PEI — Prince Edward Island, Canada’s “this’ll do” vacation spot since Confederation, has always seemed like a place apart. And perhaps we have taken it for granted, like the potato, growing dutifully underground only to be torn from the warm earth and placed at the side of whatever we really wanted to eat in the first place. That is why this week’s news, coming to The Manatee from a source close to the Island’s government, is so shocking: Prince Edward Island plans to leave Confederation.
“Not just leave like, politically. This is serious. We’re going somewhere we’ll be appreciated,” said The Manatee’s source. “Japan made a very generous offer some time ago and we’ve been preparing ever since.”
Documents obtained by The Manatee’s crack investigative “Manateam” reveal that what appear to be wind farm projects around the island are in fact a propulsion system which, when activated, will permit the 5,660 square kilometres of uplifted sandstone to sail.
“Instead of being Canada’s smallest province we will become the world’s largest sailing vessel,” said the source, who obscured their face with a straw hat and long red braids.
The PEIxit, as it’s being called, will likely have major consequences for tourism in the rest of Atlantic Canada. A Manatee survey of cruise ship passengers disembarking in Saint John revealed that 86 percent of visitors believe they are already on the Island when they arrive in the Maritimes, 7 percent got on the cruise because they were drunk, and an astonishing 9 percent responded to reporters’ questions with threats of bodily harm and aspersions about the reporter’s body odour and parentage.
“OK, but, I’m in Canada, so like… basically I’m already on PEI, right?” asked Adam Tulowitz of Chicago, Ill.
The Manateam will stay on the story as it develops. We reached the ghost of Sir John A. MacDonald via our in-house Manamedium, but he was unfortunately too inebriated to comment. In the meantime, this reporter suggests stockpiling McCain fries, just in case.