of shiny cars with Massachusetts licence plates — relatives, home from Boston for a visit with their “poor country cousins.”

The opening up of Western Canada in the first decades of the 1900s brought with it a new destination for young Belfasters. In late summer and early fall, many young men would head for the west on a “harvest excursion” to earn some cash working as farm labourers on the Canadian Prairie.

Two World Wars also took their toll on Belfast’s young men. Some were killed in action. For others, the quiet rural life of Belfast held little fascination after having seen the world. They moved elsewhere. It was after the Second World War that the process of modernization and change began in earnest. Farms became larger and more mechanized, and more people left agriculture for the security of a wage job in the service sector. Road networks improved, rendering obsolete the old forms of transportation like the Harland ferry‘, and the horse and wagon. Soon, even the train was a thing of the past.

But the greatest change occurred in the culture of the community, and in the way in which people associated with one another. Modern communication devices like the telephone, radio and television were welcomed in Belfast just as they were in countless other rural areas. In many ways these changes contributed a great deal to the way of life by opening up the boundaries of the community and bringing in the outside world. But these changes also served to alienate the community from itself. People were no longer reliant solely on each other for information or entertainment. The oral tradition — the very basis of rural culture — was in decline. In only one generation, communities like Belfast had lost many of the “characters” who made life colourful. The ability to tell a story, to “turn” a phrase, or to spin a yarn had been virtually lost.

That’s why the pages which follow are so important. Belfast People is more than an oral history of one community. It is a chronicle of the rural order and how that order has evolved and changed over the years. It is a story, told in the true voice of the people. It is not a lament for the past. Rather,- it is a celebration of a great community and its people, Belfast people.

Alan Buchanan President, Belfast Historical Society

1. The Harland ran from Charlottetown to Halliday’s Wharf in Eldon and Brush Wharf in Orwell Cove several times per week during the summer/fall season.

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