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.
*
As we begin to make our way to the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s 16th biennial conference (19-23 June), this week’s tributes from Sarah Conrad Gothie, Alan MacEachern, Janice (Millar) Trowsdale, Heidi A. Lawrence, Doug Sobey, and Deborah Quaile extend a welcome to Prince Edward Island. Register here to attend the conference either in person or virtually!
*
Sarah Conrad Gothie on finding refuge through visiting Montgomery sites
Here is life, absolute chaos, and here is a writer who lived more than a century before us, offering a lens through which we might gain perspective on our 21st-century aspirations, joys, dilemmas, and vulnerabilities. In her efforts to capture the essence of her historical moment and locale, L.M. Montgomery tapped into fundamental aspects of the human experience. Her writing is at once intimate and universal, and generations of readers around the world have found a refuge in her pages. Montgomery’s stories move readers – emotionally, first – then, literally, as so many of us seek deeper understanding by traveling to the places she held dear. Through the lens of her works, and the sites that commemorate her in Prince Edward Island and Ontario, we can make sense of our own lives in times and places that may appear outwardly different from hers, yet remain strikingly similar in all the ways that matter.
Sarah Conrad Gothie teaches academic and creative writing at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, PA, and posts about L.M. Montgomery and literary tourism on Instagram: @pages2pilgrimages
*
Alan MacEachern on the historical significance of Montgomery on PEI
I grew up on a small farm on Prince Edward Island. One summer day when I was about ten, a Japanese film crew arrived and set up for a shoot along the dirt road in front of our house. I wandered down the lane to watch. A distinguished Japanese Matthew and a redhaired Japanese Anne drove a horse and buggy back and forth a few times. Then they all packed up and were gone.
Prince Edward Island is so suffused with L.M. Montgomery’s creations that the depth of the connection can fail to fully register. But when people from halfway around the world signal their devotion to the place you call home, you take notice. I grew to appreciate Montgomery’s significance to the Island – and, in time, to appreciate Montgomery’s work itself. I walked back up the lane to the nineteenth-century farmhouse that, like many on the Island, was painted white with green trim, in half-forgotten homage to Green Gables.
Alan MacEachern teaches History at Western University and is the author of Becoming Green Gables: The Diary of Myrtle Webb and Her Famous Farmhouse, being published in summer 2024.
*
Janice (Millar) Trowsdale on Montgomery and Bideford
This year we honour the 150th birthday of Maud Montgomery, who arrived in Bideford on Saturday, July 28th, 1894, for her first teaching position in the one-room Bideford School. She was taken to stay with the family of Peter Millar, one of the trustees, until she could find a boarding place. Following Peter's injury in 1904, their third son, my grandfather, Shrieve, took over operation of the Millar Farm. Fifty years later, I grew up in that same home. At the time, I did not realize the significance of Maud's residence, but I am so grateful for her journal entries for 1899–1900, containing the account of her year in Bideford, plus her subsequent visits to Edith England at Christmas 1896, in October 1898, and again in February 1901. This historical record is invaluable to the recorded history of the community of Bideford.
Thank you, Maud Montgomery!!
Janice (Millar) Trowsdale, from Bideford, PEI, and her husband purchased the England farm property in 1964 where they lived for 54 years and where they raised their family.
*
Heidi A. Lawrence on being surprised by the unexpected
I have loved Montgomery’s work since I first managed to plow through Anne of Green Gables at around age 10 (I tried when I was about 8, but Anne just talked too much, I couldn’t manage it!). I stole my mom’s set of the Anne books, and I received a few of the other books from my (Canadian) Grandma for birthdays and Christmas. I often lost myself in the story and the landscapes – as Valancy says in The Blue Castle, they “were all that saved my soul alive.” But I think my favourite LMM moment was while the plane was landing on my first trip to PEI. I suddenly turned to my husband and said, “Oh my goodness, it’s NOT going to be like in the books! There will be cars and paved roads, not horse and buggy...” That was unexpectedly surprising to me. I still laugh at myself over it.
Heidi A. Lawrence researches children’s literature, particularly fantasy and the highly imaginative, looking for ways that characters relate emotionally and psychologically to the natural world.
*
Doug Sobey on Montgomery’s PEI nature descriptions
My first memory of L.M. Montgomery’s fiction is the Friday-afternoon end-of-the-week readings of Emily of New Moon by my Grade 5 teacher at Summerside Elementary, Dolly Matthew. The most vivid image that has stayed with me from those readings is of Emily hiding under the parlour table while the adults discuss what to do with her. Then, after seeing the Anne of Green Gables musical at Confederation Centre in 1965, I read the novel for myself and greatly enjoyed it. Move on 45 years: when asked to give a talk on the real natural world of Montgomery for the 2010 conference on “L M Montgomery and the Matter of Nature,” I went through all of her journals and non-fiction writing looking for any comments on the Island’s landscape and forests. Montgomery turned out to be a rich source for various attitudes to the forest, from the romantic and aesthetic to the antagonistic and anti-romantic, always expressed in highly evocative and memorable phrasing. Her non-fiction writings have proved to be an invaluable mine of information for many other scholars in many fields of social and historical research.
Doug Sobey, ecologist and environmental historian, is researching the history of the forests of Prince Edward Island.
*
Deborah Quaile on hanging out at Maud’s house
Birthplaces are rare in the 21st century because most of us begin life in hospitals. Few think, I should go see the ward where my favourite author was born. After I retired from a library and became a Lucy Maud Montgomery Birthplace docent, I thought, Well, isn’t this a plot twist. I get to hang out at Maud’s house!
Throughout the day I imagine Maud – one can only think of the baby as Maud – as a wee one: creeping the floors, toddling down the hallway, making a mess on the floor with her toys. It's probably the only home left on the island where Maud lived the longest, and the only one where she wasn’t an author.
During my first month of work, a visitor remarked, “You know a lot about Montgomery. How long have you lived here?”
“Two weeks,” I beamed. But in my heart, I thought, or maybe always. Sometimes I feel as if I was born here, too.
Deborah Quaile retired from Guelph Public Library, Ontario, and moved to Prince Edward Island where she not only found her blue castle, but work as a docent for the Lucy Maud Montgomery Birthplace in New London.
*
Next week Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado of Japan, International Patron of the L. M. Montgomery Institute since 2004, welcomes you to the 16th biennial conference as she reflects on why Montgomery continues to inspire readers and travellers to Prince Edward Island.