Another resident of that area, Edwin McKie, also travelled to California. He left his family at home and returned little richer from the gold fields. His descendants still have a revolver he purchased in the Sandwich Islands.

The harvest excursions of the early 1900’s were vividly remembered by the men who went on them. They left in August on the Excursion Train which travel- led five days and nights to reach Winnipeg. You paid your own way out and it was the trip out that seemed to be remembered most clearly.

Alec (Ronnie) MacDonald, Little Pond, recalls it as being “an awful rough trip. The first night they kicked all the lights down. The second day they kicked out all the windows.” By the time they reached Winnipeg the entire train was wrecked. The conductors were terrified and never interfered.

The coming of the Excursion Train was known to terrify entire towns. Restaurants were boarded and locked, the Excursion had such a bad reputation. Earl Jenkins, formerly of Cumberland Hill, recalls groups did such things as tieing a cow and a new binder, still crated, onto the back of the train. In one place it was even reported that the townspeople held guns on the train so no one would get off.

When the men finally reached their destination they worked for several months at the grain harvest, stocking and threshing the grain. The pay was about three dollars a day, a little more for Sundays. The return trip was not reputed to be nearly as eventful as the trip out.

In later years, many female teachers went West on the harvest excursion and stayed there to teach. The salaries and opportunities were much greater than on P.E.|.

Another place many girls travelled to was Boston, often known as “the Boston States”. Here they were employed in the offices or as housemaids in houses of the more wealthy residents.

The lumberwoods of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia attracted many young men, particularly during the Depression of the 1930‘s. The young men travelled there looking for work but often sat in the railroad station, the informal Unemployment Center, for several days before landing a job. They’d work in the woods, living in a camp supplied by the company, until the cut was through. They would then receive their wages and return home.

During the 1950’s it was the factories of Ontario that lured the young people, the steel mills being foremost among these. Many Islanders settled in the manu- facturing towns of southern Ontario. Today it is Western Canada and the oil boom drawing the youth of our province.

It would seem that Prince Edward Island always suffereda “Brain Drain”. The Island’s most valuable export is, without a doubt, people.

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