Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island
Encyclopedia
Borden-Carleton is a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 village located on the south shore of Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...

, fronting on the Northumberland Strait
Northumberland Strait
The Northumberland Strait is a strait in the southern part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in eastern Canada...

.

The village was created through a merger on April 12, 1995 of the original port town of Borden (an incorporated town) and the farming community of Carleton. The town of Borden opted to demote its status to a village in light of a declining tax base with the pending completion of the Confederation Bridge
Confederation Bridge
The Confederation Bridge is a bridge spanning the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait, linking Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick, Canada. It was commonly referred to as the "Fixed Link" by residents of Prince Edward Island prior to its official naming. Construction took place...

 and the closure of the Marine Atlantic
Marine Atlantic
Marine Atlantic Inc. is an independent Canadian Crown corporation offering ferry services between the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.Marine Atlantic's corporate headquarters are in St...

 ferry service.

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
Northumberland Strait iceboat
A Northumberland Strait iceboat is a rowing boat, typically 5 metres in length, 2 metres in beam, with runners fastened to the hull for dragging over sea ice....

 service crossed the Abegweit Passage
Abegweit Passage
Abegweit Passage is the narrowest part of the Northumberland Strait, comprising the 13-kilometre wide portion between Cape Tryon, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick. Tidal currents in this area can reach up to 4 knots...

 between nearby Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine
Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick
Cape Tormentine is a Canadian rural community in Westmorland County, New Brunswick.The community derives its name from a headland of the same name which extends into the Northumberland Strait, forming the easternmost point in the province.-Railway:...

, New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

 for many decades during the 19th century and early 20th century. The Prince Edward Island Railway
Prince Edward Island Railway
The Prince Edward Island Railway was a historic Canadian railway.-Construction:Located wholly within the province of Prince Edward Island, construction of the PEIR started in 1871, financed by the United Kingdom...

 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
Canadian Confederation
Canadian Confederation was the process by which the federal Dominion of Canada was formed on July 1, 1867. On that day, three British colonies were formed into four Canadian provinces...

 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
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The new ferry, to be operated by Canadian Government Railways
Canadian Government Railways
Canadian Government Railways was the legal name used between 1915–1918 for all federal government-owned railways in Canada.The principal component companies were: the Intercolonial Railway of Canada , the National Transcontinental Railway , the Prince Edward Island Railway , and the Hudson...

 (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
Siltation
Siltation is the pollution of water by fine particulate terrestrial clastic material, with a particle size dominated by silt or clay. It refers both to the increased concentration of suspended sediments, and to the increased accumulation of fine sediments on bottoms where they are undesirable...

 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 been constructed, so the vessel operated in year-round service out of Charlottetown
Charlottetown
Charlottetown is a Canadian city. It is both the largest city on and the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island, and the county seat of Queens County. Named after Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, Charlottetown was first incorporated as a town in 1855 and designated as a city in 1885...

 and Georgetown
Georgetown, Prince Edward Island
Georgetown is a Canadian town and the county seat of Kings County, Prince Edward Island. As of 2011, the population was 693.-Geography:Georgetown, Capital of Kings County, sits on an 8 kilometre long peninsula formed by the Cardigan and Brudenell Rivers, Along with Georgetown Harbour...

 from 1915 until the port at Carleton Point was ready.

Meanwhile, the construction of the port and a modification of the Prince Edward Island Railway line between Emerald Junction to Cape Traverse required large amounts of equipment on land and water, as well as labourers. Some prisoners of war from the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...

 that Canada and the Allies
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...

 had jailed in the Maritimes
Maritimes
The Maritime provinces, also called the Maritimes or the Canadian Maritimes, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. On the Atlantic coast, the Maritimes are a subregion of Atlantic Canada, which also includes the...

 were used in the railway construction, while the ferry pier and dock at Carleton Point was built using a large gantry constructed from Douglas Fir to sling armoured stone and pre-cast concrete caissons delivered by barge - some of which was salvaged from an abandoned wharf at nearby Tidnish, Nova Scotia
Tidnish, Nova Scotia
Tidnish is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in Cumberland County .The population is 1,327. It has a community centre located at 4358 HIGHWAY 366, RR#2....

 for a marine railway that had been abandoned in the 1880s.

