bought two front acres on the National Park highway from Mamie .Drew for $200 an acre and more cottages were built. Mrs. Purser had a heart attack in 1953, and Jack and Connie purchased the property from her; they operated the business from this time until 1979 when it was taken over by their son Jackie.

In 1953 Jack Proude stopped operating his store, and sold the equipment to Jack Williams, who opened his Windermere store the next year. Camping facilities were begun in about 1967, starting as a means to handle the overflow from the National Park campground. The Windermere cabins were gradually converted to cottages, with bath and/or shower and kitchen facilities, and electric heating replacing wood stoves. Windermere now consists of fifteen 1, 2 and 3-bedroom housekeeping cottages and 25 campsites.

Like other Stanhope tourist establishments, Windermere has had guests returning year after year — honeymoon couples coming back later with their children, and children of former guests arriving with their children. 1983 was the first summer that one lady, now in her 80 s, was unable to occupy “her” cottage — the same one she had had since 1946. The Williams’ made many lifelong friends from among their guests, and follow their friends’ fortunes down the years: an example, one young man who first came as a four-year old with his parents from Arvida, Que, used to serve in the Windermere store as a teenager, and is now a doctor on the staff of the Montreal Children’s

Hospital. It is clear that tourism in Stanhope is far more than just a business enterprise.

Surf Cottages

Herbert and Doris Roper learned about Stanhope through Mr. and Mrs. George Brady, whom they knew in Charlottetown. George was retired from the Island Telephone Company, and rented one of Mamie Drew’s cottages, later building one of their own. Doris had visited Stanhope as a girl, and in 1941 she and Herb rented one of Maude Shaw’s cottages on the Bayshore Road. Next year they bought Art Cooper’s cottage (now Gordon Dockendorff’s) and spent two summers there, later renting this cottage and eventually selling it. In 1944 the Ropers bought the first of three acres of land from John Arch MacLauchlan, who measured out the lot using a 161/2 foot rod or rood. Here they built their cottage. Being war-time, there were all kinds of shortages: one could buy only one pane of glass at a time, and partitions were made from the boxes that refrigerators came in. Plumbing was a one-holer outhouse; at first this had no roof, so if it looked like rain, one took an umbrella along.

In 1946 the Ropers built the first two of their rental cottages, followed by two more in 1947, and another two in 1948. A further six

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