On June 26, 2024, the Royal Canadian Mint launched a coin to commemorate 150 years since the birth of L.M. Montgomery.
Below is a version of remarks delivered at the launch event at Green Gables Heritage Place by Dr. Kate Scarth, Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies with the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Event speakers included Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Montgomery’s granddaughter Kate Macdonald Butler, and Canadian author Carley Fortune.
For more details (and to buy the coin), visit the mint’s website here.
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L.M. Montgomery wrote, “I love the little island province where I was born…I love its life and its people; and so I write about them because I want my readers to know and love them, too.”1 Well, mission accomplished, right? We’re all gathered here today to celebrate L.M. Montgomery who of course created the beloved Anne of Green Gables and So. Much. More. Montgomery told the stories of her home, of Prince Edward Island, of Canada, through novels, short stories, poetry, photography, scrapbooks, letters, and journals. Writer Alexander MacLeod calls Montgomery’s journals “one of the most important documents in the history of our country’s literature.”
L.M. Montgomery is a Canadian icon. She has shaped what it means to be Canadian. As former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson wrote, “L.M. Montgomery in all her books gave me a profound understanding of what Canada is. Through the particularity and peculiarities of Prince Edward Island and these girls’ fictional lives, I became a Canadian.”2 Montgomery has been called the Jane Austen of Canada and if you’d like a more up-to-date comparison: a recent CBC program likened Montgomery’s business and legal savvy to Taylor Swift’s. The list of Canadian writers and artists who have been inspired by Montgomery is long, including Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro, Jane Urquhart and Heather O’Neill, Mary Pratt and Mariko Tamaki, Rachel McAdams and Catherine O’Hara, Uzma Jalaluddin and Louise Penny, and of course Carley Fortune who is here with us today.
Montgomery is a cultural ambassador bringing Canada to people around the world. Huckleberry Finn writer Mark Twain declared Anne Shirley “the dearest, most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice” of Wonderland, while Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, said, “I love Anne of Green Gables… That’s one of my favourite things. She’s such a can-do kind of girl, that’s why I’m crazy about her…. I just think I’d like to see the place they [the Anne characters] all came from.” Franklin hoped to come to PEI and of course fans make pilgrimages here from all around the world. At the University of Prince Edward Island’s recent L.M. Montgomery Institute conference, presenters were from 16 different countries, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Chile, India, Iran, Sweden, Poland, Japan, China, and South Africa. And now Montgomery, her likeness on this celebratory Canadian dollar coin, will travel yet again across this country and the world. So, thank you to the Royal Canadian Mint, to Parks Canada, the Deputy Prime Minister, and all of you, for celebrating the anniversary of the 150th birthday of this extraordinary Canadian, artist, genius, and icon.
Banner Image: Royal Canadian Mint.