John Farmer and Wife; bank manager at Kinkora, 1926-50 (Author’s Collection)

fox-farming was estimated to be worth $3,000,000.00 annually, in P.E.I.15

The result of this economic boom is evident in the out— burst of business starts, especially at Kinkora. In 1920 the Provincial Bank of Canada opened a branch in Kinkora, and a few years later a bank was built.16 In 1924 the Cana— dian National Railroad appointed its first full-time agent at the Kinkora station!7 Three potato storage houses were built by the three leading potato dealers: M.J. McIver, T.A. McIver and John P. Smith. Joseph Monaghan became the owner of the Kinkora Electric Company in Freetown;18 and his brother Philip began a funeral service in Kinkora. In 1927 some unknown entrepreneur started the export of Christmas trees from the Kinkora area, the first such ex— ports from P.E.I.19 In 1929 the first telephone exchange Office in the area was set up in the home of Mrs. Mary

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Sullivan, Kinkora.20 And several new homes were built dur— ing the decade. Feeling proud of these developments peo— ple began to announce in the social columns of the newspapers that they had “spent the weekend at Kinkora Korner’.’21

During this decade there was also a major change in education at Kinkora. In 1921 the Sisters of St. Martha, a religious congregation founded in Charlottetown in 1916, was invited to supply the teachers in the Kinkora school.22 That change is credited to the new pastor at St. Malachy’s, Rev. Dr. Mathias J. Smith. He had been a public school teacher in P.E.I. before becoming a priest, and was strongly committed to education, especially to Catholic education. Having the Sisters as teachers was seen as solving several problems: they assurred the school of having a reliable supply of trained and committed teachers; as members of a religious group professing a vow of poverty they could be counted upon to be less financially demanding, at a time when P.E.I. teachers were becoming unionized; and as

Exporting Christmas Trees from Newton (Courtsy of Gladys Mulligan)