In the early 1970s, P.E.I. was facing a time of change.
Modernization was the way to go, with widespread technology making life easier for virtually everyone.
In addition, many Islanders were on the go, choosing to leave the province in search of a more financially lucrative lifestyle.
However, for a small but determined group of people, the path to P.E.I. led to a more simple way of life - one that would take them away from their familiar urban surroundings and back to the land.
Now a new website has gone back to this back-to-the-landers movement of the 1970s. Back-to-the-Island: The Back-to-the-Land Movement on P.E.I. digs deep into the stories of 16 families or individuals who came to the Island, their reasons for doing so, their struggles and triumphs, their effects on the communities in which they lived and the province as a whole and where they are today.
Here are three of the stories:
Morley and Lynda Pinsent
No phone, no lights, no motorcar and many other modern-day luxuries was the way of life for Morley Pinsent, his wife, Lynda, and their three children in the immediate years after their arrival to P.E.I. in the early 1970s.
The family's back-to-the-land experience had actually started a few years before when they lived in a commune in British Columbia.
"(We) found out there was this sort of counter culture happening and started to explore it," says Morley, an Albertan with a degree in fisheries management.
They quickly realized that the commune culture wasn't for them so they moved on. Their search for affordable land led them east to Cape Breton, N.S., in 1973.
"We loaded up our kids and the dog in our Volkswagen van and took off across the country," he remembers.
"We looked at the (P.E.I.) map and said, 'Oh we can go on one ferry and off the other (to Nova Scotia). Well it was just one ferry. We never left."
The Pinsents bought 50 acres in South Granville and built their home from wood they cut from the property.
When the Volkswagen died, they made do for a number of years with just the horse and wagon or sleigh.
"We lived very simply," he says.
"One year we added 600 square feet to the house, which almost doubled its size. And that year all our income from everything, included family allowance and all that, was just under $2,300."
They cut their own wood, drew water from a spring, preserved everything, raised and killed a steer a year and made butter from milk from their two cows.
"Basically you were working very, very hard, but you were working not for cash to buy things but to make the things you needed. It was a lot of hard work for everybody (in the family)," Morley says.
"We learned to listen to the old timers. They were pretty supportive. But then I found out later that there were bets in the community about how long we'd last. . . . "Once you lasted a year or so you started to have some credibility with the local people. We became sort of the mascot I guess."
Later on they started a market garden operation and were one of the first certified organic growers on P.E.I. They sold their specialty vegetables and herbs at the farmers' market and at the peak were supplying up to 20 restaurants.
Morley also worked for the provincial government's Small Farms Program and other contracts.
For years, the family was as off-the-grid as anyone could get because they lived with no electricity whatsoever. Light came from kerosene lamps, and for most of those years there was no refrigerator.
Later on they did erect a simple windmill to generate enough power to charge a battery to run a television.
"When you have a limited amount of electricity you get very selective in the TV that you watch. You don't turn into couch potatoes," Morley laughs.
Books were also a source of back-to-the-land knowledge. After reading up on how to till the earth with a horse and plow, he tried his hand at it.
"It was a disaster. Well, the horse didn't read the book. It looked like a mole had gone insane."
To spare himself the embarrassment, he and Lynda turned all the sod back in before a neighbour came to show him the right way to do things.
Morley admits the first couple of years were pretty trying. That first winter they had their house built but no wood cut.
"So we were going out that winter a day at a time. The horse that I had wasn't big enough yet to fight through the snow so we were dragging a day's worth of wood on the toboggan. And then the chainsaw quit and we didn't have enough money to get it fixed so we were cutting it by hand a day at a time," he says.
"All the hay we had stored wasn't stored well enough so it was got wet and froze. All those sorts of things would drive you crazy, but then once you figured it out it became easy as time went on. It all worked out."
After 15 years they hooked onto the grid.
"We wanted to improve our life and make it a bit easier," Morley explains. "I remember actually when there was a crew there putting in the line and they said, 'It's all hooked up, try something.' Well we didn't have anything, except this one friend, as a joke, (previously had) given us a hair dryer that she didn't want anymore. So that was how we tested the power to see if it worked."
When a major storm knocked out the electricity a few years later, Morley fired up the kerosene lantern for a cozy read.
