Prince Edward Island National Park

Where it sits. Prince Edward Island National Park protects roughly 60 km of the Island's north shore, facing the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in three separate pieces rather than one block. From west to east they are the Cavendish–North Rustico section, the Brackley–Dalvay section, and the Greenwich peninsula on St. Peters Bay, which was added in 1998. Charlottetown lies 25 to 40 minutes south depending on which entrance you use. The park is narrow — often only a few hundred metres deep — because what it exists to protect is the dune and barrier system itself, not a hinterland.

How the coast is built. This is one of the most dynamic shorelines in eastern Canada. Waves and ice cut into soft Permian red sandstone, releasing iron-stained sand that longshore drift carries east into spits and barrier bars; behind those bars sit lagoons, salt marsh and freshwater ponds. The dunes are held together by marram grass, whose roots bind the sand and which dies quickly under foot traffic — the reason for the boardwalks and the rope lines. Bluffs at Cavendish and Orby Head retreat by up to a metre in a bad year. In September 2022 post-tropical storm Fiona overtopped and breached dunes across all three sections, flattened stands of spruce and destroyed boardwalks and stairs; sections of the park reopened on rebuilt alignments and some trails were rerouted permanently.

Wildlife and the plover problem. The park's beaches are among the last Canadian nesting sites of the piping plover, a small pale shorebird listed as endangered. Nests are scrapes in open sand above the tide line, effectively invisible, so Parks Canada fences and closes sections of beach from late April into August and posts guardians. Great blue herons stalk the lagoons at Rustico and Covehead, ospreys nest on channel markers, and red foxes are common enough on the Gulf Shore Parkway that feeding them has become a management problem. Offshore, harbour and grey seals haul out on sandbars near the Greenwich and Brackley inlets.

Greenwich, the strangest corner. The Greenwich peninsula holds a parabolic dune system that is rare in North America — crescent-shaped dunes that migrate inland, burying and later exposing the skeletons of the spruce forest they roll over. The approach is a 4.6 km return walk that includes a floating boardwalk across Bowley Pond, a stretch that flexes underfoot and delivers you to a viewing platform above the dune field. There is an interpretation centre at the trailhead and, unlike the Cavendish end, almost no commercial development.

On screen and in the guest book. Dalvay-by-the-Sea, in the Brackley–Dalvay section, is a Queen Anne Revival summer mansion built in 1896 for a Standard Oil-era American industrialist, all shingle, gables and a great hall with a sandstone fireplace. It later became a hotel operated under Parks Canada lease, and it is familiar to viewers of the Sullivan Anne of Green Gables miniseries and Road to Avonlea as the White Sands Hotel — one of the few times those Ontario-based productions actually worked on the Island. It is a useful marker of how the park's imagery has been recycled: the beaches and dunes have supplied tourism film, documentary and title-sequence footage for decades, while the dramatic productions built their villages elsewhere.

What to do, concretely. Supervised swimming beaches operate at Cavendish, Brackley, Stanhope and Dalvay in July and August. The Gulf Shore Parkway splits into west and east segments, each paralleled by a separated multi-use path — about 10 km on the Cavendish side and a longer run past Covehead Harbour on the Brackley side — and cycling it in either direction with the wind at your back is the standard local plan. Shorter walks include Homestead, Reeds and Rushes, Farmlands and the Bubbling Springs loop. Camping is available at Cavendish, Stanhope and Robinsons Island; sites book out months ahead for late July.

Getting there and timing. Access is by car via Routes 6, 15 and 313, or by bicycle from the Confederation Trail. Entry is by Parks Canada day pass or annual pass, collected at kiosks in season and by honour system outside it. Water temperature peaks in the third week of August at around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius, which is why the Island advertises the warmest saltwater north of the Carolinas. June is beautiful and cold; September is the connoisseur's month, with warm water, low light on the red cliffs and empty parking lots. Winter access is limited but the beaches are spectacular under ice shove.