2024 is L.M. Montgomery’s 150th birthday! The L.M. Montgomery Institute (LMMI) at the University of Prince Edward Island is celebrating with 150 tributes – celebratory statements or greetings – that reflect upon personal connections to Montgomery or on an aspect of her life, work, or legacy.
To launch this year of celebration, we begin with 3 loving tributes – from Kate Scarth, Kelly Hill, and Hannah Mae Cruddas – befitting the theme of the week: Valentine’s Day.
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A tribute from Kate Scarth:
You are a time traveller, a globe trotter.
Through readings and viewings and conversations and scholarship and adaptations, we share you and your work with the future. And you reach out to us, encircling our hearts and our minds and pulling us into your time—a world you curated, you created, you conserved, in words, in images, in material things—a world that now we know, that we love, that we want to know more about, all about. Of course, you don’t tell us everything and that makes you and your world all the more intriguing.
And that reading and viewing and conversation and scholarship and adaptation happens in so many places. Around the world, Anne, Emily, Valancy, Jane, Pat are welcomed in and then invite us back to Cavendish and Park Corner, to Halifax and Charlottetown, to Leaskdale and Norval. But most of all I love that because of you, I know that places, even the mundane ones, the familiar ones, contain beauty, magic, and stories-upon-stories.
Kate Scarth is pretty sure that as an eight- or nine-year-old she read the Anne books in full hockey gear in a rink dressing room and she definitely dragged the whole dog-eared series to PEI on her first ever visit to Green Gables, where she provided the running commentary her family didn’t know they wanted. She is now the Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies with the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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A fabric illustration by Kelly Hill:
Kelly Hill is the illustrator of Anne’s Colors, Anne’s Numbers, Anne’s Alphabet, and Anne’s Feelings, a series of children's books inspired by Anne of Green Gables.
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A letter from Hannah Mae Cruddas:
To the woman who fuelled a childhood filled with wonder and magic, thank you for the shining waters, the banshees on the wind, the fierce friendships, and the beauty of a life lived with purpose and love. You wrote of girlhood and womanhood in a way that resonated with all of us - Emily for my mother, the Story Girl for my sisters, Anne for me. I feel honoured and privileged to be sharing Anne with the children of today and tomorrow so they can blossom in her joy, her courage, and her kindness. Thank you for your words, Maud. Happy Birthday!
With love and gratitude,
Hannah Mae Cruddas
Hannah Mae Cruddas created and continues to dance the role of Anne Shirley in Bengt Jörgen’s Anne of Green Gables - the Ballet® which Ballet Jörgen brings to communities across North America. Hannah Mae is also forever an Anne fan!
Here is a clip from the 2019 premiere of Anne of Green Gables - The Ballet®. Anne (Hannah Mae Cruddas) is informed that she may stay at Green Gables, provided she helps Marilla (Clea Iveson) and Matthew (Hiroto Saito) with the daily operations on the farm. Never has sweeping seemed sweeter! (Credit: The video clip is provided by Lori Endes, co-director of This is Ballet: Dancing Anne of Green Gables, a documentary produced by George Brown College about the creation of Ballet Jörgen's Anne of Green Gables - The Ballet®).
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Next week: To mark “Islander Day,” we’ll celebrate with tributes from resident Prince Edward Islanders.