THE SHORES OF MALPEQUE BAY

About the Book

The author traces his ancestry from Scotland and Ireland to the shores of Malpeque Bay, Prince Edward Island. The narration covers over two centuries from the 1740's through to 1973. His investigation into why his ancestors migrated starts with the last battle fought on the soil of Britain, the disastrous Battle of Culloden and the equally disastrous Clearance Movement in Scotland then over to the highly prohibitive Penal Laws in Ireland. Next comes an investigation into what his ancestors encountered when they first arrived on their Isle in the Gulf. In most cases they were in for a rude awakening, especially when they encountered the land tenure issue that bedeviled Island settlers and politicians from Lottery Day, July 23, 1767 through to almost the dawn of the twentieth century. From the first page to the last the land issue is the "Fixed Link". The author states that any person, historian or not, who writes about Island history without copious references to the land issue surely "misses the boat" or in today's Island parlance "the bridge".

The author also traces how various other Island, Canadian and world events impacted on his relatives, for example, two World Wars, Prohibition and the Depression. He ends his historical narration with various relatives "Coming Home" after W.W.II. He deliberately excluded an account of most of his contemporary relatives, over sixty-first cousins, in order as he phrased "to protect the guilty".

About the Author

The author, a former High School history teacher for thirty-five years, also claims in this account he only deviated from the history ?when the historical ?facts? were either unavailable or when they got in the way of a good story?. The last chapter contains a list of sources and a brief bibliography that helped the author illuminate the lives of his sometimes elusive and seldom stationary relatives.