BOOM TOWN

For more than half a decade, Charlottetown has sustained the highest immigration rates in Canada. The influx has saved P.E.I. from demographic oblivion—and made it a case study in the perils of ultra-rapid growth.

Alex Cyr

ONE MORNING when I was eight years old, my Grade 3 teacher cut math class short and brought us all to the conference room of the small school I attended in Abram-Village, Prince Edward Island. There, a social worker stood in front of the small student body—about 120 kids—and announced that a new family was coming to our village. The Mazarabakizas were a family of refugees from Burundi who’d fled their home due to civil war. Their four eldest children would attend our school, and the social worker implored us to treat them as we would any other friends—regardless of their cultural background and differences. If it seems a little extreme to have a full-school intervention on behalf of a single immigrant family, it was warranted in P.E.I. in 2003.…

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Maclean's (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

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