CONCLUSION

A sentiment common to Boughton Islanders and their descendants is the greatjoy they feel about getting to the island. For visiting children it was an immense playground and for their parents or grandparents who had spent entire summers or summers and winters on its shores there was a love that remained.

A letter from Muriel MacKenzie at eighty-five years of age says this: “All these memories are a daily ‘thing’ with me. It would be rare to go through a day without these thoughts coming into my mind! The Island is like a picture— It’s all like a painting! I have a piece of that lovely red sandstone, to remind me! And my cousin sent me a little jar of the red soil and some of the little shells that wash up on the south side. Precious souvenirs!" Following the controversy over the possible development, one of those in opposition, Mary Kennedy, Mary |. of the MacCormacks writes to the local people responsible for the petition, “Congratulations!, I do hope you will save Boughton Island. This is my birth place. We all love our homeland".

Donald King fashions poems. He finds it easier to express his feelings that way.

Now friends if you listen I’ll tell you a song

About Boughton Island the place I was born

Surrounded by water as you see by the name

Where one's heart sometimes longs to go back again.

In 2004 speculation about Boughton Island’s future continues. Besides herons and cormorants, piping plovers are found nesting on the beaches. The Nature Trust of PEI would like to see the island protected, either under its ownership or that of another conservation organization. The Nature Conservancy of Canada is dedicated to such preservation. Does Boughton Island qualify as a special place? Time will tell.

To live on Boughton Island one had to be self-reliant and hardy, able to endure the winters and the isolation. One had to live with the knowledge that oneself or many of the family would inevitably have to leave the homeland. In the end, all had to leave, but Boughton Island remains, still loved, still there, and still seen, in actuality or in

the mind’s-eye—from a distance. 97