The Anne That Ate P.E.I.

From our hotel, between trips to outlying towns, we stroll from art gallery to outdoor cafe to waterfront boardwalk. Over parts of three days, I thirstily eye a brew pub that beckons, a mere block away. I never actually get there. It's hard to explain, but we're . . . not busy, exactly, but we always have other places to check out.

At night, we retire to our inn, a recently restored row of historic homes in the heart of the town. It's a great place to come back to, with tea and warm cookies always waiting in the expansive yet cozy lobby. Even on an unusually warm summer evening, the grand fireplace makes me think that the inn would be a great place to be -- briefly -- in the winter, as the snow (I imagine) blows into huge drifts outside.

For however toasty the island is on this trip, with temperatures climbing to near 90 for several days straight, in the winters it returns to its true Canadian spirit, with temperatures frigid enough to make the other provinces proud.

Such weather -- and, of course, the fact that it is an island -- helped keep P.E.I off the beaten path for decades. Indeed, in the 1870s, islanders were wooed into joining the Dominion of Canada partly because they were promised that, under such a union, they would be able to travel more easily to the mainland and Nova Scotia.

But the passage to its neighbors, though not far, wasn't easy. The strait that separates P.E.I from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia can be icebound from January through late April, so the men who made the trip during the winter in the early years sometimes had to help push the boat over the ice. According to one account, early passengers and crew were harnessed to each other, and to the boats, for the perilous journey.

As recently as seven years ago, the trip to New Brunswick was somewhat of an ordeal, taking as many as six hours if the island was icebound. But all that changed in 1997 with the opening of the Confederation Bridge, an eight-mile, S-shaped span that the province touts as the world's longest bridge over ice-covered water.

In some ways, the bridge changed everything. But while some mourned the presumed passing of a distinct way of life, to a visitor who hadn't been there before the bridge, it seems as much a symbol, a helping hand across the water, as a radical change in the rhythm of the province.

It's still a peaceful place, it still takes ages to drive there from any major city, American or Canadian, and Gordon Lightfoot still isn't singing his own songs there.

And although the bridge has caused a welcome swell in the number of tourists, the island still seems uncrowded. As we tour the province for a third day, my older sister navigates near-empty roads and wonders "what it's like during the summer, with all the tourists." It's the second week in August, the height of the eight-week high season.

Small Pleasures

Our final foray is to the rural eastern shore. On an island where the ocean is never more than about 12 miles away, in the east it seems to be hardly more than 12 feet away. The region is P.E.I distilled -- more "country" than the rest of the rural province, more removed than other parts of an island that is already pretty remote.

It's perfect bicycling territory, and my younger sister and I indulge the temptation. We leave my mother and other sister happily ensconced with their books in rocking chairs on the porch of our inn, perched a couple hundred feet from red-clay cliffs that drop into the sea.

As we cycle, a dirt road off to the left leads to a quiet harbor; up ahead, a finger of the bay curls back toward the shore. The pines here are more spindly, and all of the outdoors looks more unkempt -- nature with a five o'clock shadow. Form takes a back seat to function.