Eat and learn history

The Sir Andrew Macphail Homestead is introducing an Island History Sunday brunch series beginning July 16.

The brunch, which will feature local produce from the homestead’s garden, will be followed by an informal talk on selected aspects of Island history. It goes from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The inaugural event features speaker David Keenlyside, archeologist and executive director of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation. The topic will be the “Island’s First Peoples’’, providing insight and information as Islanders celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. It will also serve as a reminder that Island history does not begin with European exploration and settlement on these shores.

Brunches will be held on alternate Sundays – July 30, Aug. 13 and 27 – and will feature homestead board member and novelist Sile Post, current P.E.I. poet laureate, Deirdre Kessler, and board member and Island historian, Ryan O’Connor.

Post’s talk on July 30 is called “Macphail’s Homestead Lifestyle: A Model for Modern Island Living’’, which will contextualize the local, rural homesteading lifestyle, advocated throughout Macphail’s published works as a vision for Island living in today’s world.

Kessler’s talk on Aug. 13 is entitled “Sir Andrew Macphail and L.L. Montgomery: The Emotional Textures of the Lives of Two Distinguished Islanders’’. It will provide glimpses into the lives, poetry and the writings of Macphail and Montgomery. Both authors were of Scottish descent and many parallels can be drawn from their upbringing – Montgomery by her strict Presbyterian grandparents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner MacNeil and Macphail by his schoolmaster father, William, and his mother, Catherine Moore Smith Macphail.

Performers and speakers Melissa Mullen and Rob Maclean are scheduled for October. Speakers for September will be posted on the Macphail website – macphailhomestead.ca.

Call the homestead at 902651-2789 to make a reservation.