Irrepressible Hopefulness

From Middlemarch, by George Eliot:

So Fred was gratified with nearly an hour’s practice of Ar hyd y nos,
Ye banks and braes, and other favourite airs from his Instructor on
the Flute; a wheezy performance, into which he threw much ambition and
an irrepressible hopefulness.

Fiddle Contests in PEI & Cape Breton?

In the latest edition (June, 2012) of The Island Fiddler, there's an article in memory of Bishop Faber MacDonald, a founder of the PEI Fiddlers Society, in which the author, Margaret Ross MacKinnon, recalls that:

Father Faber strongly emphasized the 

necessity to end the damage and hard feelings 

caused by fiddle contests by banning fiddle 

competitions on P.E.I. and avoiding the jealousy and 

disunity that competitions create. In our vocations as 

an Ordained Priest and a Registered Nurse 

respectively, Father Faber and I knew that it was 

critical for our new group to develop trust, respect, 

cohesiveness, comradeship, esprit-de-corps and 

have fun in order to share our individual God-given 

talents and let go of the competitive ways of the past. 

Somewhere years ago, I read a similar remark about fiddle contests in Cape Breton - but have come across no such reference since. Does anyone out there know anything about early fiddle contests in Cape Breton, and when and why they came to an end (assuming they did)?