The new port was commissioned in early 1917 when the SS Prince Edward Island began regular service from the new pier, carrying railway freight and passenger cars; she recorded 506 crossings to Cape Tormentine in that first year alone. The winter of 1917 saw a spectacular sight as dozens of houses and buildings that had been constructed in the port of Cape Traverse to the east were moved by horse and sleigh across the winter sea ice
Sea ice
Sea ice is largely formed from seawater that freezes. Because the oceans consist of saltwater, this occurs below the freezing point of pure water, at about -1.8 °C ....

 along the coast to the new port at Carleton Point. When the extension of the railway line to the new ferry port was completed, the remnant of the line running to Cape Traverse was abandoned.

In 1919, the community was incorporated as the town of Borden, taking its name from Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...

 Sir Robert Borden, whose government was responsible for the decision to locate the ferry terminal at Carleton Point. The area outside of Borden remained with the community name of Carleton.

Borden, or Port Borden, as it was frequently called, grew with the increased use of the ferry system. After the SS Prince Edward Island was modified by CNR in the 1920s to accept automobiles in addition to rail cars (after PEI legalized the use of automobiles), roads connecting to the port were improved.

In 1931, another vessel, the SS Charlottetown, joined the SS Prince Edward Island in handling the increased rail and road traffic using the ferry service. Most workers for CNR's ferry and railway yard in Borden lived in the town. After the loss of the SS Charlottetown in 1941, the now-elderly SS Prince Edward Island remained the only dedicated vessel on the ferry service through the remainder of the Second World War, aside from brief relief service by the SS Scotia or SS Scotia II from the Strait of Canso
Strait of Canso
The Strait of Canso , is a strait located in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. It divides the Nova Scotia peninsula from Cape Breton Island....

 railcar ferry service.

In 1947, the QSMV Abegweit
MV Abegweit
The MV Abegweit was an icebreaking railway, vehicle, and passenger ferry which operated across the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait, connecting Port Borden to Cape Tormentine between 1947-1982....

entered service and carried the ferry system through the 1950s but was quickly overwhelmed by the increase in automobile traffic, in addition to the constant rail traffic. The completion of the Trans-Canada Highway
Trans-Canada Highway
The Trans-Canada Highway is a federal-provincial highway system that joins the ten provinces of Canada. It is, along with the Trans-Siberian Highway and Australia's Highway 1, one of the world's longest national highways, with the main route spanning 8,030 km...

 across PEI and the neighbouring Maritime provinces in the early 1960s saw Borden host a new automobile-only ferry, the MV Confederation, which was built in 1962. During the late 1960s, automobile traffic saw record growth. In 1968, CN stopped operating passenger trains on PEI, switching the service over to bus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...

es, and the ferry terminals and parking lots at Borden and Cape Tormentine were redesigned by CN to accommodate more cars and trucks; in Borden's case, part of its rail yard was used for this purpose, with the yard being redesigned in light of declining rail traffic and resulting in the town's original passenger station being demolished.

Throughout the 20th century, and even the latter 19th century before a ferry service was instituted, there had been discussions by various politicians about replacing the ferry service with a permanent crossing. Early proposals envisioned a railway tunnel under the Northumberland Strait but these evolved by the causeway
Causeway
In modern usage, a causeway is a road or railway elevated, usually across a broad body of water or wetland.- Etymology :When first used, the word appeared in a form such as “causey way” making clear its derivation from the earlier form “causey”. This word seems to have come from the same source by...

-building craze of the 1950s (coupled with the development of the Trans-Canada Highway) into designs incorporating a causeway and tunnel beneath a navigation channel to carry rail and road traffic. Discussions and proposals were timed around federal elections and work on the land-based approach roads in New Brunswick and PEI for one proposal was actually undertaken in 1965 before all talk of a permanent crossing was shelved in light of scientific recommendations against a causeway (for navigation and environmental reasons). The federal government instead opted to expand the capacity of the existing ferry system.

The late 1960s saw a temporary relief vessel, the MV Lucy Maude Montgomery, enter service for several years, along with a much larger and mor powerful icebreaking railcar ferry, the MV John Hamilton Gray, which entered service in 1968, retiring the SS Prince Edward Island after a record 51 years of service. New docks were constructed and more permanent vessels for the ferry service were ordered. In 1971 the sister ships MV Holiday Island
MV Holiday Island
The MV Holiday Island is a Canadian RORO ferry that operates across the Northumberland Strait between the ports of Wood Islands, Prince Edward Island and Caribou, Nova Scotia...

and MV Vacationland
MV Vacationland
The MV Vacationland is a Canadian RORO ferry that operated across the Northumberland Strait between the ports of Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick and Port Borden, Prince Edward Island....

entered service, and Borden processed record traffic on its ferry system in the lead-up to PEI's centennial year in 1973, after which the MV Confederation and MV Lucy Maude Montgomery were reassigned to other services and left Borden permanently.

