Charlottetown is a Canadian city and the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island. The population of the city, proper in the 2001 census was 32,245 and the population of the census agglomeration was 58,358. Almost half of the Island's population lives within the Charlottetown area. Charlottetown was first incorporated as a town in 1855 and designated as a city in 1885. It is also the county seat of Queens County.

[edit] Geography

Charlottetown is situated on its namesake harbour which is formed by the confluence of three rivers in the central part of the island along its south shore. The harbour itself opens onto the Northumberland Strait. In 1995 the present city was created by amalgamating Charlottetown with the communities of Sherwood, Parkdale, Hillsborough Park, Winsloe, West Royalty, and East Royalty. Since amalgamation, the city occupies most of Queens Royalty and part of the townships Lot 33 and Lot 34.

Downtown Charlottetown includes the city's historic 500 lots, as surveyed by Captain Samuel Holland, as well as the waterfront facing the harbour and the Hillsborough River. Adjacent communities to the original downtown included Brighton, Spring Park, and Parkdale. The areas to the west, north and east of downtown have been developed in recent decades with several residential and commercial/retail developments, although the outer regions of the city are still predominantly farmland, as is an area in the centre of the city where an Agriculture Canada crop research station is located.

[edit] Economy

Charlottetown's economy, as with most provincial capitals in Canada, is dominated by the public sector. The provincial, federal, and municipal levels of government are significant employers in the central part of Queens County, as well as healthcare and secondary and post-secondary education. Technology companies have also been increasing their share of the city's workforce in the past decade, however the actual numbers are quite small once call-centres are excluded. Other significant economic activities include light manufacturing such as chemicals, bio-technology, and machining.

[edit] Sports

Charlottetown is home to the P.E.I. Rocket of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The team plays at the Charlottetown Civic Centre.

[edit] Tourism

Image:Charlottetown quay.JPG

Image:Day256icharlottetownb.JPG

Charlottetown is a popular destination in eastern Canada for visitors from other Maritime provinces, central Canada and the northeastern United States, as the city has a central location in the province as well as various services. The city's streetscapes with a centrally-planned downtown core containing many Victorian-era houses and buildings is an attraction, as well as a waterfront redevelopment project in recent decades which has seen walking trails and parks developed on former industrial lands. A new cruise ship terminal is planned by the local port authority which proponents hope will make the city a more attractive destination for the growing number of vessels operating in Atlantic Canadian waters.

Popular attractions within the city include the provincial legislature at Province House, which hosted the Charlottetown Conference, as well as Founders Hall, a recently redeveloped railway maintenance building which now houses an interactive trip through history tracing the development of Canada as a nation. The Confederation Centre of the Arts provides live theatre, including the Charlottetown Festival during the summer months, as well as a nationally-ranked art gallery. The Charlottetown Festival itself is headlined by Canada's most popular and longest-running musical, Anne of Green Gables - The Musical, which is an adaptation of Island author Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel.

[edit] Transportation

[edit] Air

Charlottetown Airport is the city's main airport, serving around 200,000 passengers per year. The airport is served by Air Canada Jazz, WestJet, Sunwing Vacations, and Northwest Airlines, with flights to and from Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, and new for winter 2007 weekly charter serivce to Punta Cana. Alernatively, charter flights can be made by Prince Edward Air Ltd., which has its headquarters in Charlottetown, and is the largest airline based in Atlantic Canada.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Public

Charlottetown Transit was established in 2005 using six buses. Routes currently cover the majority of the municipality with hourly weekday service and there are plans to expand the service into outlying areas and provide more buses per route. Schedules are available online at http://www.thebus.ca.

[edit] Private

Charlottetown's road infrastructure developed to serve its small population, however a growing tend toward urbanization has resulted in increased amounts of traffic in the city during weekdays for employment and during weekends for shopping and services. This is exacerbated in the summer months when tourist vehicle traffic results in clogged narrow streets and main arteries leading from the central business district.

The absence of public transit in Charlottetown resulted in a dependence on personal use of automobiles and city councils catered to this need during the 1970s-1990s by constructing monolithic above ground parking garages to house vehicles of downtown workers. Taxi companies became a last-resort for many residents without access to a vehicle, particularly seniors; taxis in Charlottetown use a zone-based fare system as opposed to meters, and do not have a protective partition between the driver and passenger.

