Not a P.E.I. Potato!
Again, another clue or an another question: Who lived here on these lands before us? What were their lives like? What events shaped our ancestors lives?
During the harvest season it is not only potatoes that are dug up. Among the tons of rocks, buckets full of golf balls (that’s what you get when you live on “golf island” – PEI has been ranked as Canada’s #1 golf destination with 26 golf courses) and an occasional treasure.
I think that the brothers Marty and Rick Lagina from TV show “The Curse of Oak Island” would have been quite excited about such a find on Oak Island (if you think how excited they get over a button) and they would get all their researchers to find out where it could possible have come from.
To me a cannonball is a sign that it was not always “the good old days”.
It is a sign of conflict, of war, destruction and fear.
According to British Cannonball Sizes, this size and weight cannonball was used as round shot in Saker Guns (cannons).
The saker was a medium cannon, slightly smaller than a culverin, developed during the early 16th century and often used by the English.
I was unable to find any documented cases of armed conflict in this area.
There is another possibility:
I just read that between 1750 and 1950 there were roughly 700 shipwrecks around the Island coast. Could it be that cannonballs washed ashore?
Both possibilities were unhappy occasions, however.
For now we can say:
A Cannonball ????
Found in a potato field ?????
in Rustico ?????