ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project is part of a much larger study that has been on-going since 1996, and in that time a large number of people have provided assistance. I am first of all grateful to Professor Gerry McKenna, then Dean of Science at the University of Ulster, for enabling me to take six months sabbatical from the University in 1996 so that I could pursue my research into the history of the forests of Prince Edward Island. I am also grateful to the P.E.|. Forests, Fish and Wildlife Division for support, and Bill Glen in particular, who has encouraged the project throughout and has patiently awaited the final product. I also thank Harry Baglole, then director of the Institute of Island Studies of the University of Prince Edward Island for arranging the research associateship that has enabled me to use the library facilities of the University, as well as his successor, Irene Novaczek, for enabling the continuance of the associateship,

I am grateful to the following institutions for allowing me access to their archives and collections, and especially to their staff members who provided assistance: the Robertson Library of the University of Prince Edward Island (and especially those responsible over the years for the Prince Edward Island Collection, in particular Simon Lloyd, Leo Cheverie and Sharon Clark). The other major repository of documents used in this study was the Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Records Office in Charlottetown, and I thank their many staff who over the years have provided helpful and courteous assistance in locating, retrieving and copying documents. I also thank the staff of the library at my own University of Ulster for organising a number of interlibrary loans, as well as the Queen’s University of Belfast for the use of material from its Canadian collection. And I thank staff at the following institutions for providing assistance in locating and copying specific documents: the Nova Scotia Legislative Library, the Public Archives of Nova Scotia; the British Library in London, the Clements Library of the University of Michigan, and the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Throughout the period of the work numerous friends and fellow historians have directed me to useful references that they had come across. For help of this type, I extend particular thanks to Bill Glen, Earle Lockerby, Georges Arsenault, Ian Ross Robertson, Reg Porter, Gilbert Hughes and Harry Holman. I also thank Bill Glen for tutoring me in the use of the computer mapping techniques that enabled me to construct the maps contained in the report.

The final product has turned out to be a much more voluminous work than I had originally envisaged, (partly due to the ever expanding number of relevant historical sources that have continued to turn up each year), and I am grateful to the provincial Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry for considering it of such significance as to sponsor its publication in its entirety. | only hope that they, as

well as other readers, will find that the work provides new insights into the fascinating subject of the history of the forests of Prince Edward Island, and that it helps to explain why the forests that we have on the island today are as they are.