Description

In 1885, on Prince Edward Island, it would have been easy to portray confederation as a bad idea. International stock market collapses in 1873 had sparked a decline in trade that deepened into a world-wide depression. By the late 1870s this contributed to the collapse of the Island’s main industry, shipbuilding, which in turn helped trigger the collapse of its largest bank and some of its bigger business fortunes. Though the timing of the depression was coincidental with confederation, another factor in the economic malaise could be laid directly at its door. The Macdonald government’s National Plan (“N.P.” in the last stanza of Roberts’ song) was a system of high tariffs designed to give Canadian industry a chance to take root and grow. By the early 1880s, though it was proving successful in this, Islanders saw it as a major factor in their accelerating economic decline.