Population Patterns
The Past
Human habitation of the Maritimes is thought to have started about 10,000 years ago, after the retreat of the latest Ice Age. Several cultures have been identified during the pre-historic period, with today’s Mi’kmaq people emerging about 2,000 years ago. It is estimated that in the early 1500s, PEI’s aboriginal population was
about 300 people. It was once assumed that
the Mi’kmaq were only seasonal residents on Prince Edward Island before the period of European settlement, but archaeological evidence now suggests that aboriginal peoples may have lived here on a year-round basis, migrating within the Island.
There is some evidence that Viking seafarers may have coasted Prince Edward Island around 1000 A.D., but European contact was sporadic even after explorer Jacques Cartier claimed the Island for the King of France in 1534. Although it gradually acquired
the name, Île Saint-Jean, and was part of several land grants, the Island was left to the Mi’kmaq until after mainland Acadia was ceded to Great Britain in1713.
In 1720, a company headed by the Comte de Saint-Pierre brought out 200 French settlers to a site at the entrance of Charlottetown Harbour. The venture failed and most of the settlers left, but “Port LaJoie” ( Fort Amherst) remained the administrative capital of the colony. Many of the first permanent settlers were French fishermen, who helped make St. Pierre on the North Shore the largest settlement, but gradually groups of Acadian farmers began to filter into the area. Île Saint-Jean was intended as a “granary” for the nearby French fortress of Louisbourg, but the colony struggled to feed itself. By 1752, its population was only 2,663 people. The number doubled over the next six years as refugees fleeing the disintegrating political situation on the mainland made their way to French territory.
After the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, British troops arrived to deport Île Saint-Jean’s Acadian population back to France. At least half of the population were rounded up. Hundreds more fled the Island. A handful of families escaped expulsion by hiding; along with returning exiles, these formed the basis for today’s Acadian population in Prince Edward Island.
The Island was confirmed as a British possession by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Over the next six years, it was first surveyed into 67 townships, then distributed by lot to various claimants on the Crown’s largesse, and finally erected as a separate colony with its own government. Highland Scots dominated the early British colonization period. After 1830, waves of English and Irish settlers provided the bulk of the new colonists. By 1827, the population had reached almost 23,000. Fourteen years later, in 1841, it had doubled to over 47,000.
By mid-century, the Island’s frontier had closed as the available farmland filled up, and immigration largely ceased. Subsequent population growth was almost entirely through natural increase. Changing trade patterns and national tariff policies within the new Dominion of Canada shrank the Island’s export markets in the decades after the colony joined Confederation in 1873. At the same time, a lack of natural resources made it difficult for Island industry to diversify following the eclipse of the once powerful shipbuilding industry.
As the number of Islanders began to exceed the carrying capacity of the mainly agricultural economy, out-migration overtook natural increase and the population declined, falling steadily from an 1891 peak of 109,000 to 88,000 in the late 1920s. Many Islanders migrated in a two-step emigration pattern, some moving first to PEI’s towns and then out-of-province, others through a pattern of yearly excursions to the prairie grain harvest or the lumber camps of eastern North America that ended in permanent resettlement. By the early 1900s, former Islanders were living throughout Canada and the United States. They still thought of themselves as Islanders, however, and many of their descendants retained a strong sense of attachment to their Island heritage. In the 1930s, the devastation of the Great Depression reduced opportunities elsewhere and brought some people back home. Improving conditions after the Second World
War, and increases in federal transfers, spurred a period of population growth that continues today.
Changing Settlement Patterns : The past century's waves of settlement and
migration had very different effects on PEI's regions. In 1891, PEI was covered
with a dense network of small mixed farms. The early decades of the twentieth
century also saw the peak level of farm use of PEI's land base, with almost 90%
of its 1.4 million acres in farms, compared to 47% today.
Rural-Urban Shift : Across the continent, the twentieth century has seen a very steep decline in the proportion of population living and working on farms, and a major population shift from rural areas to urban centers. The former trend has certainly not passed Prince Edward Island by; however, the shift to urban areas is much less pronounced here , with strong growth in rural non-farm population until the early 1980s
Interprovincial Comparisons : Around the time it joined Confederation, Prince Edward Island accounted for 14.3% of the Maritime provinces’ population, and 2.5% of Canada’s population (bearing in mind that Newfoundland was not included in these proportions). In more recent decades, PEI’s share of the Canadian population has continued to decline, although much less steeply than in the early decades of the century, while its share of the Atlantic region’s population (now including Newfoundland) has leveled out and in recent years increased slightly. Forecasts call for both those trends to continue
chart 1 - population growth 1728-1996
Created by Stephanie Ettema & Melissa Gallant