Blindingly bright afternoon sunshine streamed through the large western window into my living room. I pulled the drapes shut. The afternoon was warm, and my old brick farmhouse could retain coolness for most of the day if Istopped the sunshine from coming in and toasting the living room carpet. The sweet aroma of baked chocolate chip bars filled the air.

While transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer, I heard the back door of the house slam. My daughters were home. My husband, Arnie, would soon be home, too. I congratulated myself on good timing. The dessert bars were cooling on the counter, and the family supper would be ready in about an hour.

I walked into the living room with a basket of laundry that needed to be folded and found my twelve-year-old and sixteen-year-old daughters lying on the living room floor watching ‘Anne of Green Gables’ on television. Sitting down on the sofa, I pulled the laundry basket closer to me. Tammie popped up at my knee and asked, “When will we be having supper? We want a chocolate chip bar!”

Shaking the wrinkles out of a pair of jeans, I admitted, “I couldn’t resist eating a small wedge of it when it was fresh from the oven. We won’t eat for another hour. Cut a small serving for yourselves. I doubt it’ll ruin your appetites.”  Pausing the VHS tape, Niki and Tammie jumped to their feet and ran into the kitchen.

Buying the ‘Anne of Green Gables’ VHS set with Meghan Follows as Anne, had been a wise decision. My daughters watched the series repeatedly. I loved watching it with them. Both daughters swooned over good-looking Gilbert Blythe. They became frustrated with how Anne Shirley treated him. We all laughed when red-haired Anne smashed her school slate over Gilbert’s head when he called her ‘Carrots’. Anne did many foolish things like confusing a jar of raspberry juice with raspberry cordial. As a result, her greedy ‘bosom friend’, Diana Barry, got very drunk. We cried over sweet, gentle, Matthew’s death and Marilla regretting her decision as a young woman that ended her relationship with John Blythe.

My daughters and I have sweet memories of watching the ‘Anne of Green Gables’ series during their grade school years, so it isn’t surprising that when we were offered the chance to visit Prince Edward Island, where the story took place, we eagerly bought tickets for the cruise.

One of the most memorable lines from the series written by Canadian Lucy Maude Montgomery is, “If you are going to call me Anne, please call me Anne, spelled with an E!” The irony of Anne caring so much about her name, is that the author submitted many of her manuscripts using gender neutral initials L.M. I suspect that she did this because in 1900, women authors were often not taken seriously.  

Our cruise ship made scheduled stops in Nova Scotia, before cruising on to our Prince Edward Island port of call. My daughters and I looked forward to docking at Charlottetown. We had tickets for a five-hour-long Anne of Green Gables shore excursion.

Our guide told us L.M. Montgomery, the author, had lived in the community where the story took place. We visited the Barry house and the pond that Anne called, “The Lake of Shining Waters”. After touring the Barry house and museum, we were treated to a raspberry drink and a scone.

Although the story about Anne Shirley is fiction, the house of Green Gables, which we toured last, is real. When the author was young, it belonged to Montgomery’s aunt and uncle. It was a place she had visited often to play with her cousins. The home was close to the Barry house, just like in the story. The writer had deftly woven together real places with fictional characters.

Prince Edward Island is beautiful. Among the vibrantly green countryside, we saw many freshly planted farm fields that had the brightest red soil I’ve ever seen. The guide said the soil is red because of the high concentration of iron oxides it contains, and that the island grows 25% of the potatoes grown in Canada. The province exports potatoes to 25 countries and the United States is their largest market.

It is no wonder that Montgomery had Anne Shirley wax poetic when she saw Prince Edward Island for the first time after leaving the orphanage in Nova Scotia. I loved Anne’s fancy names for avenues lined with blossoming apple trees, and the dark, shadowed woods she had to walk through to visit the Barry farm.

In the story, Anne Shirley’s start in life was hard, but she chose to look at the world through a fairy tale lens. This is what made me and my children want to watch the Anne of Green Gables series dozens of times during their childhoods. Anne’s romantic view of the world made not only her life so much better, but it also made life so much better for all those who knew her. Even today, the story blesses me and my daughters with happy memories of watching the series when they were children. Now, we also have happy memories of visiting Prince Edward Island while on our cruise.