"A Very Fine Class of Immigrants": Prince Edward Island's Scottish Pioneers, 1770-1850

Richard Wilbur is the author of The Rise of French New Brunswick and
co-author of Silver Harvest: The Fundy Weirmen’s Story.

It is always a challenge to turn a doctoral thesis into an accessible
book that sparks the interest of the general reader. Lucille Campey has
accomplished that difficult feat in this study on Canadian immigrants.
Half of it is a descriptive and well-documented account of the various
waves of immigrants who left Scotland over an 80-year period to take up
land in Prince Edward Island. Most of the immigrants came over in
well-built and well-maintained vessels that paid for themselves with
loads of timber on the return voyage. As the author concludes, the great
majority of immigrants were well-equipped, both mentally and
financially, to succeed in the new land: “the picture of the emigrant
as a compliant customer of a rapacious shipowner travelling in a
worn-out, disease-ridden tub, at the mercy of an uncaring captain, is
not borne out by the evidence.”

The 46 pages of appendixes are perhaps even more fascinating than the
preceding text. One appendix provides descriptions of the immigrant
families and their reasons for coming (e.g., “could not earn bread
sufficient to support him and his family”), while another provides a
detailed description of many of the emigrant vessels based on details
provided by the Lloyd’s Shipping Register. Extensive notes on each
chapter’s sources reflect the high scholarship of this commendable
study.