NOTES
- The Globe and Mail (1 January 1996): A14. All references are to the paper's national edition.
- Calgary Herald (3 March 1995): A5.
- But it would probably take a “cataclysmic” event such as Quebec secession to precipitate a “realistic assessment” that would culminate in a Maritime union, he added. Gibson presented his views on the CTV television network program “Sunday Edition,” 6 October 1996.
- Toronto Star (2 September 1993): A21; (26 August 1994): A23.
- Robert Sheppard's Globe and Mail column of 12 November 1996, A23, assessing the late premier's political career, recalled Ghiz's fears.
- Rand Dyck, Provincial Politics in Canada: Towards the Turn of the Century (Toronto: Prentice Hall Canada, 1996), 85–89. The unemployment rate in the early 1990s was at times as high as 18 percent, and remains above 16 percent. Transfer payments account for 35 percent of annual provincial government expenditures.
- The Representation Act passed by Parliament in 1985 states that no province may have fewer seats in the House of Commons than in the Senate. PEI was granted four senate seats when it joined Confederation.
- See Charles Duerden, “This Land is up for Grabs!”, Rural Delivery 16 (April 1992): 18–19.
- David Milne, “Prince Edward Island: Politics in a Beleaguered Garden,” in Keith Brownsey and Michael Howlett, eds., The Provincial State: Politics in Canada's Provinces and Territories (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1992), 32; Stephen G. Tomblin, Ottawa and the Outer Provinces (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1995), 72. J.M. Bumsted, “'The Only Island There Is': The Writing of Prince Edward Island History,” in Verner Smitheram, David Milne, and Satadal Dasgupta, eds., The Garden Transformed: Prince Edward Island, 1945–1980 (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1982), 11–38, provides an historiographical overview of the way many intellectuals, too, have inculcated a sense of Island “specialness.”
- For the views of bridge opponents, see Lorraine Begley, ed., Crossing that Bridge: A Critical Look at the PEI Fixed Link (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1993); Charlottetown Guardian (1 February 1997): A1, A5. See also the New York Times (21 June 1994): A4, for an American account of the confrontation.
- Francis W.P. Bolger, “Nation Building at Charlottetown, 1864,” in Francis W.P. Bolger, ed., Canada's Smallest Province: A History of P.E.I. (Charlottetown: The Prince Edward Island 1973 Centennial Commission, 1973), 137–138.
- Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837–67 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995), 269.
- Joseph Read, “The Question of Maritime Union,” The Busy East of Canada 8 (August 1918): 5–8. Read also spoke favorably of the American federal system, which protected states' rights by granting smaller states equal representation with larger ones in the Senate.
- Charlottetown Guardian (18 November 1935): 4. Murray Beck has noted that various Ontario newspapers have long derided the existence of small Maritime provinces. J. Murray Beck, The History of Maritime Union: A Study in Frustration (Fredericton: Maritime Union Study, November 1969), 31, 37–39.
- Charlottetown Guardian (12 February 1938): 1,8. Still, the final report of the commission did suggest that, while union was not a simple matter, it might materially reduce the cost of government, and improve the credit rating, of the poorer provinces. Report of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, Book II (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1940), 167.
- The Report on Maritime Union Commissioned by the Governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island (Fredericton: Maritime Union Study, 1970), 9, 55, 61–73, 107–123.
- New York Times (1 January 1971): 6.
- Toronto Star (27 May 1972): 20.
- The Globe and Mail (4 June 1990): B1, B4.
- Charlottetown Guardian (12 September 1990): 2; (14 September 1990):3; (28 September 1990): 10; (22 March 1991): 1; The Globe and Mail (18 September 1990): B12; Halifax Chronicle-Herald (28 September 1990): A3.
- Halifax Chronicle-Herald (15 February 1991): A1; (11 June 1991): A1–A2; The Globe and Mail (25 March 1991): A1–A2; “The Road to Atlantic Unity,” Maclean's (1 April 1991): 19; Sharon Fraser, “More than Fish and Loaves: The Vision of a Maritime Union,” This Magazine 25 (August 1991): 35.
- Report of the Special Committee on Maritime Economic Integration (Charlottetown: Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island, January 1992).
- Bob Yeo, “Maritime Economic Union,” IslandSide Magazine 4 (January/February 1992): 19–21.
- Charlottetown Patriot (24 March 1993): 4. For further details on these various projects, see Peter O'Brien, Beyond the Playing Fields: Small Business Looks at Integration in Atlantic Canada (Halifax: Canadian Federation of Independent Business, October 1994), and From Opportunity to Results: An Update and Outlook on the Maritime Economic Initiative September 1992-December 1994 (Halifax: Council of Maritime Premiers, December 1994).
- Charlottetown Guardian (2 January 1996): A6.
- Charlottetown Guardian (26 February 1996): A6.
- Charlottetown Guardian (6 March 1996): A6.
- Charlottetown Guardian (19 September 1996): A6.
- Montague (PEI) Eastern Graphic (16 October 1996): 7.
- Interviews, George Proud, Charlottetown, 20 January 1997; 27 April 1997. PEI, he said, needed to pursue new business enterprises more aggressively, in order to keep its best and brightest from emigrating to other parts of Canada.
