JAJHisjtofcOf t- ~Xi ??????. f0^\f^^^^W^ViSf ,n vHWi ????????????.': .-,-' Stanhope : Sands of Time,' compiled by the Stanhope Women 's Institute History Committee, Foreword by J.M. Bumsted . Stanhope, P.E.I. : The Stanhope Women 's Institute, 1984, xii + 478 pages, paper, $14.95 (ISBN 0-9691724-0-0) * ?? ???" j - ;???)' ^':*'?????? Review by Ken MacKinnon V Standhope: Sands of Time is one of the better examples ;df'the numerous" localrhistories being produced in Eastern Canada today. Professional historians and those Prince Edward Islanders who still get their sense \ of the province's terrain by ''lot" (or township) number will see here an account of the origins and subsequent development of the shoreward past of lot 34. Back in the late 1760s when there was virtually no Britsh settlement on the Island, the Lord Advocate of Scotland , Sir James Montgomery , the most powerful Scottish politician of. ???the time, picked the Stanhope district as the site of a col?? onizing and commercial venture. Over the past few years, iri articles in Acadiensis and The Dictionary ofj Canadian Biography historian J.M. Bumsted has ex?? plored the significant role played by Montgomery in the Island's early development and : has detailed the i vicissitudes of his colonial enterprises. Events connected )with Montgomery's Island investments will no doubt. ifigure largely in Dr. Bumsted 's history of the colony to J815, soon to be published. It is appropriate therefore . ^that this historian, has provided the current volume with ???a Foreword ."8* When Bumsted mentions in his Foreword that "the husband of the Chancellor" of his {university (the University of Manitoba) "is descended from the auld who first landed on the Island in 1770,"% ihe is not only reminding us of the extent to which we must see early settlements like Stanhope as seed-beds for I ???ova far-flung contemporary Canadian community, he isy> also hinting at the book's wider significance. >; There are a number of ways in which this book pro- ] vides documentation for the whole process of the removal of people from the farms to the cities. The most fascinating section (pp. 203-51) deals with what happens when the urbanites return as tourists and cottagers. For, apart from Cavendish, this is the Island community that has been most affected by the introduction of the Na?? tional Park in the late 1930s and by the subsequent ex?? plosion of the tourist population. The sections on agriculture, church life, education, and business il?? lustrate in their different ways the complexity of change. The impact of change on agriculture was most devastating: "There are only three full-time farmers in Stanhope now, where in the 1880s there were forty two" (p. 43). On the other hand, had not a certain if modest commercialism developed in the community, the story of Harry MacLauchlin as a successful P.E.I , en- I trenreneur might have been different. ~y^__^_