Royal Canadian Mint Unveils New Coin Celebrating L.M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables

Today, the Royal Canadian Mint unveiled a new $1 coin that celebrates L.M. Montgomery as Canada's literary icon. The unveiling took place in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island at the Green Gables Heritage Place, the location that inspired L.M. Montgomery's most famous novel Anne of Green Gables. The release celebrates the 150th anniversary of L.M. Montgomery's birth in 1874.

This coin is the first circulation coin to honor an author. The new loonie will be entering circulation across Canada tomorrow June 27, 2024.



The Royal Canadian Mint launched a beautiful webpage today to announce the coin. It includes biographical information on L.M. Montgomery, the beautiful collages featured in this post, as well as information on the coin's artist and design.

According to the Royal Canadian Mint website:

"Not many Canadian authors have captured the hearts and imaginations of readers quite like L. M. Montgomery. Through her beloved stories and characters, the creator of the internationally-acclaimed Anne of Green Gables has transported millions of readers, over many generations, to the little province she called home.

One of Canada’s most enduring and endearing cultural figures, Montgomery is an icon who continues to impart a lasting impression. This year, we honour her brilliant imagination and exceptional talent with a commemorative $1 circulation coin—a tribute to her life’s work."

The coin's artwork is by Brenda Jones. She's an artist from Prince Edward Island who has a connection to Anne of Green Gables. According to a "fun fact" posted on the Royal Canadian Mint website, her grandparents owned the Green Gables house.

The coin features an image of L.M. Montgomery holding a fountain pen, with a manuscript and inkwell nearby. Below her portrait is her signature and cat icon. To the left is an image of Anne Shirley looking towards patchwork quilt fields representing Prince Edward Island.


It's a beautiful coin. I can't imagine they'll remain in circulation long. Anne fans might just pocket them all.


Official Websites:
L.M. Montgomery Literary Icon at the Royal Canadian Mint
Behind the Design: L. M. Montgomery Commemorative $1 Circulation Coin

Image credits:
Images and collages by the Royal Canadian Mint.

Created June 26, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Becoming Green Gables

Becoming Green Gables: The Diary of Myrtle Webb and Her Famous Farmhouse is a book by Alan MacEachern that will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in June 2024. Myrtle and Ernest Webb owned the farm that their cousin L.M. Montgomery based "Green Gables" upon. According to The Green Gables Diary website: "In spring 1924, Myrtle Webb began keeping a diary about her life on an ordinary farm in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. Ordinary but for one thing: it was growing famous as the inspiration for Anne of Green Gables, written by her cousin L.M. Montgomery."

MacEachern's book tells "The story of the family whose home inspired Anne of Green Gables and how that literary connection enriched - and upended - their lives." His book examines the history of Green Gables and how the popularity of L.M. Montgomery's novel affected the Webb family and tourism to Prince Edward Island.

A digital exhibition that will accompany the book called "The Green Gables Diary" will launch this spring at: https://greengablesdiary.ca/

Here's the description of the book from McGill-Queen’s University Press:

In 1909 Myrtle and Ernest Webb took possession of an ordinary farm in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. Ordinary but for one thing: it was already becoming known as inspiration for Anne of Green Gables, the novel written by Myrtle’s cousin Lucy Maud Montgomery and published to international acclaim a year earlier. The Webbs welcomed visitors to “Green Gables” and soon took in summer boarders, making their home the heart of PEI’s tourist trade. In the 1930s the farm was made the centrepiece of a new national park - and still the family lived there for another decade, caretakers of their own home. During these years Myrtle kept a diary. When she first picked up the pencil in 1924, she was a forty-year-old homemaker running a household of eight. By the time she set the pencil down in 1954, she was a seventy-year-old widow, no longer resident in what was now the most famous house in Canada. Becoming Green Gables tells the story of Myrtle Webb and her family, and the making of Green Gables. Alan MacEachern reproduces a selection of the diary’s daily entries, using them as springboards to examine topics ranging from the adoption of modern conveniences to the home front hosting of soldiers in wartime and visits from “Aunt Maud” herself. While the foundation of Becoming Green Gables is the Webbs’ own story, it is also a history of their famous home, their community, the nation, and the world in which they lived.

Reviews

“Humorous in some places and a tearjerker in others, Becoming Green Gables captures an untold story about the famed Green Gables and home-grown tourism prior to the founding of the national park.” Catharine Anne Wilson, author of Being Neighbours: Cooperative Work and Rural Culture, 1830-1960

“Becoming Green Gables provides an appreciation of the complex grassroots history of one of Canada’s most beloved historical sites.” Melanie J. Fishbane, author of Maud: A Novel Inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery

I am looking forward to reading this book and the launch of the digital exhibit.

Image credit:
Book cover of Becoming Green Gables: The Diary of Myrtle Webb and Her Famous Farmhouse by Alan MacEachern from McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Official website:
The Green Gables Diary

Purchase and read Becoming Green Gables:


Created May 14, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Cavendish Cemetery

The Cavendish Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The cemetery is the final resting place of L.M. Montgomery. She is buried alongside her husband, the Reverend Ewen Macdonald.

The entrance to the Cavendish Cemetery has a large metal archway reading, "Resting Place of L.M. Montgomery, Cavendish." The cemetery is located in walking distance from the Green Gables Heritage Place and the site of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish Home. It is open to the public, and visitors can enter and pay their respects at L.M. Montgomery's grave.



L.M. Montgomery's mother, Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, is buried nearby in the Cavendish Cemetery. Clara died of tuberculosis in 1876 when L.M. Montgomery was 21 months old.

L.M. Montgomery grieved the loss of her mother throughout her life. On December 29, 1921, L.M. Montgomery wrote in her journals, "Somehow, I have an odd feeling that mother is very near me as I write. Does human personality survive death? And is it possible that when we think of our dead it summons them irresistibly to us?"



After the death of her mother in Cavendish, L.M. Montgomery remained there with her maternal grandparents, Alexander Macneill and Lucy Woolner Macneill, who raised her at the Macneill homestead. Alexander Macneill died in 1898, and Lucy Woolner Macneill died in 1911. L.M. Montgomery's grandparents are buried next to L.M. Montgomery's mother.


Location:
Cavendish Cemetery
PE-13, Cavendish, PE C0A 1M0, Canada.

Image credits:
Photographs by World of Anne Shirley.

Reference:
Montgomery, L.M. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume III: 1921-1929. ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Oxford University Press, 1992. page 33.

Created July 17, 2007. Last updated June 28, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com