[edit] Streets, roads and highways

The city is roughly V-shaped (pointed to the south) and constrained by the North (Yorke) and the Hillsborough (East) Rivers to the east and west, both of which are crossed by bridges carrying the Trans-Canada Highway. The development of the Queens Royalty, with its 12-acre estates surveyed during the 18th and 19th centuries along a north-south axis forced early road networks into a rough grid. An Agriculture Canada experimental research station farm is the last remnant of the Queens Royalty common pasture lands and creates a large greenspace in the centre of the city, north of downtown.

The present-day Charlottetown landscape is dominated by urban development along the waterfront areas, suburban development to the west, north and east, as well as the airport to the north. Commercial development, aside from the central business district, is concentrated along several road corridors:

University Avenue/Malpeque Road
North River Road/Lower Malpeque Road
St. Peters Road
Mount Edward Road
Kensington Road

The downtown core is augmented by several feeder streets:

Queen Street
Water Street
Grafton Street

The city has a limited-access arterial highway that partially bisects the northern suburbs, linking with Riverside Drive, the Hillsborough River Bridge and the North River Causeway/Bridge.

[edit] History

[edit] Port La Joye

The first Europeans in the area, then known as Île Saint-Jean, were the French, whereby personnel from Fortress Louisbourg founded a settlement in 1720 named Port La Joye on the southwestern part of the harbour opposite the present-day city. This settlement was led by Michel Hache-Gallant, who used his sloop to ferry Acadians from Fort Louisbourg. In August 1758, at the height of the Seven Years' War, a British fleet took control of the settlement (and the entire island) and promptly deported those French settlers that they could find, this being fully three years after the original Acadian Expulsion in Nova Scotia. British forces built Fort Amherst near the site of the abandoned Port La Joye settlement to protect the entrance to the harbour.

[edit] Charlottetown's early years

Charlottetown was selected as the site for the county seat of Queens County in the colonial survey of 1764 by Captain Samuel Holland of the Royal Engineers. A year later, Charlottetown was made the colonial capital of Prince Edward Island. Further surveys conducted between 1768-1771 established the street grid and public squares which can be seen in the city's historic district. The town was named in honour of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.

On November 17, 1775 the colony's new capital was ransacked by Massachusetts-based privateers during the American Revolutionary War, during which the colonial seal, along with prisoners were taken.

[edit] Expansion and the "Golden Age" of sail

In 1793 land had been set aside by Governor Fanning on the western limits of the community for use by the "Administrator of Government" (the Governor), and as such it became known informally as "Fanning's Bank" or just "Fanning Bank".

In 1805, the local British garrison constructed another harbour defence at Fort Edward to the west of the capital's waterfront. The Prince Edward Battery was then relocated to this facility.

In 1835, Government House was constructed at Fanning Bank as a residence for the colony's Governor. It continues as the official residence for the Lieutenant Governor).

Between 1843 and 1847, a new legislature building was constructed in the community. Named "Province House", the completion of this structure was an important milestone in the history of the capital and it is still in use today as the provincial legislature and is currently the second-oldest legislative seat in Canada.

On April 17, 1855, Charlottetown was incorporated as a town, holding its first council meeting on August 11 that year. The community had 6,500 residents at the time of incorporation.

Between September 1-7, 1864, Charlottetown hosted what is now termed the Charlottetown Conference. Although many of the meetings and negotiations which would lead to Canadian Confederation were held in Province House, various social events spilled over into the surrounding community.

Prince Edward Island entered Confederation on July 1, 1873. This same day, the "Government House Farm" at Fanning Bank was designated a municipal park, named "Victoria Park" in honour of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Aside from being the seat of colonial government, the community came to be noted during the early 19th century for shipbuilding and its lumber industry as well as being a fishing port. The shipbuilding industry declined in the latter part of the nineteenth century In August 1874 the Prince Edward Island Railway opened its main line between Charlottetown and Summerside. The railway, along with the shipping industry, would continue to drive industrial development on the waterfront for several decades to come.

In 1885 the municipality saw its status upgraded to become a city.

[edit] Development into today's community

Religion played a central role in the development of Charlottetown's institutions with Protestant and Roman Catholic schools (Queen Charlotte High School vs. Birchwood High School), hospitals (Prince Edward Island Hospital vs. Charlottetown Hospital), and post-secondary institutions (Prince of Wales College vs. St. Dunstan's University) respectively. St. Dunstan's was originally developed as a seminary for training priests and the Maritime Christian College was founded in 1960 to train preachers for the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in Prince Edward Island and the Maritime Provinces.

