On Monday June 13 after 5.30 on Mainstreet, I will be hosting the first of a series of interviews that tell some stories of that amazing group of people who came to PEI in the late 1960's early 1970's as part of the Back to the Land Movement.
Wendy Pobjoy is my first guest. Wendy, as was typical of many, was not born to the land but grew up very much a middle class urban life in New York. Her father worked at the UN.
What united these people was a set of values that rejected the consumer values of the time and who sought to learn how to become self sufficient. The irony is that these young people arrived on PEI as their PEI contemporaries were leaving the Island for the city lights. As I listened to Wendy, I could sense that for many of the older Islanders left behind, these bright eyed newcomers were the echoes of the sons and daughters that they had lost. Consequently, just as the Indians saved the bacon of the early white settlers who had no idea of how to survive our harsh climate, so the older Islanders came to the rescue of this new group of immigrants. There is a deep sense of gratitude in Wendy's interview to the men and women who showed them how to build and heat their homes, grow their food and share their music.
Not having any family here of their own, this group created their own family - a kind of tribe. Raising their children well was the most important job that they had. They had no money. None! Yet many had at least one parent stay at home full time. I wonder about many people's choices today. So many of us make the statement that economics force us both to work full time. Yet these people with less money than any of us managed to make their kids the central part of their lives.
I was moved to tears listening to Wendy as she ends the interview talking about the great reward that she has found in seeing her two wonderful daughters become adults.
