I am back from Atlantic Canada and finally back on Pacific Time. My mom and I had a fabulous time in Toronto and Prince Edward Island. We spent 4 days in the Toronto area for the Avonlea Convention where we got to meet some of the actors and creators of the TV show Road to Avonlea. A couple of them also worked on the Anne movies. All of them are among the best performers of stage and film. For someone who has been pretty much a lifelong fan of these productions it was a dream come true. We were privy to funny stories and old Polaroids of goofing around on set and updates on what folks are up to now.

We did have a snafu on the way to Toronto, we were delayed four hours in Newark, NJ. So we got to Toronto at 11 pm instead of 7. We were to stay in the dorms at York Univ and all the buildings on campus were locked by then. So we had to stay in a Holiday Inn Express that night. We were also starving by that point since our flight from Newark to Toronto was too short to have a meal. I think that was the first time my mom and I ever had pizza together at 1 AM... We did eventually get our lodging figured out although it was overpriced for a dorm and the beds felt like sleeping on a brick... we made good friends with the Tim Horton's, the king of coffee shops in Canada, that were on every corner, although my mom was disgusted by the idea of their sandwich/donut combos. Horton's are not only bigger than Starbucks there, it is even bigger than McDonalds... why? It was started by a hockey player-you know Canadians and their hockey.

Toronto was full of rain, but we did have one (mostly) sunny day. Fortunately that was the day we went to many of the filming sites of the TV series and Anne movies. That's right 99% of the filming was done in and around Toronto, not on PEI. But it was amazing to realize after seeing the PEI countryside for myself that those sites in the Ontario countryside were quite similar. They were both very green (small wonder with all that rain!) Our tour guide was actually a location scout for the TV series so he could explain why they decided on places for certain scenes, etc... It was pretty incredible to see these places that are so familiar and have such a special place in your memory. The only thing that was totally weird to see was that much of what used to be the village of Avonlea is now corn fields. Even the area where the lighthouse was is now corn... So much corn! We got to meet the couple that owns the farm land that made up the whole town of Avonlea. In fact they still live in the house that was used as King farm, just like they did when the show was filmed. Of course, the inside of the house was recreated as a set elsewhere so they didn't disturb the family. But the outside of the house was shown in every episode. They had lots of fond memories of taping and funny things that happened. The most colorful stories usually took place in the winter. Yeah, they taped in some cold, snowy times. The owners children would often stay up to watch nighttime filming, even the snowy nights. The wife even had a walk on in an episode. The property was so large, they said they were rarely disturbed. Unfortunately for us none of the set of Avonlea remains since it was all dismantled in 1996 when the show ended. To see the sets before they were torn down, check out this blog: http://blogofgreengables.blogspot.com/2011/03/visiting-avonlea-village-part-one.html

Then it was off to the place that inspired it all: Prince Edward Island. I have grown up wanting to go there after falling in love with L.M. Montgomery's flowery descriptions and Kevin Sullivan's beautiful pictures of it. PE Island did not disappoint! The first thing I noticed was how blue the water was. It was like an ocean of Lake Tahoe. Once we got out and walked through the reeds and onto the beach we were amazed how soft the sand was. It was like walking on a pillow, very different from the coarse sand of California. Of course, it is very different than Pacific coast sand because it is red. It doesn't look very red in this picture but it was. It is the high levels of iron oxide that makes the sand red. To recreate the red earth of PEI in Ontario for the movies and TV series, they crushed up bricks to cover the road. (see above)

We landed in Charlottetown, the capital city of PEI that houses the smallest airport I have ever been in. It wasn't even built until 1986, before that you had to take a ferry from New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. 1986... any thoughts on why they suddenly needed an airport? A little movie by the name of Anne of Green Gables increasing tourism a bit... anyway we rented a car in Charlottetown and drove from there to Brackley Beach (where the lighthouse above was) and Dalvey by the Sea. The exterior of Dalvey by the Sea hotel was used as the White Sands Hotel on Road to Avonlea and in Anne of Green Gables the Sequel. It was really amazing to see it! We had lunch there. I had an amazing seafood bisque style chowder. Then we shared a sticky date pudding. The hotel really is right on the water but not on the seashore as it looks on the series. It is some inlet in the north central part of the island.


Then we went to Cavendish, Montgomery's hometown. That is where the real Green Gables, the home of one set of Montgomery's cousins, is. Of course the home now has tours. We did not take an official tour but talked to a couple of people who work in the house. Behind the house is a trail through a small woods. These were the woods that inspired the Haunted Wood in Anne of Green Gables. If you walk the whole trail you not only pass through Green Gables golf course (yes, I know) you eventually end up at the site of MacNeill Homestead, where Montgomery was raised by her maternal grandparents. Also in Cavendish is the Avonlea village created to bring Montgomery's fictional setting to life. It is very touristy (of course, all of Cavendish is) and more geared toward children. They have live performers acting out scenes from the Anne books, including Anne's marriage to Gilbert, and entertain kids with things like pig races. As someone warned me, the Gilbert looked nothing like any of us would imagine he did and the acting was a bit annoying. Kids can dress up as Anne (they have straw hats with red braids attached which made me feel a bit like Anne had been beheaded to bring in sales) and there is even an Anne of Green Gables chocolate store... we didn't stay long. As my mom said I might have liked it as a child but I don't know...

Then we went to Park Corner, a town where more of Montgomery's cousins and her paternal grandparents lived. She used her cousins' house, Silver Bush, in a few of her novels and we went to it. While we were there there were some girls from North Carolina who decided I was Anne herself and wanted pictures with me. It was pretty funny. Then it was off to the house across the street, Montgomery Manor. The man who runs the house (and I think lives there in the off season) was Montgomery's nephew. There were a lot of interesting things related to her life there and he talked about farming when he was a kid before they had a tractor. After that we saw the small house Montgomery in which was born in New London, PEI.

We went to two more places before heading to Summerside, the second largest town on PEI. They were both places she taught. One was Bideford Parsonage, in Bideford, where she boarded during the first year she taught. This was in Western PEI, the only time we left central PEI. Bideford was fairly far north and if we had gone a little further on the coast, we could have seen some cliffs. But we didn't know that then. I thought there would be cliffs along the central PEI coast. On our way to Summerside we stopped through Acadian territory including lunch in a town called Miscouche. I thought it was a fun word.

Finding the schoolhouse LMM taught at for a year was a little harder. Plus is started raining pretty hard. Made our nice, white rental car have some nice, red, muddy flair... If you're ever looking for Lower Bedeque, PEI just remember you have to pass Northern Bedeque, Central Bedeque and Bedeque first... once we found it though it was great. We had the place totally to ourselves and two recent high school graduates in period outfits came to tell us about the school. One told us her grandpa taught there since it was still open 1965... Lower Bedeque is not exactly a large community. But we saw beautiful pastoral land on the way there.

We didn't spend as much time in Summerside and Charlottetown as in the other areas. But we did go to the waterfront in both cities (they're both pretty small to be called cities but they are there). Summerside is used in some of Montgomery's works. Anne is supposed to teach there. But there weren't really any LMM related sites there. We did try PEI ice cream at the small boardwalk there and went to the top of a lighthouse with a great view. Charlottetown has an old town section and we walked through there down to the water.

So the planners of the Avonlea Convention in Toronto said this will be the last one but others have already expressed interest in taking over planning. So maybe in a few years we will go and we can go back to PEI, too. We didn't see as many lighthouses as I wanted to and there was one more LMM site to see... if you want to see more of my photos you can see my album here: AvCon/PEI Album