As with most communities in North America, the automobile shaped Charlottetown's development in the latter half of the 20th century, when outlying farms in rural areas of Brighton, Spring Park, and Parkdale saw increased housing developments. The Charlottetown airfield in the nearby rural community of Sherwood was upgraded as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and operated for the duration of World War II as RCAF Station Charlottetown, in conjunction with RCAF Station Mount Pleasant and RCAF Station Summerside. After the war the airfield was designated Charlottetown Airport. Further post-war development saw residential properties continue to expand in adjacent outlying areas, particularly in the neighbouring farming communities of Sherwood, West Royalty, and East Royalty.

To commemorate the centennial of the Charlottetown Conference, the 10 provinces and federal government contributed to a national monument to the "Fathers of Confederation." The Confederation Centre of the Arts, which opened in 1964, is a gift to the residents of Prince Edward Island, and contains a public library, nationally-renowned art gallery, and a mainstage theatre which has played to the Charlottetown Festival every summer since.

In the 1960s new public schools were constructed in the community and in 1969 the city became home to the amalgamated University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), located on the campus of the former St. Dunstan's University. Together with the federal Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food's Charlottetown Experimental Farm (also known as Ravenwood Farm), these properties comprise a large green space surrounded by the city. The Prince of Wales College downtown campus became part of a new provincial community college system named Holland College, in honour of the island's famous surveyor. The P.E.I. Comprehensive Development Plan in the late 1960s greatly contributed to the expansion of the provincial government in Charlottetown.

In 1982 the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital, named after Queen Elizabeth II of Canada, was opened, followed in 1983 when the national headquarters of the federal Department of Veterans Affairs was moved to Charlottetown as part of a nation-wide federal government decentralization programme. In 1986, UPEI saw further expansion with the opening of the Atlantic Veterinary College.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Charlottetown witnessed increased commercial office and retail development. A major downtown hotel and convention centre was completed in 1982 and soon helped to encourage diversification and renewal in the once-dilapidated waterfront Numerous apartment complexes as well as shopping centres also sprung up in this era. In the 1990s, abandoned railway and industrial lands on the waterfront were transformed into parks and cultural attractions.

The late 1990s and 2000s witnessed a change in the retail landscape with the opening of big box stores on the site of former traditional shopping centres and in new developments in the northern suburbs, particularly the neighbourhood of West Royalty which is a key road junction.

In attempting to maintain its heritage cityscape, and due to the lack of adequate bedrock in the area, Charlottetown limits new buildings throughout the municipality to a maximum height of six storeys.

Official seal of the City of Charlottetown.

[edit] Municipal government

The city's municipal government is structured around a council comprised of a mayor and 10 councillors elected using the ward system; there is currently a discussion about electing councillors at large.

[edit] Neighbourhoods

Main article: Neighbourhoods of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

Charlottetown is comprised of the following neighbourhoods which were one-time independent municipalities:

Charlottetown (original municipality)
Brighton
Spring Park
Parkdale
Sherwood
East Royalty
West Royalty
Winsloe

The original municipal boundary between Charlottetown and the common area of the township of Queens Royalty was the northern edge of the original 500 lots along present-day Euston Street. This boundary was extended north to Allen Street and Kirkwood Drive during the early 20th century, taking in part of the rural community of Brighton west of the downtown. The village of Spring Park was amalgamated into the city in 1959, extending the city's boundary north to Hermitage Creek, which also formed the southern boundary of the village of West Royalty. Development filled in most vacant land in the Brighton and Spring Park neighbourhoods by the 1980s.

Municipal amalgamation in 1996 saw the outlying independent municipalities of Parkdale (town), Sherwood, East Royalty, West Royalty and Winsloe (villages) merged into a larger city of Charlottetown at the same time as rural communities east and west of the city were amalgamated to form the towns of Stratford and Cornwall respectively.

A green belt is in place around the northern fringe of the municipal boundary, although it is poorly enforced by the provincial government, leading to urban sprawl.

[edit] Demographics

According to the 2001 census, the City of Charlottetown had 32,245 residents of whom 45.8% were male and 54.2% were female. Children under five accounted for approximately 4.9% of the resident population of Charlottetown. This compares with 5.6% in Prince Edward Island, and 5.6% for Canada overall.

