PEI: Happy Birthday Anne!

Forever youthful, Anne Shirley turns 100 this year.

Women and girls often arrive on PEI with an interest in historic sites related to the distinguished PEI author Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne of Green Gables books, dolls, gift shops, amusements, confections, coloring books, museums, and performances call out from every direction. Anne of Green Gables—The Musical is staged each summer at Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre and has been on tour to Broadway, London’s West End, and Osaka as well as several cities in Canada.

The most significant historic site is Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Cavendish National Historical Site, attracting 350,000 visitors each year. The name signifies the two strands of the story told at the site: on one hand a museum to the literary biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery and, on the other hand, a shrine to the lives of her most famous fictional characters. Parks Canada acquired the site in 1932. When I first visited in the 1970s and early 1980s there was little more than the Green Gables house, the home of Montgomery’s uncle and aunt. Then was the site of ice cream socials and three-legged races as well as a magnet to Anne enthusiasts; surprisingly often these were young women from Japan. Declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 2005, a new Visitors Reception Centre first introduces visitors to the story of Lucy Maud Montgomery, her literary works, and her place in contemporary popular culture. The interior has a hushed academic feel with dark walls and restrained lighting.

Parks Canada aims to “commemorate the cultural landscape associated with the formative years and early career of world renowned author L. M. Montgomery. From the visitors’ center, a short garden path leads past the gift shop to a barn built new to represent farming in the region. I liked that inside the barn door, the work of farming is conveyed sparsely, encapsulated in a few well-chosen pieces of farm equipment. An adjoining exhibit tells the story of “Farm Life in the 1800s” in illustrated panels. The barn’s dairy/livestock area brings a bit of surprise – a fiberglass cow— an upturned pail is a popular prop for posed “milking” snapshots.

The barn opens to a view of the Green Gables house museum. Here, the two narratives – the story of Montgomery’s grandfather’s cousins’ homestead and that of the fictional characters — overlap. Montgomery was raised nearby in the home of her Macneill grandparents and she spent time visiting and roaming the woods and fields of the farm that provided the setting for Anne of Green Gables. According to Parks Canada, the house and grounds have been “restored and decorated as Montgomery described in her novel.” So much so, that the rooms bear the names of the fictional characters: Marilla’s Room, Anne’ Room, Matthew’s Room, and are described as they represent these characters. David Jr. and Margaret Macneill are largely erased from the site in favor of the novel. The historic house museum as imaginary world is a bit unnerving for the historian but, like a good historical novel or film, it works for the audience.

The drive to convey the “peaceful” and “beautiful, natural setting” from which Montgomery “drew inspiration” has produced a rather sanitized historic site. Yet the museum, through its exhibits and house draws visitors into the writer’s story. While it’s hard to conjure Anne or Lucy Maud Montgomery wandering blithely through the encircling Green Gables golf course, the farming exhibit provides good context for the modern agricultural landscapes nearby.

National Historic Site status has also been extended to the site of Montgomery’s Macneil grandparents homestead where she lived much of her early life and where she wrote Anne of Green Gables. The Macneill descendants operate and offer tours of the small site – signs point out both the locations of long gone buildings as well as connections to passages in the author’s fiction. The signs across the landscape are reminiscent of the low-key Rainbow Valley amusement park. The site had two strengths – the most comprehensive bookstore devoted to Montgomery that I found and views of actual farm fields along the walking trail.

The third and quirkier Lucy Maude Montgomery is my favorite; so be sure to stop at the Cavendish Post Office. Visitors come in to get their Anne postcards stamped in Cavendish, but you must stay to tour the exhibit. Montgomery’s Macneill grandparents kept the local post office in their home and it was from there that the determined, aspiring writer sent off her manuscript. The exhibit tells the story of that manuscript from the author’s pen to the publishers’ desk—it traveled by horse, train, iceboat, and ship through a maritime winter landscape and down the coast to Boston. The publisher’s acceptance letter is the coda to the moving, fascinating story. This exhibit beautifully evoked the writer, the act of writing, the nervous, self-conscious wait and the Island landscape, transportation, and mail service. While the Green Gables exhibit is great for mature readers who have loved Lucy Maud Montgomery’s work, aspiring young writers should see this exhibit.

Irene Gammel has published extensively about the literary work and life of L. M. Montgomery; she edited Making Avonlea: L. M. Montgomery and Popular Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2002) and Looking For Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L. M. Montgomery and Her Literary Classic (2008). The Making of Avonlea offers fascinating perspectives on the setting, the characters, the popular history of Anne, and the meanings that we inscribe on the landscape. The L. M. Montgomery Research Group links to conferences and other Anne events including an announcement that “Poland joins worldwide celebrations of the birth centenary of Anne Shirley.”

There are many other historic sites related to L. M. Montgomery on Prince Edward Island that I have not visited for a few years. For more information, check these out:

“Picturing a Canadian Life: L. M. Montgomery’s Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers” is Confederation Centre digital exhibit in English, French, and Japanese. This exhibit features, not surprisingly, resources for scrap booking but it also offers a list of collections and archives for “cultural tourists” and Anne aficionados.