Chapter 7 ,

 

An Experience With War

The first automobiles arrived on RBI. in 1902: about
twenty—seven years after they were invented.2 They were
generally not welcomed; the roads were considered too
narrow for both horse-and—carriage and cars; and, farmers
complained that the noise of their engines frightened the
horses. At best cars were seen as only a noisy nuisance. The
opposition was so strong that in 1908 the RBI. legislature
banned them from the roads, a ban which lasted until 1913 .3
As petitions to have the ban removed increased the govern—
ment allowed each school district to decide when it would
open its roads to automobiles. Kinkora and Middleton gave
their permission in 1917.4 Earl Craig in Middleton, and
Philip Monaghan in Kinkora, were the first owners of cars
in the area.5 Some people remember the thrill of a Sunday
afternoon ride with Philip, who charged his passengers a
“small amount” for a ride up and down the Kinkora road;
others recall the foul smell of gas exhaust.6 But the horse-
and-buggy still held the right of way on the roads. With a
Simple raised hand a horse-and-buggy driver could force
a car driver to stop, turn off the engine, and let the horse
and buggy pass by. This was often done as a joke. It ap-
pears the horses were less frightened than were the farmers
about what these machines might do to the sale of horses.
Nor could they see that the car and truck might speed up
a solution to the farmers’ main transportation problem,
better transportation to the mainland.

P.E.I. farmers became hopeful about a solution to this

67

problem during 1911, especially when the new federal Con—
servative leader, Robert Borden, campaigning in the federal
election of that year, promised to definitely deal with it if
he was elected.7 The Conservative candidate for Prince
County was Dr. Patrick C. Murphy, formerly from
Kinkora; he easily won the majority of the votes in Kinkora
and Newton, but he lost the County by eighty-five votes.8
However, the Conservatives did win a large majority of the
seats in the House of Commons; and on December 29, 1911
Islanders received “the best news ever to come to P.E.IZ’ —
they would get a car ferry and standard gauge railway
tracks.9 In June of the following year the route for the new
car ferry was drawn between Carleton Point (later renam—
ed Port Borden), in Township 28, P.E.I. and Cape Tormen—
tine, New Brunswick. In January, 1913 the government
signed the contract for construction of the ferry with the
British company, Sir William Armstrong, Whiteworth, for
$690,000.00]0 But the ferry, christened the “Prince Edward
Island? did not begin service at Borden until 1917, even
though it was completed in 19143‘ The first World War
broke out and British security regulations delayed its sail-
ing from England until 1915; and then it was put into ser-
vice between Charlottetown and Pictou until October, 1917;
it was six years after the promised ferry, and voters did not
forget that.

When World War I broke out in 1914 Islanders general—
ly welcomed it. The newspapers had been predicting it for
a couple of years; religious leaders joined the chorus of
those calling on Great Britain to “smash the Kaiser”;12 and,
the economically-minded saw war as giving a boost to the
economy. “Be cheerful war makes worki’ wrote the editor
of the Examiner, August 24, 1914. And one year later the
newspaper was urging Islanders: “Buy it now and set the
wheels of commerce humming merrily?13 Conservative
Premier J.A. Matheson set out the war goals for Islanders: