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I’m not an historian—not even an amateur historian. I would never pride myself in thinking of myself as one,” insists author Marian Bruce. Nevertheless, the particular stories she has told in recent books are distinctly historical.
When I met with Marian, she was perusing for the first time a copy of her new book, A Century of Excellence: Prince of Wales College, 1869-1969. The book may be an institutional history, but Marian says of it, “I don’t find institutions very interesting at all…. In this book, I went for the personalities. It is character-driven; it is narrative-driven. It is not analytical.”
One personality associated with Prince of Wales captured Marian’s imagination particularly: Alexander Anderson, a principal of PWC, “a really brilliant man academically, and a very brilliant teacher.” He had a lasting influence on prominent Islanders including L. M. Montgomery and Sir Andrew Macphail.
Marian says, “Alexander Anderson laboured under the most horrible circumstances: an unsafe, cold, poorly ventilated, overcrowded building…. He somehow figured out how to get the building repaired, and he built the college during difficult times. Later, he became superintendent of schools and had a real influence on public schools. He was forever campaigning for higher salaries for teachers, and he thought it disgraceful that male teachers were paid more than women. At that time, there was much bigotry on Prince Edward Island, and I found no example where he got involved in that.
“This one was the best. And imagine! We had him here in PEI.
“I find it sad that you could ask a thousand smart people on PEI who was Alexander Anderson, and none of them would know. We have shrines to politicians, but no monument to Alexander Anderson. Not a wing, not a room, not a clock!” exclaims Marian.
“We have a past to be proud of, as far as education goes. We’ve always been a poor province. I laugh when I read or hear that ‘it has been a difficult year for government.’ When was it not?”
“It was hard to set up an education system here. And it was bad for a long time. But, as an example, they were able to produce and support an institution like Prince of Wales that produced graduates who went everywhere and did extremely well.”
Going everywhere has always been problematic for Maritimers. Marian certainly succumbed to what she calls the “Maritime disease” of needing to come home in the middle of a productive career as a writer and editor for newspapers and magazines from Vancouver and Prince George to Montreal to Halifax to Charlottetown.
“When I was working at the Vancouver Sun,” Marian recalls. “I did a story at a nursing home that was closing…there was an old man who said, ‘The only one thing I regretted in my life was I never went back to PEI to live.’ He had left the Island in ‘ought six,’ he said. That stayed in my mind. It worked on me,” Marian said.
When she moved home, Marian says: “I gave up a good salary, and security. But home is home.”
Since returning home, she has often turned her writing pen and her editing pen to local history and biography. “As Islanders, we are very conscious of roots and tradition,” she says. “We trace relationships. We need to know who your father is,” she says.
“I think we’re small enough that [our past] is manageable. Our histories, our stories, can be told on a human scale.” The stories don’t narrow our view of the world, she suggests, because “so many people have connections to this place.”
The perfect example, Marian Bruce offers, is Prince of Wales College: “It’s not just a remote institution that’s gone. This place really matters to people. The emotion about Prince of Wales is profound.” As an alumna of the school—and now an author of the stories of its past—Marian Bruce has put an old passion into words.