PART I HISTORIAL BACKGROUND OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

Prince Edward Island was orignally known as Isle de Saint Jean as early as 1603 by Samuel de Champlain and probably by other earlier European voyagers. The first recorded European landing on Isle de Saint Jean occurred on the East Shore on June 29, 1534 by Jacques Cartier of St. Malo, France, who claimed the beautiful island in the name of King Francois I of France. This was but one of “Certain islands and lands where it is said that a great quantity of gold and other precious things are to be found.”

April 20, 1984 marked the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Jacques Cartier’s first voyage of exploration to this continent, during which he entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and landed in several places, and finally at Gaspe, Quebec. This first voyage in 1534 was the first step in the development of New World ter- ritories that are now part of Canada. Cartier’s reports of having found vast, unspoiled lands of great scenic beauty, led to the arrival of the first European set- tlers, marking the beginning of Canada’s history as a nation.

Jacques Cartier left the harbor of St. Malo, France, his birthplace, on April 20, 1534 with two ships and sixty-one men. He headed for the New World, and twenty days later sailed through the Strait of Belle Isle to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He then followed the coasts of Newfoundland, Isle de Saint Jean, and New Brunswick,

reaching Gaspe on July 14, 1534, stopping at several places for exploration.

Where Jacques Cartier actually stopped for exploration in Prince Edward Island has been a source of mystery for many years. In 1964, Dr. D.H. Loring, a geologist of the Bedford Institute of Oceangraphy, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, while walking along the beach near Jacques Cartier’s entry point to Alberton Harbor, searching for some evidence of Cartier’s explorations, found a pile of rocks similar to those found in Europe. Realizing that the rocks could be ballast left there by an early traveler to Prince Edward Island, Dr. Loring sent the sample rocks to a geologist in the Netherlands for identification. Several fossils in the flint rocks caused the Dutch scientist to decide that the rocks were from the St. Malo, France area where Cartier lived.

Jacques Cartier had written in his dairy that he had removed the ballast from the two ships in the shallow waters near Alberton Harbor. Cartier’s fifty foot ship and his second ship, arrived at Goose Harbor on June 29, 1534 about 10:00 am. where he spent the day in exploration. He later sailed in the direction of the Kildare River, which he named, Canoe River, and then to North Cape, which he called, Indian Cape. At that particular time, Cartier, the first European to visit Prince Edward Island, was searching for fresh water before continuing to navigate the St. Lawrence River where he later claimed all of North America for France.

However, the colony of Isle de Saint Jean was practically ignored by the two great powers, England and France, for a period of nearly two hundred years. As the struggle for domination of the New World developed, particularly following the