Charlottetown :
Features
I meet my cousin Anne Shirley, of Green Gables, shortly after a three-legged race on the tree-fringed meadow of a country fair. Her red braids nearly stand on end with excitement and disbelief. She exclaims, “A cousin! And me an orphan all these years! Where have you been? Look, Diana, I have a cousin!”
Anne’s best friend, Diana Barry—of the Avonlea Barrys—seems a bit surprised by the impromptu family reunion. I hand her my camera for a quick photo with Anne before the girls dash off to participate in a village music concert. Inside the nearby white clapboard church—most likely Presbyterian, now a music hall—Anne and her Avonlea friends crank up the fiddles, guitar and accordion and darn near rattle the rafters.
During a five-day summer visit to Prince Edward Island, I encounter Anne seven different times, including this Anne at the Avonlea Village theme park.
Despite the fact that she’s technically 111 years old, Anne hasn’t aged a bit. Luckily for P.E.I.’s tourism industry, neither has the red-soiled island she calls home. After 100 years, much of the Island still feels like she belongs.
Anne Shirley, of course, never existed: she’s pure fiction—the brainchild of author L.M. Montgomery. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Anne’s first appearance in print: the publication of Anne of Green Gables, which made Montgomery famous and gave P.E.I. an icon that’s much more interesting than ocean breezes, modern golf courses and ubiquitous spuds.
Meeting Anne falls between fact and fiction. Each Anne I encounter has a slightly different take on the character: a special shade of orange in her wig, a unique gingham to her dress and a different ability to respond to a traveller who shares her character’s uncommon surname, Shirley. Other than Anne at Avonlea Village, the responses are more, “Oh… are you enjoying P.E.I.?,” the same as they say to visitors surnamed Jones or Takagi.
I encounter the strolling actresses in the “Haunted Woods” at Green Gables Heritage Site, in the theatre foyer at Anne of Green Gables: The Musical, greeting tourists on the streets of Charlottetown and at Avonlea Village.
Like Anne, Avonlea never existed, although Montgomery was inspired by the real-life villages of P.E.I. Today’s Avonlea is very real, as a theme park. Unfortunately, it shares Cavendish Road with blissfully unrelated attractions like wax museums, water parks and museums of the strange.
Developed in 1999, Avonlea Village is a collection of both new and beautifully restored historic P.E.I. buildings that replicate Anne’s fictional town with homes, a barn, a general store and the church. Each year, about 40,000 visitors pass through the gates of this privately owned, perfectly manicured attraction.
If your kids are hooked on Anne, Avonlea Village can be the pièce de resistance during a P.E.I. visit. Despite an entrance fee of about $64 for a family, moms and dads seem genuinely relieved as their kids race off to play with Anne & Co.
Page: 1 2 3
