2. The Future of the Past
And Prince Edward Island in the 1970s was a good place to do it. The Island had a long tradition not only of small farming, but also of rural exodus. The population had shrunk every decade of the previous century (the 1970s would reverse that trend, thanks in part to the back-to-the-landers). There was land to be had. "We bought fifty acres for $2500," says John Rousseau, "and we moved into a community that had a lot of old farming couples and no young people. They had all left. We passed them on the boat."
Morley Pinsent and family had just moved out of a commune in British Columbia, and were looking around for a place of their own. In BC, "What we could afford, we realized we would be about 500 years old before it was really productive." They headed east. When in the Maritimes, "We said, 'Oh,' looking at the map, ‘we could go on one ferry and drive down and come off on the next one.’ Well, we took the one ferry and never left." Pinsent says, "I would be untruthful if ... I didn't say probably a primary factor was a fifty acre farm for $6,200, half cleared and half in hardwoods. Lovely rolling hills, springs, great building sites." Quite a few back-to-the-landers found such places through Dignam Land, an old Ontario-based newsletter that listed – and still lists – tax sale properties. The places were scattered all over the Island’s three counties. Mark and Joyce Arnold bought 50 acres near New London for $6000; the Ader-Joneses paid $9000 for their 125 acres; Peter Richards rented a farm in Kelly’s Cross over the phone, for $50 per month.
There were deserted farms on or near the shore, but most were inland, with some never having been farmed – the cheapest of cheap Island land. The presence of some back-to-the-landers would then attract more, and two areas in particular became enclaves: the Dixon Road / Breadalbane area of Queen’s County, and the Lewes / Iris /Hopefield / Cardigan area of King’s County. Joan and Gerald Sutton chose to settle on the Dixon Road in 1970 in part because Phil and Jean Corsi’s family ran a commune and hosted parties there. "They were just very interesting," Joan says, "so we thought that this would be a good place to settle. Also, it’s halfway between Charlottetown and Summerside and you can work in both areas. We knew we wanted to grow our food and stuff so we didn't want to be on the shore, because in the winter you don't want to be out there." Steve Knechtel notes with some pride that in an Island phone book overloaded with Macs and Mcs, there was at one point five Ks on the Lewes Road: the Katzes, Koleszars, Kershes, Krauskopfs, and Knechtels.
Beyond Prince Edward Island having good, available, inexpensive land going for it, there were signs in the 1970s that it was developing a sense of itself as a place of environmental possibility. Paying the most of any Canadians for energy, Islanders were hit especially hard by the 1973-74 energy crisis: within a year the price of electricity rose 50% and heating oil 100%. Alex Campbell’s provincial government, which in 1969 had introduced a 15-year Comprehensive Development Plan to move PEI to a modern, streamlined economy, now converted to a "small is beautiful" philosophy, preaching the value of alternative energy, decentralization, no growth, and self-sufficiency. The Campbell government created an Institute of Man and Resources to coordinate its efforts, and it brokered the 1976 building of the Ark bioshelter in Spry Point by the US-based New Alchemy Institute with Canadian government funding. Though the IMR garnered some interest – Small is Possible, the sequel to Small is Beautiful, would call it "one of the most carefully planned and well-structured efforst at energy and self-sufficiency in existence anywhere in the Western world" – it was the Ark, with its vision of an ultramodern, ultra energy-efficient single family home, that really inspired people. There were stories in Chatelaine, Maclean’s, the New York Times, and the Whole Earth Catalog spinoff Co-Evolution Quarterly. Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth founder himself, came down to swing a hammer when the Ark was being built, and stayed to watch Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau fly in by helicopter to open it.
In a sense, of course, none of this had anything to do with the back-to-the-land movement. The houses in Lewes were separated from the Ark in Spry Point by more than just 50 kilometres and $375,000 in construction costs; the back-to-the-landers were not trying to demonstrate anything to anyone, they were doing it by and for themselves. Still, the reputation that the Island built in the North American counterculture community in the 1970s undoubtedly attracted some back-to-the-landers there, and jobs and support from the burgeoning environmental field undoubtedly helped some in making ends meet. And conversely, the arrival of back-to-the-landers early in the decade undoubtedly helped both precipitate and foretell the Island’s foray in sustainability. Returning to a 19th century existence, the back-to-the-landers were ahead of their time.