Tag Archives: Prince Edward Island

Giant Potato sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Two-ton tater tot

Oh, the fates were cruel to me this day. I happened to pass through a town that shared my last name, and in that town I stumbled upon a giant fiberglass potato. In front of a potato museum.

Which had closed an hour before.

Now, really. That’s just not fair.

Green Gables Heritage Place sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Animal, Vegetable, Polymer

Continuing on the whole fake farm theme, the ones that make me giggle the most are those that don’t try very hard in the ambience department. When my friend Elizabeth and I went to PEI together, our whole trip was centered around our childhood (and adult!) love of Anne of Green Gables. But even we were hesitant to visit Green Gables Heritage Place, because what could it actually offer? There’s no real Green Gables farm—Anne is a fictional character, the 1980s miniseries that everybody knows so well were mostly filmed in Ontario, and even the author’s home is now only a ruined foundation, located on a different site nearby.

Well, I’m sorry to tell you our fears were well-founded. The “Green Gables” house is just a replica farmhouse, filled with random period furniture and staffed with somewhat bored university students in Edwardian garb—all with the aim to give the busloads of cruise ship tourists a misplaced feeling of nostalgia, rather than information about the author or a detailed recreation of anything tangible. If it had been irredeemably hokey (you should have seen our reaction to the Green Gables post office in Cavendish!), we probably would have loved it—instead, we found it vaguely depressing.

Until we got to the barn, that is. The shiny fiberglass Jersey cow gave us a bit of much-needed comic relief—while Rachel Lynde’s imagined voice echoed in our heads.

Portrait sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Travel companion

Usually when I travel, I’m hurrying around everywhere, frantically sketching as many things as humanly possible (since I often travel alone, I can get away with this!). But when I travel with a friend, sometimes it’s nice to just sit for a spell and capture the moment. Because for me, that’s the best thing about having a travel companion: having the experience together.

Confederation Bridge sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Spindly spans

To continue this week’s bridge theme, let’s head north and check out a couple of Canadian feats of engineering. These two bridges have very little in common with one another—except that they both kind of gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I think the main thing was the sheer distances spanned here, by two relatively skinny structures. In the case of the Confederation Bridge that connects Prince Edward Island to the mainland, the span is eight miles long. That’s comparable to some of the wider stretches of salt water in Washington state, but thanks to the water depth here, you won’t find bridges like that around my neck of the woods. So even though the crossing to PEI took just a few minutes, it felt like traversing a little ocean.

World's longest covered bridge sketch by Chandler O'Leary

And as for the world’s longest covered bridge? Well, now that was freaky. And creaky. And saggy. And rattly. And…well…long. It took me almost as long to walk across the Hartland Bridge and back as it did to drive the Confederation Bridge—plenty of time to freak out a little bit. (My fear of heights didn’t help, either.)

But you already know I have a major thing for covered bridges. Heck, I’d already crossed the entire province of New Brunswick just to see this one thing. This was definitely not the moment to chicken out.

Houses of Prince Edward Island sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Home sweet homes

You know how much I love drawing houses—and Prince Edward Island seemed to be the pretty-farmhouse capital of the world. There were so many, in fact, that it was hard not to spend my entire vacation sketching houses. So this was the only way I could think of to save room in my sketchbook for drawings of other things…

Lobster sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Tourist (lobster) trap

No trip to the Maritimes is complete without a good lobster meal (or two, or three…). And a pound of fresh lobster looks mighty impressive on a plate—good drawing and good eating.

Now, a fifteen-foot, fifty-ton roadside lobster statue?

World's largest lobster sketch by Chandler O'Leary

That’s something I could sink my teeth into.

World's largest lobster sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Prince Edward Island sketch by Chandler O'Leary

A world where there are Octobers

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”

—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Prince Edward Island sketch by Chandler O'Leary

And I’m so glad my first visit to Prince Edward Island was an October one.

Prince Edward Island sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Even without the peak fall color everywhere, the island was easily one of the most beautiful, picturesque places I’ve ever seen. In fact, the gratuitous beauty got to be a running gag between my travel companion and me—with each new jaw-dropping vista, one of us would roll our eyes and sigh, “Jeez, I guess I’ll just look at another pretty scene…” and then laugh.

Prince Edward Island sketch by Chandler O'Leary

Actually, laughing about it was about the only way we could keep our sanity. It was all I could do not to abandon any attempt at sketching (because what puny drawing could ever hold a candle to the real thing?) and just burst into dumbfounded tears over the enormity of it all. Because all those October trees, and October fields, and October skies made for two days so perfect that no amount of careful painting could ever do them justice.

Prince Edward Island sketch by Chandler O'Leary