Point Prim

Point Prim is a dead end, and that is exactly why it is worth driving down. A narrow road peels off the highway east of Charlottetown and runs straight out along a low spit of farmland, the Northumberland Strait visible on both sides until the land narrows to almost nothing and you arrive at the lighthouse with nowhere left to go. We came on a soft grey afternoon in early summer, the kind of light that flatters PEI’s famous red soil into something almost burgundy, and there was one other car in the lot and a tractor working a field of new potatoes nearby. The whole peninsula has the feeling of a place that the modern century forgot to develop, which on this over-developed planet is a compliment.

The oldest light

The lighthouse itself is the oldest on the island, built in 1845, and unusually it is round — a tapering cylinder of brick rather than the more common square wooden towers, designed by the same man who later laid out a good deal of Charlottetown. You can climb it in season, up a tight wooden spiral that creaks in a way that inspires no confidence whatsoever, to a lantern room with a view of the strait and, on a clear day, the faint smudge of Nova Scotia across the water. I am mildly afraid of heights and the climb tested that, but the keeper on duty — a retired schoolteacher who clearly considered the lighthouse a personal possession — told the building’s history with such evident affection that I forgot to be nervous until I was back on the ground.

The point is also a quietly excellent place to do nothing. The shoreline below the light is all red sandstone, soft enough that the sea has carved it into low shelves and the occasional small arch, and at low tide you can walk out along the rock and watch cormorants dry their wings on the exposed reef. Lia found a sand dollar, intact, which she carried around for the rest of the day like a small trophy.

The oyster shed

What turned Point Prim from a pleasant detour into a fixed memory was the chowder house near the lighthouse — a small operation that serves seafood at picnic tables overlooking the water. The oysters are Malpeque-strain, pulled from the strait practically within sight of where you sit, and they arrive on a tray of crushed ice with a wedge of lemon and absolutely no ceremony. I have eaten oysters in a lot of places that charged a great deal more and delivered considerably less. Lia said they tasted like the smell of the sea air, and I have never been able to improve on that.

We followed the oysters with a bowl of seafood chowder thick enough to stand a spoon in, ate it slowly while the tide turned, and then drove the long straight road back out feeling like we had stumbled onto something most visitors miss entirely. They are all up at Cavendish chasing the Anne of Green Gables machinery; the people who turn down the Point Prim road get the better deal.

When to go

The lighthouse and the food are seasonal — roughly June through September, with July and August the safest bets for everything being open. The shoulder weeks of June and early September are quieter and the light is gentler. Bring a windproof layer regardless; the point is exposed on three sides and the strait breeze finds you even on a warm day. Aim for an outgoing tide if you want to explore the sandstone shelves below the light.