lot of churches of every denomination on the whole island.

The next tourist attraction was The Bottle Houses at Cap-Egmont. Edouard Arsenault (there are a lot of Arsenaults in this region) got the idea of building these bottle houses after he received a postcard from his daughter in 1979. The postcard was of a glass castle she had visited on Vancouver Island. He started collecting bottles from his community, removed the labels, cleaned them and in spring 1980 began his project. His first structure was a six-gabled house.

The pump organ that Edouard enjoyed playing throughout his life.

He added a Chapel.

And a tavern.

Local artist, Lucie Bellemare, created a bottle tree.

The gardens around the houses are very nice and well kept. Edouard Arsenault was also interested in gardening.

A large tree fell down in a storm in recent years and a local artist sculpted this face calling it "Spirit of the Wood". The owners affectionately call it Edna.

This replica of the Cap-Egmont lighthouse is at the bottom of the garden. Edouard Arsenault was the last resident keeper of this lighthouse 2km from his bottle houses.

Cap-Egmont lighthouse.

Another large church - forget where.

A glimpse of the sand bar on which you can walk for miles at low tide -  at North Cape.

Next stop was O' Leary where there is a potato museum - we should have one in Donegal!

Fancy peeling this!

Everything on the menu had potato in it. I tried a nibble of the fudge. It was very sweet but had the right texture. They also had lobster flavoured chips (crisps) but I didn't like them.







We went on to Lennox Island in Malpeque Bay which is home to the Mi'kmaq community. Archaeological evidence and oral traditions indicate a native presence on the shores of Malpeque Bay dating back 10,000 years.

A Mi'kmaq legend explaing how Lennox Island belongs to the native people

St. Anne's Church on Lennox Island

The Harbour

View from the harbour.

By the time we had left Lennox Island it was too late to finish our tour of the North Cape so we took the shortest route home and will try to get time to go back and see what else there is to see.

We are currently planning a road trip to Nova Scotia and to New Brunswick. Obviously we will be limited in what we can see but at least we will have been there.