In 1977, CN reorganized its ferry services in eastern Canada under a separate operating company named CN Marine
CN Marine
CN Marine was a Canadian ferry company headquartered in Moncton, New Brunswick.-History:CN Marine was created by parent Canadian National Railway in 1977 as a means to group the company's ferry operations in eastern Canada into a separate operating division...

; the new company immediately ordered a newly designed ferry to replace the MV Abegweit, which reached 30 years service that year. The new vessel, originally named MV Straitway but renamed MV Abegweit
MV Abegweit
The MV Abegweit was an icebreaking railway, vehicle, and passenger ferry which operated across the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait, connecting Port Borden to Cape Tormentine between 1947-1982....

(after the original Abegweit was renamed MV Abby prior to being retired), entered service in 1982 and was the largest capacity ferry vessel to operate from Borden.

In 1986, CN Marine was renamed Marine Atlantic
Marine Atlantic
Marine Atlantic Inc. is an independent Canadian Crown corporation offering ferry services between the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.Marine Atlantic's corporate headquarters are in St...

, to remove all traces of its link to the railway company. At the same time, discussion of a permanent crossing (a "Fixed Link" to the mainland) was revived by the federal government after it received several unsolicited proposals. CN abandoned all of its railway
Prince Edward Island Railway
The Prince Edward Island Railway was a historic Canadian railway.-Construction:Located wholly within the province of Prince Edward Island, construction of the PEIR started in 1871, financed by the United Kingdom...

 lines in PEI effective December 31, 1989 with the MV John Hamilton Gray hauling the last locomotives and cars off the Island on December 28. With the closure of the railway and abandonment of the yard, the western side of Borden became an industrial brownfield during the early 1990s.

In 1992 it was announced that the Northumberland Strait Crossing Project, or the "Fixed Link", would be built and a Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

 company, Strait Crossing Incorporated (SCI) had been selected as the developer. SCI secured the use of the old Borden Elementary School (which had been replaced several years earlier by the Amherst Cove Consolidated School on the northern edge of town) and undertook drill core sampling for bridge pier locations through 1993. In 1994 a farm property on Amherst Head, immediately east of Borden, was purchased and a staging facility was constructed for building massive bridge components on shore. A large pier was built into the harbour to accommodate a heavy lift marine crane which would carry the components into the Northumberland Strait to be installed. Throughout the 1994-1996 period, Borden's local economy grew at an unprecedented rate with the influx of over 5,000 workers in the town of 800.

The longest serving Mayor of Borden was Gilbert Bell (1959-1986).

Confederation Bridge Project

The project was named Confederation Bridge
Confederation Bridge
The Confederation Bridge is a bridge spanning the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait, linking Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick, Canada. It was commonly referred to as the "Fixed Link" by residents of Prince Edward Island prior to its official naming. Construction took place...

 and upon its opening on June 1, 1997, the ferry service closed after 70 years of daily operation; the vessels were transferred to other services or sold off and the ferry wharves, terminals and other shore-based facilities were decommissioned and dismantled.

After the completion of the Confederation Bridge, Borden's economy shrank as the influx of workers left the town and province and as some of the laid-off or retired ferry workers moved away. The federal government provided "Fixed Link Adjustment Funds" which saw the development of a tourist shopping complex on the property of the former railway yard, which is now named "Gateway Village".

The adjustment funding also paid for the expansion of the town's industrial park to accommodate new manufacturing interests and today the majority of Borden residents are employed in local manufacturing or service industries or in the tourism sector. Major employers include McCain Foods (French fry plant opened in 1992 in the north end of Carleton on the border with Albany), Master Packaging (subsidiary of J.D. Irving Limited), Silliker Glass ( an glass supplier and Kawneer Aluminum fabricator), a beef slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse
A slaughterhouse or abattoir is a facility where animals are killed for consumption as food products.Approximately 45-50% of the animal can be turned into edible products...

(operated by Co-Op Atlantic), and Transcontinental Printing (division of Transcontinental Media).

There is an ongoing effort by government to find a new use for the Amherst Head staging facility now abandoned by SCI since the completion of the Confederation Bridge construction project.

External links

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