Through the years, curiosity has brought me more satisfaction than trouble, so when it strikes, I usually indulge it. Seeing Lorie Kane—born and raised on remote Prince Edward Island—rise to prominence on the LPGA Tour, I wondered how a girl from Canada’s smallest province developed into a player on the biggest stage in women’s golf.
Determined to find out, a friend and I caught a plane to Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island. Not that we had to fly: Formerly accessible only by plane or boat, PEI is connected to the New Brunswick mainland by an eight-mile bridge that opened three years ago. We soon discovered that the pace on PEI is in tune with the island’s three major industries: fishing, farming and tourism. You don’t rush any of these.
For about six months of every year, the maritime lifestyle and pastoral setting draw legions of visitors from the northeastern U.S. Many have been coming here for generations to stay at the colorful inns and bed-and-breakfasts near the beaches—and to play the surprisingly large number of superb seaside courses.
We had our choice of more than 20 layouts, including several that rank among Canada’s best, one fresh off the drawing board of acclaimed designer Michael Hurdzan and, of course, Lorie Kane’s home course. That’s a lot of quality golf concentrated on an island twice the size of Rhode Island, but populated by fewer residents (138,000) than Providence.
Over breakfast at Charlottetown’s Fairholm National Historic Inn, a restored mansion near the harbor, I asked the waitress if she had read Anne of Green Gables, written by islander Lucy Maud Montgomery. She blushed and admitted she had not. Locals apparently don’t share the rest of the world’s ongoing fascination with the 1900s children’s classic that put PEI on the map. The book is a favorite of Japanese youngsters, thousands of whom convince their families to make the pilgrimage to PEI.
