Western P.E.I. family donates 32 hectares to Island Nature Trust in honour of their parents

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 16, 2025 2:00 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

A household has donated 32 hectares of onshore to the Island Nature Trust to support it from improvement and sphere the ecological environment.

The onshore has belonged to members of the aforesaid extended family for 125 years. It's located successful Days Corner, conscionable eastbound of Wellington successful occidental P.E.I., on the Ellis River.

The donation is being in honour of Edd and Ruby McNeill, who bought it from a comparative successful the 1970s.

David McNeill, 1 of their sons, said his parents dedicated their lives to him and his siblings, and now, they're dedicating the onshore to them.

"One idiosyncratic asked me, 'Why didn't you merchantability it?' And I said, 'Well, we'd merchantability it, and their bequest is gone,'" helium told CBC's Island Morning. "It's a invaluable portion of onshore successful presumption of ecological factors."

Protecting uncommon habitat

The property, present named the Edd and Ruby McNeill Natural Area, is location to much than a kilometre of coastal brackish marsh and provides captious situation for respective taxon astatine risk, according to the Island Nature Trust.

The not-for-profit enactment says brackish marshes supply situation for a wide scope of wildlife, but marque up lone 1 to 2 per cent of the landmass connected Prince Edward Island. Historically, galore farmers built dykes successful brackish marshes to convert them to farmland for hay, leaving fewer afloat intact successful their archetypal condition.

These ecosystems service galore purposes. They support breeding and migratory species, filter nitrogen from h2o earlier it reaches the sea, and sequester ample amounts of bluish c successful their soils. They besides assistance trim the interaction of tempest surges and coastal erosion.

A onshore with history

The communicative of the onshore dates backmost to 1900, erstwhile Ruby McNeill's gramps Simon Day purchased the property. He farmed the land, operated a blacksmith shop, and ran the section mail. The country became known arsenic Days Corner.

Eventually, his youngest son, Lem, took implicit the onshore and the blacksmith shop. Though helium was offered galore chances to make the land, Lem Day yet chose to merchantability it to Edd and Ruby McNeill to support it protected.

Another of the couple's sons, Dwayne McNeill, said his parents were dedicated to protecting the wood and land. They didn't hunt oregon trap, and ever tried to beryllium benignant to the situation and the animals surviving there.

"All we ever did was chopped wood disconnected it. That's each they ever did with it, and farmed the beforehand 2 fields," Dwayne McNeill said.

Like Lem Day, the mates received galore offers to merchantability the onshore for improvement implicit the years but chose to honour Lem's privation of keeping it protected.

"Our parents weren't affluent people. They were benignant people. They gave america everything we ever wanted. But they besides didn't judge that wealth should beryllium your God. So basically, by putting it successful their sanction and having a lasting legacy, I anticipation that they would admit that," David McNeill said.

"I consciousness that this should past for a agelong clip aft us."