The summer of 2024 saw us head to the East Coast. Charlene mentioned that she wanted to head to Prince Edward Island to see all the Anne of Green Gables stuff. Initially, I had planned on skipping this small province and saving all those attractions for another trip where we explore the island in depth at some undetermined future date. But the wife asked, so I added a couple of days to see everything related to the fictional character who became a Canadian icon.
Years ago, when I started formally planning a trip we would follow, I planned a stop in Leaskdale, Ontario. It is just over an hour from our home and offers something greatly confusing to me.
In Leaskdale is the Lucy Maud Mongomery House.
How can this be?
L.M. Montgomery is a PEI legend. If she is from there and wrote all her stories about living on this island, why is there a house just an hour from home with her name attached?
To our surprise, and to the surprise of everyone who visits this heritage home/museum, Lucy Maud Mongomery lived a significant part of her life in this Ontario home with her preacher husband. It was the home that the congregation bought for whatever preacher was leading their church—a manse. Also, the entire series of Anne of Green Gables was written in this home, as well as many other literary works that she is famous for.
We had to stop in and have a guided tour. The tour was informative. We saw the original furniture that L.M. Mongomery used daily and in her writings. We learned so much about her life, marriage, writings, and impact on PEI and Canadian culture. Because of the thoroughness of the tour, we were amazed by all that we learned.
So, it would be natural to expect to visit PEI and see the places that inspired the novel and its main character, Anne.
We were disappointed.
Utterly disappointed and dismayed.
There are a number of places that link themselves to Anne in PEI. Each one is a hotspot for fans who want to take in everything they can about this well-written work of literary art.
Our first stop was a lovely home. Simply called Anne of Green Gables Museum, it houses several artifacts linked to L.M. Montgomery and her creation of the Anne series. Located in a beautiful setting, a few places on the site are said to inspire places mentioned in the series. My wife, who I knew liked the series, surprised me by how much she knew of the series. She was nearly quoting passages and references to what we were seeing, and she was surprised at times that I had no idea what she was talking about.
This place was a self-guided tour. It was also likely the best place to learn about Anne but more about Lucy, her author. There were artifacts and little fact sheets. We would walk the grounds, see a pond that turned out to be the Lake of Shining Waters (something I had no idea what Charlene was talking about when she was excited to see for the first time), and even take a path through a forested area.
The Anne of Green Gables Museum was just okay. Nothing to the depth of Leaskdale and the manse that L.M. Montgomery lived in for much of her life. It almost seemed inappropriate that, for a fee, we could get the autographs of one of the residents of this home/museum. This museum doubles as a home to those who operate the museum and the grounds. It is currently resided by very distant relatives of Lucy Maud Montgomery. I have no idea how many would have paid for an autograph from someone who never knew the author, can only claim a distant (very distant, at that) relation, and was born well after L.M. Mongomery’s death. The whole thing felt like a gimmick and left a bitter taste in the experience.
In fact, the rest of the places had a gimmick feel. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Birthplace is a small, cramped house where the author was born. She lived for two years at this location and likely had no memory or connection to this home. This museum had several rooms set up in a manner typical of the period and a large centre room displaying various published writings by L.M. Montgomery. We left this place disappointed and even ripped off. Nothing new was discovered.
The government-owned Green Gables Heritage Site inspires the Green Gables part of Anne of Green Gables. This prime location could not have been more disappointing. This site was the most crowded of all the locations we visited that were connected in one way or another with the fictional character Anne Shirley. The only redeeming feature of this place was the gift shop. All the island’s gift shops sell the same items, but at least they were more reasonably priced here. Recently, the federal government, which owns Green Gables, added Indian relics and heritage information. The natives of the island are never mentioned in the fictional series, and this addition, which takes up the majority of the Anne Museum, feels forced, unnecessary and even fake.
The namesake home of Green Gables is picturesque and filled with some heritage timepieces that have little to do with Anne or Lucy. There is also a path in the woods that is said to be the inspiration for several passages in the series which we walked, but we found it to be nothing more than a pleasant stroll on a rainy afternoon (the remnants of Hurricane Beryl were just arriving when we came to this Anne location).
A separate path would take us to L.M. Mongomery’s burial site. It is rather nondescript for someone who has significantly impacted Canadianism. A walk across the street to Montgomery Park will take you to a hole in the ground where a home once stood. The Site of L.M. Montgomery’s Cavendish Home was the least favourite of the places we had seen.
At this overpriced gimmick of a destination, we were entertained by a very sparse gift shop selection and a path that led to a few information signs that tried hard to build some sort of tourist attraction for a hole in the ground. Then, we finally got to see the hole in the ground where Lucy had fond memories of when she had done some writing.
We were most disappointed with this site the most.
Yes, we have visited holes in the ground before and absolutely loved it.
Case in point: Laura Ingalls’s homestead at Walnut Grove, Minnesota. There was literally a hole in the ground, which was the only remaining evidence that a family once tried to live there. It was a dugout home on the side of a creek, and it excited both my wife and me to levels that surprised even us.
Laura Ingalls was a real, live human girl who lived and breathed and wrote an autobiography. She started here, and at this site, native grasses were planted to have a natural feel of the time and place in the history of the 1870s. The location is very simple. Located on private property, which is someone’s farm and home, a donation is all that is required to enter. No gimmicks. A few signs to help point out some things, but no way was there some way to exploit the childhood memories of millions of Americans (and Canadians who watched the T.V. adaptation).
Down the road from this historic site is a museum that is nothing short of informative and fascinating about the life of Laura Ingalls, her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, and her family. An extensive area is dedicated to the T.V. series I watched religiously weekly with my parents.
In New York, not too far from the Quebec border, is the Almanzo Wilder Homestead. Here, we had a phenomenal tour of the life of young Almanzo when he lived on this very farm. It also went into great detail on how hard farming was back in the mid-1800s. I had no idea what time, effort, and exhaustive dedication it took to keep a farm going through the various seasons and the variety of hardships that life can throw at them. Plus, Sunday afternoon was their only time off, where the entire family stayed in one room.
These Ingalls sites connected us to real people and brought us greater insight into their lives and even the lives of those they affected. None of the sites we visited felt gimmicky, exploitive, cheap, or overpriced, like the attraction of Anne on PEI. My wife expected this section of our summer vacation to be the highlight of the entire trip, but she left with a huge, empty feeling. Even weeks later, we would comment on the disappointment of Anne Shirley.
Too bad. There could have been so much more with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life and her fictional (and most beloved) character, Anne Shirley.
Ironically, the bad weather was the highlight of the PEI segment of our vacation. We set up our tent in the pouring rain and walked along the coastline, enjoying the fact that we were on the ocean and had the entire beach to ourselves. At this point, the hurricane was just a large rainstorm, and strolling the beach together was a pleasant way to end the day.
- Leaskdale, Ontario, has the best Anne of Green Gables site. The guided tour is very informative. Be sure to include the church across the road in the tour.
- None of the places on PEI that celebrate Anne or Lucy are expensive, but what you get from the experience does not match what you paid.
- Check out these locations on All The Places We Have Been To Map.
- Feel free to express your opinion about the locations mentioned in this article. Your experience may be much better than ours, which I sincerely hope it is.
