2024 is L.M. Montgomery’s 150th birthday! The L.M. Montgomery Institute (LMMI) at the University of Prince Edward Island is celebrating with 150 tributes – celebratory statements or greetings – that reflect upon personal connections to Montgomery or on an aspect of her life, work, or legacy.
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At the age of nineteen, Mongomery took up her first teaching position at Bideford mid July, 1894. It was hot and tiring, but by mid September, she is speaking proudly of how well the “kiddies” did on their recitations and how it reminds her of her own school days in Cavendish and “finding a world of wonders around me” assisted by “teachers I used to think such marvels of learning and dignity.” As excited children (and adults) get ready to go back to school, this week’s tributes – from Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz, Melanie Whitfield, and Linda Stewart – celebrate the formative impact that teachers had in directing them to Montgomery’s novels.
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“Meeting Maud for the First Time” by Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz
Pierwsze spotkanie z Maud
Klasa w szkole podstawowej, w ławkach siedzą uczniowie. Trwa lekcja języka polskiego z moją ukochaną nauczycielką (która była z pewnością pokrewną duszą panny Stacy). Mam dziesięć lub jedenaście lat, chyba jest wiosna, bo pamiętam mocne i ciepłe promienie słońca na kartkach podręcznika. Fragment, który mamy przeczytać, opowiada o rudowłosej dziewczynce, która przyjechała do miejsca o nazwie Zielone Wzgórze, a pewna pani Linde mówi niemiłe rzeczy o jej włosach i wyglądzie. Zaczyna się awantura. Scena w podręczniku była dobrze wybrana, bo zaraz po lekcjach poszłam do biblioteki, żeby wypożyczyć książkę. Potem czytałam Anne of Green Gables – i inne powieści Montgomery – każdego lata. Ale „epoką w moim życiu” była pierwsza wizyta na Wyspie Księcia Edwarda w 2022. To niesamowite, jak zmieniła (właściwie: uzupełniła) moje wyobrażenie o świecie Montgomery. Wplotła wspomnienia zbierania łubinu po deszczu i błękitnych przebłysków Zatoki św. Wawrzyńca w moje lektury Maud, ale Anne, Emily i Pat pozostały tymi samymi „przyjaciółkami-z-wyobraźni”.
A classroom in a primary school, students sitting at their desks. A Polish lesson is going on with my beloved teacher (who was surely a kindred spirit to Miss Stacy). I am ten or eleven years old. It must be spring, as I remember the bright and warm sunshine on my textbook. The passage we are supposed to read is about a red-haired girl who has come to a place called Green Gables, and a certain Mrs. Lynde says unkind things about her hair and appearance. A row begins. The scene in the textbook was well chosen, for I believe I went to the library straight after school and borrowed the book. After that, I read Anne of Green Gables – and other Montgomery novels – every summer. But really the “epoch in my life” was my first visit to Prince Edward Island in 2022. It is remarkable how it changed (actually: completed) my perception of Montgomery’s world. It has woven memories of picking lupins after the rain and the blue glimpses of the Gulf of St. Lawrence into my readings of Maud, but Anne, Emily, and Pat remained the same “friends-from-the-imagination.”
Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz is a literary scholar and translator; she works at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.
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Melanie Whitfield on being awakened to a genuine passion for learning
In 1963 my immigrant parents bought a farm a mile and a half north of Leaskdale, Ontario. To our family of eight, there was nothing significant about the place they chose. My siblings and I attended a one-room schoolhouse with a teacher named Annie Barton who changed the projection of my life forever. Every afternoon she read a story to us, and one day she started to read Anne of Green Gables. To this day, I can still feel my reaction, totally involved, indeed overcome with the magic of Anne through the compelling words of the famous author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. How many times did my family drive past the Leaskdale Manse and St. Paul's Presbyterian Church without any idea of the significance of those places? Today I am President of the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario, and have been involved with the organization for over thirty years. It has been a journey with many side stories and eventful moments. It has awakened and fed a genuine passion for learning about and sharing the life of Montgomery in Leaskdale with the world.
All because of one significant moment in my life...
Melanie Whitfield is President of the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario and lifelong Maud fan!
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Linda Stewart on the pure delight a first-year teacher introduced
My most memorable experience with books and reading occurred in a one-room schoolhouse in Iris, Prince Edward Island, when I was six years old in first grade. The teacher read to us, a chapter a day, from Anne of Green Gables. I saw, I felt, everything the red-haired Anne saw and felt. I gasped when she dyed her hair green. The raspberry cordial incident made me chuckle.
As I listened, life seemed suspended in time. Then, the teacher closed the book!
I begged her not to stop. “Please read some more, teacher!!! Please read one more chapter!!! Please!!!”
She seemed to hesitate, to consider my mournful pleas. But then, “No. You have to wait until tomorrow.”
Monday through Friday, during each reading from the beloved book, I sat enthralled and filled with pure delight at the antics of Anne with an “e.” Weeks went by, the teacher eventually came to the last page and read THE END. Of course, I never wanted it to end.
Linda Stewart’s poetry, short stories, and essays have been published in Island, Canadian, and American magazines, anthologies, and journals. Her debut novel Beautiful Sadness was published by Acorn Press in September 2022. Linda was born and raised in PEI and lives in Wood Islands.
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Next week’s tributes will continue to celebrate the global impact that Montgomery’s novels have had.