Tag Archives: Charlottetown

Charlottetown has a flag, and I’ve never seen it before?

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That green-and-white flag in the background of the photo below? It’s the flag of the City of Charlottetown, and I don’t remember ever seeing it before it was helpfully pointed out to me by Councillor Mitch Tweel in this morning’s Guardian.

Screenshot of a page of the Guardian newspaper that shows a man with grey hair wearing a dark top who is gesturing with his hand. A green-and-white flag is behind him.

It’s quite striking. Looks a bit like the diagram for the most boring, frustrating game of chess ever conceived.

A flag design of five green rectangles on a white background, with a purple-and-white crown in the middle rectangle.
Svgalbertian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But it’s a good design because even I, rural PEI mouse who obviously doesn’t spend enough time in the Capital, knew immediately what it represented: the five squares that were part of the original 18th century city plans.

Screenshot from a
From Charlottetown Heritage Squares: Conceptual Master Plans and Design Guidelines, April 2012

In my defense, I poked around Charlottetown via Google Street View and saw the flag flying outside Charlottetown City Hall, but couldn’t find it in any other prime flag-flying locations like parks. It certainly isn’t part of the City’s “Great things happen here” branding. I will keep my eyes peeled for it next time I visit.

I swear I know how to read, and I have bookmarks to prove it

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Peter’s wonderful post about Charlottetown’s venerable Bookmark (his photos of tiny details around the shop and their aerie office are delightful) made me dash pre-morning-coffee to rifle through my small bookmark collection to confirm his observation that there has never been a “the” before the bookstore’s name. Me too, Peter, me too.

I guess I had my final visit to the Queen Street location this past Wednesday, when I dashed in to pick up a book order while a friend waited in my illegally-parked car. I didn’t know to give a final nod to the place where I’ve spent many happy hours, so Peter’s post allowed me one last wistful glimpse. Looking forward to the new digs!

A series of yellow and blue bookmarks from a Charlottetown, PEI, store called Bookmark. The oldest one would likely be from the early 1980s and the most recent from a couple of years ago.
The bookmarks of Bookmark, from the early 1980s to almost today.

Vic Runtz Collection #1

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Here are some 75-year-old Vic Runtz cartoons from the Charlottetown Guardian I’ve enjoyed over the past few months. Plus ça change…

Newfoundland, a Canadian province for only one year, announced the creation of a provincial museum while PEI could never seem to get beyond the talking stage (and still can’t to this day). July 14, 1950, page 4
July 8, 1950, page 4.
Scrappy little Summerside’s new federal government building (now the site of the Summerside Rotary Library) was under construction while Charlottetown still waiting. April 20, 1950.

Up West

From The Western Guardian section of the Charlottetown Guardian, January 16, 1925

This brief item in the January 16, 1925 Charlottetown Guardian made me smile. I would expect many Summersiders today would suspect they don’t often get a better deal than Charlottetown folks, but at least on the train in 1925 there was a benefit in coming from the western capital!

The region of PEI where I live is commonly referred to as Up West. It’s more Up Northwest, really, from the rest of the island, but as the main highway through our end of PEI, Route 2, has long been referred to as the Western Road because it starts from the western end of Summerside, we are west.

Some people in central PEI can take the “up” part too literally, as if you have to climb a steep mountain to get here. There is a notion – mostly apocryphal, but a little bit true, in my experience – that when you try to organize a meeting between people in my area and folks from Charlottetown, or even sometimes Summerside, you will hear “But it’s soooo far to go to Tyne Valley/O’Leary/Alberton/Tignish!”, as if the distance would be magically shorter for us to go to them.

Maybe someone at the PEI Railway knew of this magic directional difference, perhaps similar to a magnetic hill, and that prompted the cheaper west-to-east fare to the 1925 hockey game. Mistake? Mischief? Delightful whatever the reason.