"But I couldn't see the bloody book because I was so used to having that extra (illumination)," he smiles.
Sadly, Lynda died in 1999.
Morley sold the property in 2003, having lived there for more than 30 years.
He now lives with his partner, Carol Downe, in Rustico.
He doesn't miss the kilometre-long laneway, but he has wonderful memories of that back-to-the-land time that was his family's reality for so many years.
"It's something that I really loved when I was doing it and when we were finished it was an experience. That's what life is all about," he says.
"We weren't proving anything to anybody but ourselves. It was a comfortable life."
Carla and Rick Gibbs
Books propelled Rick and Carla Gibbs on a back-to-the-land adventure to their farm in Hopefield, P.E.I. that took up the latter part of the 1970s and then some.
The Whole Earth Catalogue and Richard W. Langer's Grow It guide for small-scale organic farming fired up their dream of living off the land and actually survived being burned for fuel during some of the those early freezing P.E.I. winters.
"We didn't have two nickels to rub together but you know what? Looking back I wouldn't have changed anything. They gave me life experiences that I wouldn't have otherwise," muses Rick from their comfortable home in Montague where they now live.
In 1969, Rick, who was a native New Yorker, met Carla in a park in Montreal.
They moved to P.E.I. a few years later after Carla's father bought a 200-plus-acre farm in Hopefield, sight unseen.
"He loved the Island ever since he'd visited since I was 11. He'd be getting The Guardian since then and there was a property for the same amount as (an inheritance he'd recently received) and he bought it," she says.
The farm only had one acre cleared so over the next 10 years they added to that.
"At first we had everything (in terms of animals), typical back-to-the-landers," Rick says, smiling.
"We had everything that was in that (Grow It) book," laughs Carla.
They maintained a subsistence lifestyle for 10 years and blended well into the community.
"We had wonderful neighbours," Carla says.
"They were Islanders for generations and they knew better than we did what we were getting into," adds Rick, who admits that at first he didn't know the difference between hay and straw.
"And I'm sure that they looked at us with a bit of pity and with a bit of amusement and all the rest of the emotions, but they were tremendous. . . . But if you put in a hard day's work, that's what they understood."
The farm was on its way to becoming a commercial operation. Rick had built a pig barn and was raising about 500 hogs a year and milking about 10 cows.
Meanwhile, Carla, who had a degree in French and sociology, decided to pursue a teaching career.
When it became evident that agriculture was becoming a very difficult way to make a living, Rick, who had a degree in film, was drawn back to that. He progressively moved out of farming as he built his career as a cameraman and then producer with CBC.
The Gibbs moved to Montague a little more than 10 years ago to a spot that is about as close to country living as one can have in a town setting. They still have a strong attachment to the farmland which they still own.
Carla misses the animals on the farm most. And although Rick misses the strong sense of community in the Hopefield area, there's one memory that is not on his "I miss" nostalgia list.
It dates back to their first winter when the well caved in and he had to draw water from a cantankerous hand pump in a vacant house across the road.
"We had one cow and a couple of horses and goats at that point. So it would take 55 hand pumps to fill up this five gallon bucket, drag it across the ice and snow and bring it into the barn and sluuuurp, the cow would suck it up in 10 seconds," Rick says, laughing.
"So I'd schlep across the road again for 55 more pumps. I don't miss that."
Malcolm and Christine Stanley
The commute to work for Malcolm Stanley takes him along a woodland winding path across the yard from his home on the Dixon Road to his on-site pottery studio.
For his wife, Christine Stanley, it has been a short jaunt downstairs to her basement weaving, spinning and fibre arts studio. She's only recently taken a part-time craft-related position outside the home, where she is on this day.
The couple has been living somewhat of a back-to-the-land life since they arrived on P.E.I. in 1975 in order to make their living in the creative ways that they love.
"We came here because of the cottage craft industry, which was the buzz word back then," says Malcolm.
The Stanleys, who met and married in New Brunswick, eventually purchased nearly 40 acres on the Dixon Road, which was a haven for like-minded individuals.
"We were just kids. We knew we wanted to live out in the country and be somewhat self-sufficient," says Malcolm.
Being that it was the middle of that first big energy crisis, his eye was on the woods as a source of heating fuel. But Christine was keen on establishing a small farm with heritage breeds.
