Borden-Carleton

History

Borden traces its history to Prince Edward Island's requirements for transportation to mainland North America, whereas Carleton was a surrounding farming community to the north and west of the port. Borden's development is related to the fall of fortunes for another nearby community during the First World War. A winter iceboat service crossed the Abegweit Passage between nearby Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick for many decades during the 19th century and early 20th century. The Prince Edward Island Railway built a line from its mainline near Emerald Junction to the Cape Traverse wharf to facilitate this traffic in the 1880s. By the 20th century, the federal government began to face the reality of an unreliable winter iceboat service, which existed primarily due to the Dominion having failed to meet its obligation to provide "continuous steamship service" under the Prince Edward Island Terms of Union, when the province entered Confederation in 1873. As a result, the federal government announced in 1912 that it had commissioned the construction of a custom-designed railcar ferry, the SS Prince Edward Island at a shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The new ferry, to be operated by Canadian Government Railways (later merged into the Canadian National Railways system), was to operate from a new year-round port to be built at Carleton Point, several kilometres west of Cape Traverse; the harbour at Cape Traverse having been deemed unsuitable for a deep draught vessel due to siltation and the need for continuous dredging, despite being the most direct point on Prince Edward Island opposite Cape Tormentine. The SS Prince Edward Island arrived in the Northumberland Strait in 1915 during the early years of the war but the port at Carleton Point had not…

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  1,969
• Song Sparrow

  Melospiza melodia (A.Wilson, 1810) · Aves
  1,369
• American herring gull, Smithsonian Gull

  Larus smithsonianus Coues, 1862 · Aves
  1,318
• European Starling

  Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,247
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  1,100
• Double-crested Cormorant

  Phalacrocorax auritus (Lesson, 1831) · Aves
  1,073
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  952
• Ring-billed Gull

  Larus delawarensis Ord, 1815 · Aves
  832