INTRODUCTION

In a very real way this study had its beginnings in 1959 when I as a history major at St. Dunstan's Univeristy was encouraged by Rev. Francis W. P. Bolger to take as the subject of my thesis my home community. That thesis was a very short and incomplete work, but the research for it introduced me the study of communities. Later studies in social anthropology encouraged me to return to that subject. So in 1980,during a visit to the Prince Edward Island Public Archives,I spent several days finding additional sources of

information on Kinkora. During the next two years I continued

the research, and now present the results.

I have had two objectives in doing this study. First, I wanted to write a detailed description of the first seventy years of Kinkora, based on the information available to me. Lack of resources and time prevented a longer study. Second, I wanted to try a sociological analysis of historical records in the context of community studies. This latter goal necessitated imposing certain boundaries on the area being studied; fortunately, I found a set of geographical boundaries already existing for the community as far back as the 1860's. I have accepted those boundaries to define the area of this study; but I have also ignored them when I considered them restrictive to understanding social

action.