fourth one - on the farm he had cleared and developed by the sweat of his brow. He could relax now surrounded by grandchildren and ponder the results of his endeavours, not only for himself, but for his fellow Islanders. He had struggled hard over the years to try to resolve the land problem to free settlers from the grasp of absentee landlords, and he lived long enough to see the matter finally settled. He pushed hard to get a year-round steamship connection to the mainland, and he lived long enough to see the beginnings of the service. He watched as the Fathers of Confederation gathered in Charlottetown in 1864 to talk of creating a country from the various colonies. He lived long enough to see P.E.I. join the federation in 1873. The Federal Gov- ernment assumed the colony’s railway debts and agreed to finance a buy-out of the last of the colony’s absentee landlords to free the island of leasehold tenure.

The Island entered Confederation on July 1, 1873. The problem of absentee landowners was subsequently addressed by the passage of the Land Purchase Act of 1875.

Upon entering the union with Canada, Prince Edward Island was promised that the federal government would ensure a “continuous means of communication between Prince Edward Island and the mainland would be maintained.” In this day and age, that clause can be interpreted in many ways. But, to the people who inhabited Prince Edward Island in the late 1800s, it was understood to mean that Islanders would always have a way to travel between PEI and the mainland.

All of those things must have filled him with a sense of accom- plishment as he looked back over the many battles won. There were many worthwhile achievements in his life, but it’s likely that he would have rated his family as his greatest fulfillment. Eleven children raised to adulthood and each and every one an industrious and pro- ductive citizen. Vere thought about them often:

The oldest, Elizabeth Emma, was born on April 28, 1809, in Newington on the outskirts of London. She was only four when the family arrived in Guernsey Cove. She married Thomas Roberts, a son of one of the Guernsey settlers, and they had eight children.