Occasionally Wright

Cure-all

"If old Mary didn't have Alzheimer's I'd get you to call her right now. (Expletive) that woman had more remedies than you can count. Had one for everything." (Pause) "Except Alzheimer's I guess."

-from Overheard on the Island by David weale

Are You or Aren't You?

"She explained matter-of-factly to the other woman that I wasn't an Islander but that I had lived here all of my life."

-from Overheard on the Island by David Weale

Depending on who you ask there are different rules for determining whether or not a person has the right to call themselves an Islander. Like the woman in the quote many people feel that it doesn't matter how long you've lived on PEI- if you weren't born there you can't be an Islander. Others are even more strict and hold that even if you were born there you have to have still lived there for a certain amount of time or for a certain percentage of your life (I've been told half of it) to claim Islander status. Still others will tell you there are genetics involved. If your parents are both Islanders who moved away before you were born you may be able to call yourself an Islander if you move to PEI. Maybe. Or you might be considered a marginal Islander if you were born there but your parents are from away.

So am I an Islander? I was born in Charlottetown, have lived there for about half of my life (give or take a few months) started and finished elementary school there (but did most of grade 1 and grades 2-5 in NB and NS) and did all of junior and senior high there. Neither of my parents was born on PEI but my paternal grandmother was (I think). Her family comes from Tryon giving me some Island lineage.

So do I make the grade? I say the Island birth certificate clinches it for me but I have enough of the other bases covered to make perfectly comfortable calling myself an Islander.

Weather on the Island

"It's a great summer all right, but we'll pay up for it this winter."

-from Overheard on the Island by David Weale

While it's definately a Canadian thing to talk about the weather it's even more of an Island thing and one thing you can be sure of is that at least half of the population is always going to be upset with the weather in the summer. If it's sunny and dry all summer it's great for tourism but the farmers need their rain, and if they get their rain the tourism people get upset because the campgrounds are empty.

And then in the winter the tourists are gone, the Strait freezes over and the fields can't grow a thing and everyone gets the chance to complain.

Islanders and Jealousy

"The Island is hell for jealousy They'll do anything to help you up, and anything to pull you down if ya get up too far."

-from Overheard on the Island by David Weale

The one exception might be with sports stars- nobody really seems to be trying to pull Brad Richard or Lori Kane down, or Eli MacEachern back in the day. Music is another story altogether. Don't even try to keep Islander's support once you move away to Toronto (or even worse, the States) to make it big.

You Don't Say

"It is the God-given right of every Islander to know the business and whereabouts of every other Islander."

-from Overheard on the Island by David Weale

I'm not sure truer words were ever spoken. If you're living away and you go home to the Island the first that happens when you get home is that you get an update on all the Island news- who's sick, who died, who's pregnant or getting married, etc. It can even be as mundane as who has gotten a new car or a new dog. Then when you leave the Island to go back to wherever you've moved away to any Islanders that live there immediately want the updates. "So, what's the news from home?"

Cruising on the Ferry

"One Sunday afternoon we drove to Broden to go across on the new ferry; but when we got over there we decided there was probably nothing to see, so we just stayed on the boat."

-from Overheard on the Island by David Weale

I can count myself among the Islanders who has gotten on a ferry just for the ride and then headed back to the other side. It's free if you're on foot so why not?

**UPDATE**

As Ami points out in the comments below it's not curently free to walk onto the ferry between Wood Islands, PEI and Caribou, NS. I don't know if that's a recent development but I do know that went I went across and back in 2001 I didn't pay a cent and I don't remeber ever paying at Borden. However, according to the Northumberland Ferries website it costs $12.50 for adult foot passengers to cross.