7. Mod Cons
One might assume that the back-to-the-landers eschewed all elements of modern life, but the truth was more complex than that. Some gratefully accepted the technologies that came their way while others renounced them. Some of those interviewed seem to have been as conflicted about material possessions as are the rest of us today. Wendy Ader-Jones operated 50 beehives, a greenhouse, and the first organic strawberry u-pick on PEI, yet didn’t accept invitations to the local Women’s Institute for several years: "I was afraid to," she says. "Because everybody had to take a turn hosting all the women at their home and I had no running water, no electricity, and no telephone at our farm. But everybody else had gotten all those 'mod cons', you know, years before, and I was embarrassed to bring them to the house." Compare that to Christine Stanley, who says, "I was really strict back then because I didn't want any electricity. People would give me things like electric frying pans for Christmas and I rejected all of that. I wanted no electricity. I wanted a hand pump. I've sort of given in a little bit but now that my kids are gone I can see myself going back to - I don't want any of that. I want to live a simple life."
In a society devoted to time-saving, throwaway conveniences, the back-to-the-land movement was in essence redefining (or re-redefining) what the simple life was, and how it could be achieved. Yet back-to-the-landers either knew or quickly discovered that the simple life was a lot of work, and so few were dogmatic. They took up the technologies that made sense for them, that were available, that they could afford, and that made their life simpler.
Not surprisingly, indoor plumbing was a matter of importance. The Stanleys had moved into a cabin with no electricity or running water, and installed a flush toilet only when their son Michael was starting school; his grandmother was convinced "he’d be traumatized at school if he didn’t know how to use a flush toilet." Both the Gibbs and the Suttons speak of always having had indoor plumbing – the Gibbs because it came with the farm they bought, the Suttons because "We were never that back-to-the-land" – and of sharing it with back-to-the-landers who didn’t. Joan Sutton recalls that the Corsi family had an outhouse, and "sometimes his kids would run up here in the winter to use the bathroom. That tells you something!" Peter Richards of Kelly’s Cross was not ideologically opposed to running water, he just couldn’t afford it when he built his own house. "We were willing to live at that standard for a while, but it was a great day when I lay in the bathtub and turned on the hot water tap the first time. It was one of the greatest days of my life."
Going without electricity was equally difficult. The Pinsents eventually succumbed because they were having trouble with food storage, and because their growing market garden needed a reliable supply of water. And there were other factors. Morley Pinsent notes that "We missed music, and the kids missed the television." They tried using a windmill for a while, and then a Belarus tractor with a big global battery that he would drive down to the neighbours and recharge. "It made it really selective for the kids watching television," says Morley.
The arrival of modern technologies wasn’t necessarily welcome. Cef Pobjoy remembers feeling closely attuned to the older generation of Islanders, who were well-accustomed to living without electricity or indoor plumbing. He states,
It was the middle generation that was going 'What the fuck are these guys doing? We're just getting running water and indoor plumbing.' I had no indoor plumbing for six years, and I loved it. Outdoor toilet, no running water, no lights. ... No sound in the house. The day that we finally – we got two kids – ... and I bought a fridge and I couldn't believe how invasive the sound [was]. The whole fucking house was vibrating, and it was a newer fridge! It’s just hmmmmmmm. It’s very disturbing. And when the light came on, I just felt invaded. But on the day we got running water I almost went on my knees and thanked God. Six years of pumping water in the winter.
It is worth noting that in many of these stories, children figure prominently. Morley Pinsent wryly calls his children his "labour force," helping make living back-to-the-land possible – but they also made it more difficult. By virtue of going to school, kids drew the family daily into the mainstream. They were on the one hand forced ambassadors for the movement and on the other hand agents of modern life infiltrating the back-to-the-land homes. Pinsent’s children, for example, faced some stresses because they were considered "different" at school and because they didn’t have some of the material possessions that other kids did. In something of the same vein, the Arnolds’ daughter was teased on the school bus for having such healthy lunches. The lifestyle tested families, Joyce Arnold concludes: "you could either become reliant on each other, or it could pull families apart."
For many people who had made the deliberate choice of becoming back-to-the-landers, it was very difficult to impose that choice on children, so kids often precipitated not just the arrival of modern conveniences but the eventual abandonment of the back-to-the-land way-of-life altogether. This may speak ultimately to how fragile that existence really was – how difficult it is in our society to seek the simple life, and how simple it is to be pulled back into that larger society. Laurel Smyth speaks of how razor-thin the margin was for Prince Edward Island back-to-the-landers:
It’s really hard to support yourself at all unless you're extremely competent and have a very wide-ranging sphere of activities to support yourself back on the land. You know, you still need your heat and your light .... If you don't have electricity then you're going to either buy a lot of candles or you're going to be making them or you're going to have lanterns – then you have to buy the kerosene for them. So everything, you have to spend money, no matter what. There's no getting away from the money economy without very, very serious group application to achieving that goal. I just can't imagine it, and certainly I wasn't about to embark on something that rigorous when I had a child. I mean, there were ones who did, but those ones weren't really here on PEI. This is not a place that truly lends itself to such harsh realities. Surviving winter alone, and mud season, that was enough of a harsh reality.