Before I begin this post, I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Ron Garnett at www.airscapes.ca for allowing me to use many photos from his CD collection of aerial photos of the Island.   Definitions of Landscape and Topography LANDSCAPE is an emotional and aesthetic response to the territory around us. Like a work of art, it is a picture. TOPOGRAPHY is a scientific analysis of the component parts that make up the landscape. It is description and measurement, not emotion.   An Island appears… About 12,000 years ago when the glaciers that covered so much of the northern hemisphere were melting and retreating to the north, a landmass,…

This post is in an incomplete state because I lack both visual and written sources to describe the origins of these two towns and to what degree the Morris plans were followed in subsequent development. I don’t even have a copy of the Morris plan for Georgetown and must, for the time being, rely on the Lake Map of 1863. This is very much a work in progress and is likely to remain so for some time. I thought it advisable to insert it in this sequence so it would follow the description of the origins and evolution of Charlottetown and have its place in the larger narrative.   HOLLAND…

Before Wright’s final plan of Charlottetown was approved and his grid plan with green areas began to be carved out of the wilderness set aside by Holland, there was no set of official regulations as to how things should be done, and which facilities and features should be identified as necessary for every town. The grid plan, now of considerable antiquity, first introduced in the New World by Philip II of Spain in the 1570s, was familiar to those planning future towns in the British Colonies, and may have been a source of inspiration. In 1768 Charles Morris used a grid plan with a central square reserved for the most…