Pituamkek (Conway Sandhills), PEI (Photo John Sylvester)
It was a busy weekday morning in the summer. I was getting my kids ready for a day of summer camp, and my husband had just come off the water from a morning paddle on the Hillsborough River near where I live on Prince Edward Island. In the middle of packing bags and lathering sunscreen, I got a text message from my colleague Jesse cancelling our meeting we had scheduled later that day. He said it was too nice out to be in the office and could I meet him at the wharf for 9:30 a.m.? I quickly did the math. The wharf was about 1.5 hours away. If I got in my field clothes and out the door right away, I might make it. I started thinking about my calendar, wondering what I could cancel. My husband looked at me and asked, “What are you waiting for? This is the work. Being in relationship is the work.”
Photo by Lanna Campbell/NCC
I arrived at the wharf just in time. I remembered my hat, forgot my lunch. I hopped aboard the boat with a group of folks from Lennox Island First Nation, L’Nuey (a PEI Mi’kmaq rights-based organization) and Parks Canada, just as the country music started blasting from the boat radio. We were headed to Hog Island for the day, the jewel of Pituamkek. As we sailed out of Malpeque Bay, it was not lost on me how lucky I was to be included in this crowd.
Located in northwestern PEI (Epekwitk), the area known in the Mi’kmaq language as Pituamkek (Bee-DOO-um-gek), or in English as Hog Island and the Sandhills, is rich in Mi’kmaq history. For thousands of years, Pituamkek has been important to the Mi’kmaq of Epekwitk. In the last 20 years, the Epekwitnewaq Mi’kmaq and their partners have been working together to conserve this special place. The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) has been working in the area since 2008, with the shared goal of conserving as much of the Sandhills complex as possible.
Photo by Lanna Campbell/NCC
As a conservation partner in Pituamkek, NCC is part of a working group of incredible Knowledge Holders: people who have been working tirelessly to see this area of PEI recognized for its ecological and cultural significance for decades. As the NCC representative in the group, I always come away from a Pituamkek team meeting thinking, what can I do? How can I leverage where I work, and my access to resources, to help execute the Mi’kmaq’s vision for this area? We gathered a solid team of dreamers at NCC and explored the art of the possible; grounded in the depth, trust and importance of the relationship we are building with Mi’kmaq partners on PEI.
In May 2025, NCC was one of the recipients of the 2025 Reconciliation Recognition Awards from the Epekwitk Assembly of Councils. During a small private ceremony in which the awards were handed out, I felt tremendous humility and gratitude for our shared partnership and stumbled to finds my words to express what it meant to receive such an honour.
Of all the times I’ve had on the land — and in boardrooms — with the Pituamkek partners, that day on Hog Island sticks out in my memory.
Jesse shared his sandwich with me and someone else threw me a bag of chips. We sat on the beach, away from the mosquitoes, and listened to stories from the archeologist, who told us all about the incredible artifacts they have found here. We walked through the water to get back to the boat, and our captain serenaded us back to the wharf. We were a motley crew with a shared vision.