Charlottetown serves as the provincial capital city for Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada’s most sparsely populated province.

Charlottetown’s nickname is “Birthplace of Confederation” recognizing the capital as a key site for the founding of Canada. The province of PEI has many monikers including “Garden of the Gulf” referring to the surrounding Gulf of St. Lawrence, “Million-Acre Farm” or simply “The Island”.

Research website numbeo lacks sufficient data to rank PEI’s provincial capital on its comprehensive global quality of life rating which benchmarks 250 cities worldwide. Numbeo does evaluate Charlottetown on several individual factors. For instance, Charlottetown is number one with the lowest pollution score, while Charlottetown’s ranks among the best 2% of fastest traffic commute times. In addition, its safety score places PEI’s capital among the top 28% of safest cities. However, Charlottetown scored in the bottom 7% for its climate and the lagging 8% for health care.

Each summer, the Charlottetown Festival at the Confederation Centre of the Arts features Anne of Green Gables – The Musical. That play is Canada’s most popular and longest-running musical and is based on PEI author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s timeless novel.

Back on June 26, 2008, Charlottetown was the site for the world’s longest softball game, played over 96 hours. According to Guinness World Records, that record was broken by an even longer softball game by another Canadian venue–the village of Waskatenau in Alberta.

The three largest employers for which Charlottetown serves as headquarters are the provincial health and wellness authority Charlottetown Health Region, City of Charlottetown and Charlottetown Board of Education.

From an international trade perspective, Prince Edward Island shipped C$1.5 billion worth of goods around the globe during 2019. Its most valuable exports include potatoes including prepared or preserved spuds (26% of PEI’s global exports), machinery including electrical equipment (21.5%), lobsters (11.6%), chemical products (7.8%), and vehicles including vehicles-related goods (0.7%) according to the Canadian International Merchandise Trade Database.

The Charlottetown region’s unemployment rate was 10.2% in June 2020, up from 7.5% in June 2016. That unemployment rate is used to calculate Employment Insurance program entitlements for the Charlottetown region

Capital Facts for Charlottetown, Canada: Quick Reference

 

Charlottetonians celebrate Canada Day as a national holiday each July 1.

Charlottetown occupies 17.1 square miles (44.33 square kilometers). The city’s population was 40,488 people at July 1, 2019.

At the provincial level, Prince Edward Island has a population of 156,947 residents living within a land area measuring 2,190 square miles (5,672 square kilometers).

Charlottetown’s population density averages 2,368 residents per square mile (913 per square kilometer).

Population density dilutes within PEI’s provincial land borders to an average 72 inhabitants per square mile (28 per square kilometer).