Prince Edward Island, Canada

You may not know it, but I was born and raised in Toulouse, southern France. In 2003, I decided to move to Canada because I wanted to see more of the world. I have never looked back since then. I would not live elsewhere!

As a nature photographer, Canada is one of the greatest places in the world. It has so much variety that it is not even funny. I even find great things to document with my camera in cities.

Unfortunately, many outsiders see Canada in a very uniform manner. More often than not, when I talk to people who have never visited us but know one Canadian, friend or family member who lives here (very often limited to Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver), they always ask me if I know that person. They even give me their home address.

After 18 years, I still have to remind some of my friends and family members that Canada is the second largest country in the world and that everything is far. I usually include distances between main points of interest. For example, "I live 2,500 kilometres away from Montréal"; or "It takes about two hours by plane for me to be in Toronto", will do the trick. I still have to take screenshots of Google Maps and send those to them, so they start realizing that they actually know Canada even less than they thought they did.

When it does not work, and this is especially the case with Europeans, I describe the country in this manner. Each province and territory is more or less like a country you would find in the European Union. For example, Manitoba, my province, is the same size as France, but has about 70 times fewer inhabitants!

(Fun fact: Manitoba is known as the land of 100,000 lakes. One of them, Lake Winnipeg, is the fifth-largest freshwater lake in North America, and the twelfth largest lake in the world!)

Anyway, moving on to the topic at hand: Prince Edward Island (PEI for short).

PEI is 280 kilometres long, which makes it the smallest province in Canada. The Island is connected to the mainland (Cape Jourimain, New Brunswick) by the Confederation Bridge, located in Bordon-Carleton.

I went to Prince Edward Island in 2019, because I am fascinated with lighthouses, and I wanted to see one of the gems of Atlantic Canada and the Maritimes (a group of provinces made up of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). I had such a blast!

My friend and I rented a car, so we could move around the island easily. We stayed in Charlottetown, the lovely capital city of the province; and stopped by places like Cardigan, Summerside, Greenwich Beach, Cavendish Beach, the Confederation Bridge, Dunelands, Dalvey-by-the-Sea, Basin Head Provincial Park, the Canadian Potato Museum, and Anne of Green Gables Heritage Place. Yes, the place that inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery's famous books!

Of course, I also feasted my eyes on numerous lighthouses: Cap Egmont Lighthouse, Cape Bear Lighthouse, Covehead Lighthouse, Naufrage Lighthouse, North Cape, Panmure Island Lighthouse, Prim Point Lighthouse, Tignish Lighthouse, West Point Lighthouse, and Victoria-by-the-Sea Lighthouse.

Some areas of PEI even reminded me of places along the Atlantic coast in France where I used to go with my parents as a kid!

I took hundreds of photos during the trip, many of which were captured with my Nikon F90X. At the time, I was just getting started with black-and-white film photography, after many years as a professional digital photographer. But I am really happy with the images. I hope you will enjoy looking at them in the video below.

For those who wonder about the kind of lens and film I used, the answer is below:

• Lens: Nikon AF DC-Nikkor 105mm
• Film: Ilford XP2 Super 400 B&W

If you are interested in checking out the whole series at your own pace, click here. (The page takes a little while to load, so please be patient.) All the images are there.

That's it for today! Thank you for reading!

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Cendrine Marrouat is a writer, photographer, podcaster, blogger, anthology editor, and the co-founder of Auroras & Blossoms and A Warm Cup of Cozy. She has authored and co-authored more than 40 books, including The Train: A Short Story (2023), In Her Own Words: A Collection of Short Stories & Flashku (2022), After the Fires of Day: Haiku Inspired by Kahlil Gibran & Alphonse de Lamartine (2021), Rhythm Flourishing: A Collection of Kindku and Sixku (2020), Walks: A Collection of Haiku (2019-2020), and In the Silence of Words: A Three-Act Play (2018).

Cendrine's work has appeared in many publications. She is the creator of the Sixku, Flashku, Sepigram, and Reminigram; as well as the co-creator of the Kindku, Pareiku, Vardhaku, and Hemingku.