The fake red braids are everywhere. As are the “Anne of Green Gables” soda, keychains, T-shirts and potato chips. And the commemorative Anne license plates. And of course the “Green Gables” movie — all three parts — and the animated series.
The 11-year-old freckle-faced orphan is a heck of a marketer, as it turns out, and the guardian of a killer franchise that has helped lift Prince Edward Island, Canada’s tiniest province, out from the shadow of Nova Scotia, its better-known, craggier neighbor. Anne lurks around almost every corner, and even a hip home-furnishings store in the island’s capital of Charlottetown can vow, in a sign, that it is only “95 percent Anne free.” But if any islanders resent the fact that their homeland’s most enduring symbol and chief tourist attraction is a fictional character, they’re not talking.
As for me, I prefer P.E.I. unadorned, with its rolling green hills, royal blue sea, fresh lobsters, and the modesty of a place that — with the notable exception of the Anne machine — feels little need to shout its virtues.
Nearly two years after my father died, curiosity has brought my mother, two sisters and me there, to the land he left as a child. He had, repeatedly, expressed no interest in returning.
Half expecting a lonely and left-behind outpost, we find instead a tidy island idyll dotted with family farms and wildflowers, undisturbed pink-sand beaches and the quiet hum of a less-traveled place. Things are slow in this pocket-size speck of the world’s second-largest country, and no one seems to be complaining.
After an 11-hour slog from Boston, we cross a sleekly modern bridge from the lonely tip of New Brunswick, and there we are, smack in the middle of a paint-by-numbers canvas: Bucolic Landscape No. 1.
We pull over in Victoria, a tiny bayside artists village. The bay is there, all right, but the artists are nowhere to be found. All but a couple of the town’s shops are shuttered on this warm, sunny Sunday, and one gets the feeling that it wouldn’t be whole a lot peppier on any other day of the week. But there is a shop that makes its own chocolates — OK, I’ve done my homework — and a roomy porch on which to loll and watch people pass by (or not) as we drink coffee and lemonade and sample the wares. For me, it’s better than fine, and on this point there seems to be broad consensus.
This, I realize later, is vintage Prince Edward Island. There’s not much to keep you busy, but plenty to keep you happy. It’s a bloom that unfurls, petal by petal, at no one’s pace but its own.
But a certain perennial preteen is allowed — encouraged, even — to break the staid isle’s rules, as we discover on a trip to Cavendish, a town on the north-central coast, a region that’s better known as Anne’s Land.
Cavendish, the childhood home of “Green Gables” author Lucy Maud Montgomery, is the vortex of Hurricane Anne, the belly of an excruciatingly amiable beast. If you’re looking for Anne-themed miniature golf or an Anne-style gas station, or if you want to get married in the Green Gables museum — some people do — then the Cavendish area is your place. About half of the island’s 800,000 annual visitors pay their respects to the Green Gables house, a farmhouse once owned by cousins of Montgomery that inspired the setting for the novel.
In a world in which travelers are more often seduced by action and glitz, the little orphan Anne is pretty much all that islanders are willing to offer up to tourism. But they do so with a gusto that can be somewhat disconcerting, elevating the celebration of the feisty but pure-hearted redhead to something between a cult of personality and a fetish.
“Is Anne of Green Gables really real?” The question posted on a tourism Web site acquires a certain existential heft. The answer proffered is almost mystical: “You have posed a question to which there is no short answer.”
No one embraces Anne as tightly as the Japanese, who were introduced to Montgomery’s 1908 novel when Canadian missionaries gave a copy to a former student just before World War II. The woman translated the story of the orphan who was taken on as a farmhand under the mistaken belief that she was a boy, and something clicked.
For decades, the book has been a staple in Japanese classrooms and bookstores, better known there than in its native country. A theory, espoused in more than one scholarly tract, is that Japanese females, especially, admire Anne because she has it both ways — being a bit of a high-spirited rebel while ultimately remaining true to her homeland’s traditional values.
Today in Japan, there are Anne fan clubs (one of which created a 350-pound model, in sugar, of the Green Gables house), a line of Japanese homes modeled on the original Green Gables, and an Anne bed-and-breakfast in Osaka. Planeloads of Japanese tourists arrive in P.E.I each summer to pay homage to “Akage no An,” or Red-Haired Anne. The Anne-quests are so popular that menus at some harbor-front restaurants in the island’s capital are printed in Japanese.
Having no preteens (or Japanese) among us, we steer as clear as we can from all things Anne. Not that it’s so difficult — on P.E.I, one is never far from a quiet corner. We find refuge less than a mile from the Green Gables house, along the red-sand beaches of Prince Edward Island National Park. Here, away from the water, lucky visitors might spot red foxes and other endangered species. Offshore, the Gulf Stream delivers some of the warmest water north of the Carolinas. And there’s not an Anne memento in sight.
Another day, we head east from our base in Charlottetown to Montague, where my father and his family lived. Distances are funny on P.E.I, very un-Canadian. What looks like a long journey on a map is only about 30 miles, and we’re there in about 40 minutes. Indeed, almost every place on the island can be reached by car within an hour from the capital.
Montague was a faded shipbuilding center even in the 1920s, when my father was there, populated largely by Scottish immigrants like his father. There still isn’t much there, although the town is one of the biggest on the island, with about 1,800 residents. You could drive through it and scarcely realize it.
We are pleasantly surprised to find a recently restored riverfront, complete with a prosperous-looking marina and boat captains offering seal-watching tours. At a waterfront restaurant, my mother and I devour bowls of plump, tender mussels that clearly enjoyed happy childhoods in the surrounding waters. Lunch for the four of us comes to some $20.
The town, bolstered by a renowned golf course nearby, gives off the whiff of a place that has managed a modest turnaround. Though we have no enduring connection to the place, it’s good to see that it’s doing all right. Even when we return to Charlottetown — the province’s biggest town by far, with about a third of the island’s 142,000 residents — the sense of quiet remains.
Where to Eat:
— In Charlottetown: For Italian, try Sirenella (83 Water St.; entrees from less than $10), or for Lebanese cuisine, check out Cedars (81 University Ave.; $5-$15). Between meals, don’t miss Cows, a P.E.I-born and bred ice cream shop that has several locations around the island.
— In Montague: Windows on the Water (106 Sackville St.) is the place for mussels and a long, lazy lunch on the wraparound deck. Live it up for about $10 at lunch; about twice that for dinner.
— In Anne’s Land: The northern coast is known for its lobster suppers, which started as charitable affairs in churches. Some are now commercial and cavernous, but one that has stuck to its roots is St. Ann’s Church Lobster Suppers, in the town of Hope River. Closed Sundays. A lobster dinner with all the fixin’s will set you back $19.50.
- Arab News Features 21 August 2003