Join us at the Revue Cinema Sunday, June 9, 2019, 4 p.m. for a short documentary about the author of Anne of Green Gables, followed by a Q&A with two Montgomery experts. Tickets: $10 on Eventbrite, $15 at the door.
“I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells. May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand. My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it. What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best.”
It is hard to believe those words were written by the creator of Anne of Green Gables, an author who infused her books with optimism and joy in every day life and who was enchanted by her natural surroundings. But those words were, perhaps, the final ones to be penned by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
In the last seven years of her life, she lived at 210 Riverside Drive in Swansea, which she called “Journey’s End.” When her husband, who suffered from mental illness, resigned his ministry in Norval near Georgetown, they retired in 1935 to this house, backing on the Humber River.
The dwelling inspired one of the settings in Jane of Lantern Hill, a novel Montgomery began writing in 1936. It was a symbol of family happiness for the book’s young heroine.
But any happiness was to elude Montgomery at Journey’s End. Those years were marked by depression and drug dependency, financial worries and rejection by the literary community, and concerns about her two sons, especially Chester, a ne’er-do-well who was ultimately arrested for embezzlement in the 1950s.
Montgomery was brilliant and gifted. She had an impressive memory and could entertain the huge crowds who were eager to hear her speak. She also had incredible energy and discipline to manage her prolific writing career at the same time she was carrying out the myriad duties of a minister’s wife, running a household, raising children, fighting her publisher in court for years and covering for her husband’s sometimes debilitating mental condition.
We are thrilled to have Montgomery biographer Mary Rubio and Norval resident Kathy Gastle as our guest speakers to help understand the woman behind Anne Shirley.
Kathy discussed the project to create a Montgomery museum in the hamlet where LMM and her husband lived for almost a decade.
A Special Treat:
Our screening and discussion about the Anne of Green Gables’ author Lucy Maud Montgomery was a great success. The audience consumed 7 dozen Mock Cherry tarts, made from one of her family’s favourite recipes. According to Mary, the recipe for the tarts was rediscovered in a notebook stored in a basement. Her youngest son Stuart was overjoyed to be able to taste the long-missed Mock Cherry recipe again.
About the Documentary:
Our short film is part of the Extraordinary Canadians television series based on a Penguin collection of biographies written by well-known Canadian authors. In this documentary, novelist Jane Urquhart explores Montgomery’s life.
Our Guest Speakers:
Mary Henley Rubio is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Guelph. She is the author of Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, and, with Elizabeth Hillman Waterston, she edited five volumes of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, two volumes of The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, and a Norton critical edition of Anne of Green Gables. Given her long interest in Montgomery, she was able to interview many people who knew her, including her younger son, Dr. Stuart Macdonald.
Kathy Gastle, who grew up in Norval, is part of a group working to create a Lucy Maud Montgomery centre in the hamlet near Georgetown in the manse and Presbyterian church, where Montgomery and her minister-husband Ewan Macdonald lived and worked from 1926 to 1935. Kathy also has a strong personal connection with Montgomery: Her godmother was Joy Laird, who was the girlfriend of Montgomery’s younger son Stuart. Unfortunately, her family was not considered socially acceptable in Montgomery’s view. And that’s another story we will learn about.