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.
*
This week we have tributes from Tara Parmiter, Katsue Masuda, Audrey Loiselle, Natália Dukátová, and Lyndsey Darling that celebrate Montgomery fostering activities associated with the May long weekend: opening up the cottage, getting back to nature, reading, and enjoying the companionship of friends and family.
*
*
Tara Parmiter celebrates Montgomery’s Snow Queens and Wind Women
On a recent spring day, I glanced out the window of my fourth-floor apartment and saw a flurry of white crab apple blossoms fluttering gracefully through the air, dancing upward on the wind. The whole urban landscape was transformed, and in that moment, I felt so thankful, not only for this glimpse of the wild nature of my city, but also for Montgomery and her nature-loving heroines, who taught me about Snow Queens and Wind Women and Flashes and how to live each day with eyes and heart and mind open to the beautiful surprises of the world around me.
Happy birthday to one of my favourite nature guides!
Tara Parmiter is a Clinical Professor of Expository Writing at New York University.
*
Katsue Masuda celebrates Montgomery’s mayflowers
When I was in the third grade, my mother bought me Anne of Green Gables as a birthday present. I kept asking for sequels every year, and when I was in junior high, I learned that Prince Edward Island was a real place. During my university years, I visited the Island for the first time and stayed for three weeks. After several trips and working with a travel agency, I landed a job as a tour guide on PEI.
At first, I just liked to see the various seasons described in Montgomery’s books; then I wanted to feel the joy of spring after a long winter. Before I knew it, it had been 28 years in PEI. Again, this spring, I'll go into the woods looking for mayflowers. Gilbert's love, expressed through gathering these small flowers for Anne, still touches my heart after all these years.
Thank you, Maud, and happy 150th birthday!
Katsue Masuda is co-founder and manager of PEI Select Tours Inc., making dreams come true for Japanese Anne lovers for 28 years.
*
Audrey Loiselle celebrates Montgomery’s pine woods
Les œuvres de Maud constituent pour moi l’ultime lecture réconfort depuis trente ans. Je ne me lasse jamais de sa plume poétique, de son humour plein de finesse et de ses héroïnes pétillantes, et c’est avec plaisir que je replonge plusieurs fois par an dans ses livres. Si je ne suis devenue comme elle écrivaine, je lui dois toutefois beaucoup; sur le plan professionnel, puisqu’elle m’a orientée vers les études littéraires anglaises qui m’ont amenée à pratiquer le métier de traductrice, mais encore plus sur le plan personnel, car elle m’a appris à aimer les forêts (sans toutefois ignorer les soues à cochon), ainsi qu’à toujours entrevoir la part de comique dans le tragique.
Maud’s books have been my ultimate comfort read for the last thirty years. I never tire of her poetic writing style, subtle sense of humour, and sparkling leading ladies, and I eagerly return to her works several times a year. I owe her much, though I never became a writer myself. From a professional standpoint, she drew me to the study of English literature, which eventually led to a career in translation, but more significantly, on a personal level, she showed me how to appreciate pine woods (without dismissing the pig styes) and to never feel “quite so unmixedly tragic about anything.”
Audrey Loiselle lives in the Eastern Townships of Québec and is pursuing a master’s degree in Comparative Canadian Literature (Literary Translation and Translation Studies) at the Université of Sherbrooke, while also working as a translator for the federal government of Canada.
*
Slovak scholar and translator Natália Dukátová celebrates Montgomery’s creation of “home”
Keď som v 11 rokoch prvý krát čítala Annu zo Zeleného domu, presne viem, aké bolo ročné obdobie, aké bolo počasie, kde som bola aj ako plynuli dni, na čo som myslela a ako som sa cítila. Všetko v mojom živote bolo zrazu iné a intenzívne. Pri žiadnej inej knihe predtým a ani potom som nemala podobný zážitok. A keď som neskôr snívala o miestach, ktoré by som rada navštívila, vždy boli na prvom mieste červené útesy a zátoky na Ostrove Princa Eduarda. Annina sila a túžba po vzdelaní, jej citovo nabitý svet sa stal mojou každodennou súčasťou. Keď som sa v roku 2016 prvý krát zúčastnila konferencie na Ostrove Princa Eduarda, takmer okamžite som vedela, že som „doma“, medzi svojimi. Že presne títo ľudia a komunita vedia a chápu, čo to znamená splynúť so životom kníh jednej spisovateľky. Zrazu nebolo potrebné vysvetľovať lásku, ani vášeň. Pretože všetci sme boli jej súčasťou. A tento pocit so mnou ostane do konca života.
I was 11 when I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time. and I know exactly what season we had back then, what the weather was like, where I was and how those day went by, what I was thinking and how I was feeling. Everything in my life was suddenly different and intense. With no other book before or since have I had a similar experience. And later, when I daydreamed about places I wanted to visit, the red cliffs and coves of Prince Edward Island were always at the top of my mind. Anne's strength and desire for education and her emotionally charged world became a daily part of me.
When I first attended the L.M. Montgomery and Gender conference in 2016, I knew almost immediately that I was “home,” that these people and community knew and understood what it means to merge with the life of one writer's books. Suddenly there was no need to explain love or passion. Because we are all part of it, and that will stay with forever.
Natália Dukátová is a teacher and independent scholar focusing on children’s literature and a lifelong reader and lover of LM. Montgomery’s work.
*
Lyndsey Darling celebrates Montgomery’s odes to beauty
It’s Spring. You loved Spring. You loved it for its newness and for its own “peculiar sweetness.” Just as you loved all seasons for their own particular splendor. That’s what you taught me, among many other things. To find beauty and peace in the natural world around me. That every season has its own magic and all we need to do is look up and notice.
But it’s hard to always remember this. Life can get in the way and we can forget to notice. This is why we come back to you again and again—to remember. To remember to find the magic in the simple and to find humour in the absurdities of everyday life. These lessons inspire many, and inspired me to create this textured tapestry, “You never know what peace is until…,” as an ode to the beauty of your world and so that I might never forget.
Lyndsey Darling has a Master’s in Literature from Memorial University. She is a fibre artist and currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, working in communications for a not-for-profit organization.
*
The tributes from next week will celebrate the power that Montgomery’s literature has to inspire the imagination of creatives and readers.