On P.E.I., Anne's reign is inescapable

It is all Anne all the time on Prince Edward Island. And it was about to be that much more when the Royal Canadian Mint rolled out a new $1 coin paying homage to Lucy Maud Montgomery, the most storied Canadian author of all, to mark her 150th birthday.

- SHINAN GOVANI

Green Gables Heritage Place in Cavendish, P.E.I., a re-creation of “the home” of Anne Shirley, heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables,” which defines the island like no other place in Canada, Shinan Govani writes.

Days before the reveal, however, here at Green Gables Heritage Place in lovely Cavendish — where I’d made a pilgrimage — a guide affixed me with some candour regarding a certain wilful, pigtailed girl. The one who even Mark Twain declared “the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice” of Wonderland.

“I went through what we call Anne Rage,” this islander quipped.

I had not heard the term before, but I got it. Typical youthful rebellion, turned against what is ubiquitous, and on P.E.I. that is “Anne of Green Gables,” circa 1908 — a phenom that defines the province like no other in Canada. Big Business and its beating heart. Unlike any other place, arguably.

Not even Evita looms over Buenos Aires the way Anne does here, I reckon. The Vampire Lestat is synonymous with New Orleans, but even it offers competing myths.

My guide continued that she had a transformation her first summer working at the centre, in an area that inspired the author. “Montgomery is even more interesting than Anne could be: she kept journals, but edited her journals after she became famous. Had pen pals all over the world. She is full of mysteries.”