Province House National Historic Site is one of the oldest functioning parliamentary buildings in the world. It's the only surviving venue of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, where the idea of Canada was first seriously debated. Architect Isaac Smith, entirely self-taught, based his Neo-classical design on an estate from his English hometown. After his career in public buildings, he retired to Nova Scotia to sell Bibles.

The Wallace sandstone exterior survived the great fire of 1884 untouched. Inside, the story is more complicated: a restoration launched in 2015 with a 10 million dollar budget has ballooned past 138 million dollars.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the extraordinary chain of events that unfolded here, explaining why Newfoundland missed the conference due to a lost invitation, why PEI initially refused to join Canada, and how a railway bankruptcy six years later changed that decision entirely.