The median income for a household in the city is $52,996, and the median income for a family is $77,008. Males have a median income of $42,519 versus $28,136 for females. The per capita income for the town is $29,710. 12.2% of the population and 8.0% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 9.6% of those under the age of 18 and 10.3% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.

In 2001, 16.4% of the resident population in Charlottetown were of retirement age (65 and over for males and females) compared with 13.2% in Canada; therefore, the median age is 38.8 years of age comparing to 37.6 years of age for all of Canada.

In the five years between 1996 and 2001, the population of Charlottetown fell by 0.9%, compared with an increase of 0.5% for Prince Edward Island as a whole. Population density of Charlottetown averaged 727.3 people per square kilometre, compared with a provincial average of 23.8 for Prince Edward Island.

The Charlottetown census agglomeration area (CA) is comprised of Charlottetown and the neighbouring towns of Stratford and Cornwall, as well as adjoining rural areas of central-eastern Queens County, namely Lots 31, 34, 35, 36, 48, 49 and 65. At the time of the census in May 2001, the estimated resident population for the CA was 58,358 people over an area measuring 823.39 square kilometres, compared with a resident population in the province of Prince Edward Island of 135,294 people. The July 1, 2005 population estimate for the CA is 60,321 and the 2010 projected population is estimated to be 61,210.

According to the 2001 Statistics Canada, more than nine out of ten inhabitants of the Charlottetown metropolitan self-identified as Christian. This breaks down to 91.7% Christian (46.0% Roman Catholic, 42.6% Protestant, and 3.0% other Christian mostly Orthodox), 7.3% stating no religion, and minor religions that comprise less than 1.0% includes Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish.

[edit] Media

Radio

FM 88.1 - CBAF-29, La Première Chaîne
FM 88.9 - CBAX-1, Espace musique
FM 90.3 - CIMN, University of Prince Edward Island campus radio (not currently broadcasting)
FM 93.1 - CHLQ ("Magic 93"), hot adult contemporary
FM 95.1 - CFCY, country
FM 96.1 - CBCT, CBC Radio One
FM 100.3 - CHTN ("Ocean 100.3FM")
FM 104.7 - CBCH, CBC Radio Two
FM 105.5 - CKQK ("PEI's K-Rock"), classic rock

Television

Channel 8: CKCW-1, CTV
Channel 13: CBCT, CBC
Channel 31: CBAFT-5, SRC
Channel 42: CIHF-14, Global

Cable service is provided by Eastlink.

Newspapers

The Northern Star (North Shore community newspaper)
The Buzz (independent arts/entertainment)
The Cadre (UPEI student paper)
The Guardian "Covers The Island Like The Dew" Daily (Charlottetown based)
The Surveyor (Holland College student paper)
The Journal Pioneer (Summerside Based)
The Eastern Graphic<ref>The Eastern Graphic</ref> "The Lively One" Weekly (Montague, Prince Edward Island Based)
The West Prince Graphic<ref>The West Prince Graphic</ref> Weekly (Alberton, Prince Edward Island Based)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 46.24° -63.1399°
- WikiSatellite view at WikiMapia
- Street map from Mapquest
- Topographic map from Topozone
- Aerial photograph from Terraserver
City of Charlottetown - municipal website
Milton Acorn

Image:Flag of Prince Edward Island.svg	Prince Edward Island
Counties	Kings - Prince - Queens
Parishes	Bedford - Charlotte - East - Egmont - Greenville - Halifax - Hillsboro - North - Richmond - St. Andrew's - St. David's - St. George's - St. John's - St. Patrick's
Lots	1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 31 - 32 - 33 - 34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 - 51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - 55 - 56 - 57 - 58 - 59 - 61 - 62 - 63 - 64 - 65 - 66 - 67
Royalties	Kings Royalty - Prince Royalty - Queens Royalty
Cities	Charlottetown - Summerside
Other communities	Alberton - Borden - Breadalbane - Cavendish - Central Bedeque - Cornwall - Ellerslie - Foxley River - Freeland - Georgetown - Hebron - Hunter River - Kensington - Knutsford - Miminegash - Miscouche - Montague - Morell - Mount Stewart - Murray Harbour - Murray River - North Rustico - O'Leary - Souris - Stratford - Tignish