Winter Roads

Before the practice of snowplowing roads in the winter, PEI residents used many shortcuts across the countryside to make travelling easier in the wintertime.

We have to remember that a mile saved for your horse and heavily loaded sleigh was very important. An extra mile for a truck or car is nothing now, but any saving of your horse’s efforts was needed.

Avoiding hills, either up or down, was a challenge.

One such road started at MacRae’s feed mill in Heatherdale. Anyone travelling from Iona, or Bellevue, would turn thru the farmyard at MacRae’s, across the back pasture, and thru the hedge into a field owned by Matheson’s of Valleyfield. Across this field, thru a small section of woods and then into a long field leading to the Valleyfield road.

At this point anyone coming from Valleyfield West would join the trail here. Across the road and down a pasture to cross a small creek, locally known as Valleyfield Brook. Through about 300 yards of woods and the trail would come out at the Macleod farms (actually Ronnie Nicholson’s ancestors ) in Upper Montague. This would lead to the South Montague road, which followed the Montague river, past Knox’s dam, across the Sorrey bridge and right into downtown Montague!

This road  was used by many travellers in the winter as a quick route to Montague. In the wooded sections, it was sheltered from the wind. The trail never seemed to build up with snow. The trail was packed down as each horse or team travelled on it.
And, another aspect of the trail was a certain house where the Valleyfield road was crossed. A traveller could stop there to water the horse, and get a drop of something to warm his insides!

This was still a common trail into the 1950’s, but was no longer used after roads were plowed.

~Submitted by Peter Verleun