G’day there!

Well, the past few days have come and gone in a flash! As I wrote last time, my parents have popped in to Skye for a little over a week, and with a car once again at our disposal, my girlfriend and I have been playing tour guides. My dad, a seasoned traveller, has been behind the wheel, while my mom has been riding shotgun. Nervous at the best of times, she has (very) slowly been acclimatizing to driving on the left, and though still quite riddled with trepidation, has now navigated a goodly number of single-track roads (“THERE’S A CAR COMING!!”), and even a couple of mountain passes (“I CAN’T LOOK!!”); however, despite what could be described as severe acrophobia, we did manage to get her up and across the mighty Quiraing on the island’s north end, practically an Olympic feat (coaxing her, that is). It’s always a scream with her, figuratively and sometimes literally.

My mom, when she reads this, will be quite surprised and no doubt pleased as punch to learn that she has unwittingly provided the inspiration for this week’s post. A noted collector of just about everything, when she travels she’s the first person into a gift shop, always on the hunt for postcards of places she’s visited to add to just one of her many sizeable collections. I myself am one of those people who always intends to pick up postcards, but then never ends up doing so. Road to Hell, good intentions, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, over the years she has amassed a small mountain of postcards, among other things. But it pales in comparison to the veritable deltiological Everest possessed by the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation. Since 2012, they’ve been making their vast collection of Island postcards available online (for free!), and as of this post nearly 600 have been painstakingly hi-res scanned and uploaded to their Flickr page. The content really is quite varied, and runs the gamut from landscapes to architecture, monuments to portraits, and images old, and not so old. Copies can be downloaded (I’ve actually made use of one or two in the past on my site, including the one seen above), and even if you fancy yourself a connoisseur, I guarantee there are at least a few that you haven’t seen before.

So there you go, a short but sweet P[EI History Guy]SA highlighting a lesser known database of Island history. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have some postcards to pick up…

…

Pfff, who am I kidding?

Cheers,

PEI History Guy

P.S. – And yes, the title of this week’s post comes to you courtesy of Terence Young’s 1963 From Russia with Love, starring everyone’s favourite “Jamesh” Bond, Sean Connery.

P.P.S. – Oh, and a nice little bottle of Jura Superstition.

P.P.S. – Under 500 words this week. Enjoy it now, because I plan on making up for lost time when I get home.