10/03/2026
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While there are many talented artists on Prince Edward Island, Elinor Murchison Gillis’s talents and distinctive style are very special to our community of Belfast: a specific historical and cultural perspective underpinned her paintings. Through recollection, research, and attention to detail, she produced a fine documentation of days gone by from Orwell to Wood Islands.
The Murchisons and the Gillises were Selkirk settlers. Elinor told us that the ancestor of all Murchisons on Point Prim was Donald Murchison who arrived with his second wife, Ann MacGillvray. He named their 1803 PEI farm “Auchtertyre” after the family seat in Scotland. The land upon which most of us remember Elinor living was part of the land deeded by Selkirk in 1803 to the ancestors of her husband, Chester Gillis. (If you wish to sit in this history in current times, travel to the old farm on Point Prim [now BarVela Pizza], to enjoy the best pizza pie on the island, and let the beauty —and your imagination of history — soak in.)
Elinor Gillis of Point Prim only came to painting when she was in her 50s after her 7 children were raised, but her local historical perspective had been informed by a lifetime of stories of her seafaring ancestors, stories of families waiting for them to come home, memories of her school house days, and community activity -- captured in her mind’s eye.
Elinor Gillis painted historical scenes on everything from canvases, seashore shells, sea glass, greyed barn board, old schoolhouse desks, to old windows and doors. Often, the items upon which she painted added the depth of history to a cultural story. For instance, one painting of the Point Prim Schoolhouse is painted upon a panel of the old schoolhouse door— the latter itself, an artefact. A painting of the inside of the old school house reveals chalkboard notes; how the fire was kept; and each of the students has been accurately placed. She named them aloud from memory.
Elinor grew up reading and hearing stories of the sea, where stories of the loss of sons figure prominently. She remembers stories of women “waiting and waiting” never wanting to hear the words “lost at sea.” She felt the sea so much so that painting it, and its waves, became easy for her. The blues of the sea under big blue skies repeated in her scenes.
A common theme in her paintings is her use of bright, not dark, colours, as her paintings represent pleasant memories for her. Her bright winter scenes of “Bushing the Big Ice” and “Ice Boats Crossing the Strait” share historical practices not continued today. Several paintings are of old buildings at Eldon which no longer exist including Moore’s store (with its workers on the step), and one of the “older” creamery at Orwell where a named young man sits upon the roof.
In some cases, she referenced photographs, but she usually pulled from her memories. A favourite subject was the old house on Point Prim that is no longer there — “where the old tree is;” it was a “grand house with high ceilings” and bumped out windows. (Captain Whittle’s house.) Another favourite subject, at the end of Point Prim Road, is the Point Prim Lighthouse where again her family figured prominently, as light keepers.
She loved to paint the marshes, noting the importance of the marshes to early settlers: for hay, mussel mud, and now better understood, for purification of water and for wildlife. History tells us that the marshes of Point Prim were the top choice of lands for the early Scots.
Because her “historical collection” paintings were important documentation (a primary source) of an early Belfast life, the artist purposely kept them in her private studio separate from her “folk art" (often whimsical) kept in the green barn open to the public. Elinor sold the folk art to locals and tourists in the summers—just as Maude Lewis of Nova Scotia did, Elinor remarked.
For the 200th anniversary of the Selkirk Settlers, Elinor painted the Polly having just arrived at Orwell Cove. She had contacted the Archives in London, where she obtained a copy of a drawing of a sister ship as little information existed for the Polly itself. She imagined the ship coming along her own shore, and then backdropped it with the high red cliffs of the cove. To see this site today, travel to the end of Selkirk Park Road; the cliff of the painting stands before you. Imagine "the Landing" (a federally registered "National Event"), and those first years for the Selkirk Settlement. (For an interpretation of the Selkirk Settlement story, visit the Selkirk Scottish Heritage Centre —also on Selkirk Park Road —in the summers.)
Elinor Murchison Gillis was proud of her Scottish heritage, and we are grateful that she had the vision to document community life here on what once were Selkirk lands. Gillis won the Selkirk Award from the Belfast Historical Society in 2015 for her “excellence and outstanding contribution to preserving our history, heritage and culture.”
Mrs. Gillis passed away at Dr. John Gillis Memorial Lodge in Belfast on May 18, 2020, at the age of 92.
