Phil Cuhane has lived his entire life in Ottawa, but Prince Edward Island has always been close to his heart. That is evident in his dedication to PEIPostcards.ca, his website where he posts and organizes his personal collection of historical PEI postcards.
Phil’s love for PEI started in the 1970s and 1980s when he made regular visits to the province.
His website began in 2017 when he purchased 600 cards from a Halifax based collector and by 2018 it had grown to over 1750 postcards. These postcards provide glimpses into the province’s social, geographic, and business history as well as leisure and lifestyle.
Phil began the painstaking process of scanning, documenting and researching his postcard collection for himself and other researchers, but the site has caught the eye and imagination of the wider public and those who love Prince Edward Island.
Organized by towns and features, Phil’s collection includes many postcards that are of historical significance and that date back over 100 years and the site honours the unique place that postcards hold in our cultural history.
Perhaps most significant is that Phil has helped to increase the interest in historical Prince Edward Island images by making his collection easily accessible to the public, while many personal collections are kept private. This act has contributed significantly to increasing the knowledge of these historical images.