CHAPTER SIXTEEN: 
     
     Néymé/m‘M/w 
     
    
   
   
    
     he world in which Kathleen and Bill raised their eight children 
     
    

    
     was being gradually but inexorably transformed. The three 
     
    

    
     decades following their marriage would result in profound 
     
     and fundamental changes in Prince Edward Island society. When they 
     
     moved to Charlottetown in the mid—50s, the familiar lifestyle and well— 
     
     established family and community relationships served as a background 
     
     to their daily lives and the events that affected them. People like them 
     
     who had moved from rural communities maintained close ties with their 
     
     friends and relatives in those communities, and helped reinforce the ties 
     
     that bound the city to the country. However, the demographic eruption 
     
     of the baby boom, the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the increasing 
     
     secularization of community values, the shifting nature of the economy 
     
     and the pervasive influence of the brave new world of communications 
     
     eroded and dismantled the Island’s traditional rural order and introduced 
     
     a new era of modernity to Charlottetown. By the 1980s, the profound 
     
     social, economic and cultural changes that had taken place resulted in the 
     
     unraveling of Prince Edward Island’s social fabric and the old rural order 
     
     that had nurtured and sustained it. 
     
    
   
   
    
     One of the indicators of that profound and fundamental change was the 
     
     increase in the population of Charlottetown. In 1951, Charlottetown and 
     
     the Royalties had a population of 20,387. By 1981, Charlottetown and 
     
     surrounding communities, whose growth was spurred by the automobile, 
     
     contained close to 45,000 people. The advent of baby boomers made 
     
     children under 10 the largest segment of the population. They brought 
     
    
   
   
    
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