There was a circus in Charlottetown at the same time as the First Confederation Conference, and it attracted more people than did the arrival of the representatives from The Canadas (now Ontario and Quebec) who were sort of crashing the meeting anyway. The Prince Edward Island representative, William Henry Pope, had to be rowed out to the ship himself to greet the new arrivals. There was no room in town for the Canadian delegates, so they spent each night on board the ship. See the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottetown_Conference.