Charlottetown is a unique community. The smallest provincial capital in Canada, it is also one of the oldest. For more than a century, it was the only city on a predominantly rural Prince Edward Island. This gave it advantages that no other city in Canada enjoyed. It also generated problems no other city had to deal with. How Charlottetown played the advantages, and coped with the problems, makes for fascinating history.-- Population, political and social life, the urban landscape, and the economic events that shaped metropolitan growth -- Charlottetown: A History brings these themes together in a book that will reward both the professional historian and general reader. Over the years, many aspects of this history have been explored but never as a whole. This is the urban biography of the Birthplace of Confederation.