- Saint John Telegraph Journal (28 December 1995): A1. McGuire was probably referring to a meeting held in Truro, Nova Scotia, on 17 November 1995, at which several dozen politicians, professors, and bureaucrats expressed interest in politically uniting the Maritimes and eventually Newfoundland. Among those involved were economists John Odenthal of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council (APEC) and Brian Russell of the North American Policy Group, based at Dalhousie University; and political scientists Agar Adamson of Acadia University, Robert Finbow of Dalhousie, and Roger Ouellette of the Université de Moncton. Halifax Chronicle-Herald (18 November 1995): A6; Charlottetown Guardian (18 November 1995): B5. Two other Université de Moncton academics, Daniel Bourgeois and Donald Savoie, have also become proponents of Maritime union. Richard Starr, “Maritime Union,” New Federation 4 (March/April 1994): 15; Richard Starr, “'Atlantica': Can Four Provinces Become One?”, Atlantic Progress 3 (February 1996): 21; Saint John Telegraph Journal (20 December 1995): A11.
- Telephone interview with Don Wilson, Ottawa, 8 October 1996.
- Charlottetown Guardian (18 September 1996): A1.
- Interview, Wayne Easter, Hunter River, PEI, 27 September 1996.
- Charlottetown Guardian (26 July 1995): A7.
- Letter to the editor of The Globe and Mail (23 December 1995): D7.
- Marion Reid, “Maritime Union: Is it Good for Prince Edward Island,” in Maritime Union: Is it a Good Idea for PEI? A Symposium (Charlottetown, PEI: Institute of Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island and the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, 1996), 63–65.
- Interview, Pat Binns, Charlottetown, 2 October 1996. Pope was the island premier who opposed Confederation until Canada granted PEI more favorable terms in 1873.
- The Globe and Mail (20 November 1996): A3.
- “Not Time for Maritime Union,” press release from the office of Pat Mella, Charlottetown, 2 November 1995.
- Milligan and Cheverie responded to my query at a meeting held at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, 18 September 1996.
- Robert Morrissey, “From Opportunity to Results: An Update and Outlook on Maritime Economic Initiatives,” paper presented to the seminar on “Maritime Union: Is it a Good Idea for PEI?”, Charlottetown, 27 February 1996.
- Telephone interview with Herb Dickieson, O'Leary, PEI, 25 September 1996.
- Charlottetown Guardian (3 September 1996): A1–A2. One Island Acadian, Aubin Edmond Arsenault, was premier of the province between 1917 and 1919. For a history of the Acadian community on PEI, see Georges Arsenault, The Island Acadians: 1720–1980, trans. Sally Ross (Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1989).
- Charlottetown Guardain (7 April 1997): A1.
- Aubrey Cormier, “Maritime Union: An Acadian Perspective,” in Maritime union, 37–39.
- On PEI, some 4.5 percent of Islanders list French as their mother tongue, but only 2.3 percent use it as their primary language at home. For the total numbers of people in the Atlantic provinces who claim French as their mother tongue and/or home language, see Statistics Canada, Home Language and Mother Tongue: The Nation (Ottawa: Minister of Industry, Science and Technology, January 1993), Table 1, 10–11; and Table 5, 148, 152, 154, 158, 160, 164, 166, 170.
- Provinces are obliged, under Section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees minority language education rights, to provide schooling in either official language “where numbers warrant.” However, education itself is a provincial responsibility and each province itself determines whether there are sufficient numbers of students in any particular locale to warrant a French school. The PEI School Act specifies that there be at least fifteen “Section 23” children over two consecutive grade levels in a school district to qualify for minority language education. In 1995, a group of parents in Summerside, PEI, launched a lawsuit against the province, charging that their constitutional rights were being violated because thirty-four children were being forced to attend a French school in a village forty minutes away by bus rather than being educated in French in Summerside. They won their case in the PEI Supreme Court in 1997, though the province is appealing the ruling. Charlottetown Guardian (11 January 1996): A4; (16 January 1997): A4; (8 February 1997): A1, A3.
- However, a three-unit federation, with New Brunswick remaining a bilingual jurisdiction, might prove a better solution, especially if it included a so-called “Triple E” Senate—one that is elected, has effective powers, and with equal representation for the constituent units—so as to prevent a small jurisdiction such as PEI from being submerged politically. Such an upper house might also provide representation for nonterritorial groups such as the Acadian Francophones outside New Brunswick and aboriginal groups.
- Charlottetown Guardian (11 May 1996): A3. Philippe Doucet and Roger Ouellette consider former Liberal premier Callbeck “somewhat less pro-union than her predecessor, Joe Ghiz.” Philippe Doucet and Roger Ouellette, Maritime (Atlantic) Union: History and Prospects, The Maritime Series, No. 1 (Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, June 1996), 26.
- Saint John Telegraph Journal (28 September 1996): A14.
- Tomblin, 72.
- In a personal communication, Thérèse Arseneau of St. Mary's University in Halifax, suggested that the region's difficult geography and climate might provide a stronger argument against political union.
- Charlottetown Guardian (26 January 1996): A1.
- Eric Ellsworth, “Political and Economic Union in Atlantic Canada,” in Maritime union, 43–45.
- Robert Finbow, “Atlantic Canada: Forgotten Periphery in an Endangered Confederation?” in Kenneth McRoberts, ed., Beyond Quebec: Taking Stock of Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995). 61–62.