Exploring PEI :: Province House, the Birthplace of Canada

This weekend, Charlottetown celebrated its 157th birthday. We attended the celebrations at Victoria Park. We had a lot of fun there. We visited the library and then sat in front of Province House to have a quick snack and noticed it was open, so we went in!

We love exploring new places and playing tourist when we move to a new area.

Province House is a national historic site of Canada and is known as the birthplace of Canada. The building is beautiful and spacious. There are two main rooms you can visit, and a library.

The photo below shows part of the library:

 

The Province House is still used today for the Legislative Assembly:





Province House is known as the birthplace of Confederation. In September 1864, 23 political leaders from the British Colonies of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada (Ontario and Quebec) began the discussions that led in 1867 to the creation of the Dominion of Canada. (text from the Parks Canada).

The Parks Canada staff told us that the table and chairs (in the photo below) are the original ones from 1864. Andre noticed the spittoons right away! The staff member also explained that no one sat in the preferred seat (with the red curtain around it) during the historical meeting. That chair was used before during the Prince Edward Island Legislative Council. I thought it was very interesting to visit this room, especially since we learned about Confederation in our Canadian History last year. We will come back again this summer and see the sound & light show and historical vignettes.

If you would like to learn more about Confederation, you can visit the following site:

Confederation for Kids