Ms. Reed's portrait on display in the The Matthew & McLean Museum in Souris

A majority of Prince Edward Islanders claim Scotland as an ancestral home. E. Jean (McLean) Reed, a native of Souris, developed a Tartan on behalf of Islanders in 1957. Ms. Reed created the design to be representative of the P.E.I. landscape. Prince Edward Island's tartan colours symbolize the Island. The rust signifies the redness of the soil, the green represents the grass and the trees, the white for the caps on the waves, and the yellow is for the sun.

Following her early education at St. Mary's Convent in Souris, Ms. Reed received a degree in Fine Arts from Mount Allison University in the 1930's. In 1938, she graduated from the Ottawa Civic Hospital of Nursing and in 1941, joined the Royal Canadian Army as a Lieutenant Nursing Sister. She went overseas with the Canadian General Hospital Unit 7, in November of the same year. Nursing Sister was later transferred to Unit 5 and after serving in England for a year, went on to Sicily, Italy and France. At war's end, she returned to P.E.I. and was for a number of years superintendent of Charlottetown's Red Cross Arts & Crafts League for the Charlottetown and P.E.I. Hospitals and the Provincial Sanatorium. Ms. Reed was a talented potter and weaver and created many other crafts at her home in West Covehead. She nursed for many years at the Prince Edward Island Hospital. After her sudden passing, she was laid to rest in an Island Tartan covered casket in the family plot in the Union Cemetery, Souris West, P.E.I.

A tartan is a pattern consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. Tartans originated in woven cloth, but are now displayed in other materials. Most tartans are associated with Scotland. Tartans are sometimes misrepresented as plaids in America. The word plaid actually means a tartan cloth slung over the shoulder or a blanket. A Tartan is made with alternating bands of pre-dyed coloured threads woven as both warp and weft at right angles to each other. The weft is woven in a simple twill, two over - two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass. This forms visible diagonal lines where different colours cross, which give the appearance of new colours blended from the original ones. The resulting blocks of colour repeat vertically and horizontally in a distinctive pattern of squares and lines known as a sett. The Prince Edward Island tartan was woven by Ms. Reed with a loom. Tartans were different cloth patterns until the mid 1800's. In that era a person chose the tartans most to his liking - in the same way as people today choose what colours and patterns they prefer in their clothing. Thus, it was not until the mid 1800s that specific tartans became associated with Scottish clans or Scottish families, or simply institutions who are or wish to be seen as associated in some way with a Scottish heritage.

The warmth & glow of the fertile soil The green of the field and tree The yellow and brown of Autumn The white of surf on a summer sea Helen Laughlin