"I knew nothing about farming, but that's all I wanted to do," Christine said in her Back to the Island interview with researcher Ryan O'Connor.
"I just talk to all the old farmers. I have no problem if I see a herd of sheep I'll go in and have a chat and learn from them."
The interesting thing was in the 1970s that generation wasn't too far removed from the previous generation of Islanders who had always lived like that, Malcolm says.
"There was a fellow up the road, George Dixon, for whom the road is named after, who was credited by a lot of my neighbours for helping them survive the early years. He showed how to work a horse and plow and about seasoned wood and skills like that," he adds.
"That first year I couldn't figure out why my wood wasn't burning. It was sizzling green wood!"
For the most part, the Stanleys have been masters of their own employment, rarely working for any employer other than themselves. That work entailed the clearing of some of the land.
"When I think back on it I wish I had bought a piece of property with a field because we've had to stump this whole thing and it was backbreaking . . . ," Christine said in her Back-to-the-Island interview. "And I did almost all the work because Malcolm had to pay for it by making pottery. So I built the barn with the baby in a backpack and our two-year-old -?we have pictures of him handing me lumber . . ."
Despite the fact that Malcolm comes from an academic family and Christine was raised in a very mobile air force family, they have fostered their own particular way in the world which resonates with most of their customers.
"It's funny. There's a certain amount of selling the lifestyle. People who drive a little bit out of the way to come to a place like (this) are expecting a certain attitude. . . ," Malcolm says.
But some do question their lifestyle of choice.
"People will argue with me and say, 'You're living in an unreal world.' Well, duh? What's more real than this, shovelling manure. What's unreal about this?" Christine said.
". . . Or we will have people to the shop, you know we're back here in the woods and they'll say, 'You actually make a living back here? Do you ever get anybody back here?' And Malcolm will say to them, 'Well you're here . . . .' "
Telling their stories
Back-to-the-Island: The Back-to-the-Land Movement on P.E.I. is a website dedicated to the back-to-the-land movement on P.E.I.
In addition to a series of interviews with back-to-the-landers conducted by University of Western Ontario (UWO) student Ryan O'Connor in 2008, there is a single narrative history of the movement, by UWO associate professor of history Alan MacEachern.
There is also an opportunity for other back-to-the-landers, their children or anyone else to contribute stories or photos about those days.
People can send their stories or be interviewed by the researchers by contacting niche@uwo.ca or filling out the online contact form. The website is http://niche.uwo.ca/backtotheisland.
Following is a Q&A with MacEachern:
Q: What will people see what they visit the website?
A: "Visitors will see some wonderful photos by George Zimbel, a well-known photographer who spent his 1970s as a back-to-the-lander in Argyle Shore. I love the photos: they capture the sense of P.E.I. as being an alien place for the back-to-the-landers, a place they had to learn. Visitors can also listen to 16 interviews with back-to-the-landers by Ryan O'Connor, and they can read my narrative trying to capture that time: why they came and what they experienced.
Q: Are you pleased with the way it turned out?
A. I am pleased, proud, excited. The web allows you to bring together text, audio, and visuals so easily - I can't imagine telling this story without being able to hear the peoples' voices, for example. And a website means that we can invite more back-to-the-landers to contribute their photos, memories, whatever. And we're doing that. It's exciting to be not just telling history, but also helping people share their history.
Q: What do you hope people will gain from this research and reading the stories of these Islanders?
A: In part, I want them to have fun reading it because it's a fun story. A bunch of people from across North America burrow into little pockets of P.E.I. to live lives that are fundamentally based on a deep knowledge of the land - but they don't know the land. It's no wonder many locals found them comical. Yet what's impressive is how many back-to-the-landers learned the land, built deep friendships with neighbours and lay down roots. And they were important in teaching P.E.I. about organic farming, alternative energy, environmentalism.
Q: Why do you want people to add to this history?
A: Because it's still so easy to do so. Too often, we wait to preserve history until the last minute - like when there are only a few soldiers left from the First World War. But there are a lot of "newer histories" worth saving, and the back-to-the-land movement is one. It's a story of outsiders seeing P.E.I. for the first time and, as a result, of Islanders seeing P.E.I. anew.
