“A SmallWorld After All”: L. M. Montgomery’s Imagined Avonlea as Virtual Landscape

In the rental car on this clement afternoon in June, Jenny and I discuss some of the papers given at a three-day academic conference centered on an author whose literary output has been the subject of both my graduate work and hers. It is my fourth such conference here, her third; we talk comfortably over the familiar mixed feeling of satisfaction and regret now that the conference has ended—satisfaction over the chance to connect with new and familiar friends and colleagues, regret that these discussions had to end so soon. As part of the conference package, we have been given complimentary tickets to a tourist attraction a 30-minute drive away. With us in the car is our new friend Cynthia, who is researching an article for Saturday Night magazine but who has no way of getting around. The drive is pleasant, the scenery making us feel lazy and contented, the conversation open and frank. Once we arrive at the tourist site, however, we need a moment to adjust to the glaring contrast between what stands before us and the scholarly gathering we have just left behind. For the theme park is “Avonlea: Village of Anne of Green Gables”, located on the outskirts of Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada; the conference, L. M. Montgomery and Life Writing (2002), is the fifth biennial conference devoted to author L. M. Montgomery,1 whose imagined community of Avonlea, described in three novels and two collections of short stories published between 1908 and 1920, has proven socially, geographically, and culturally recognizable to readers around the world for nearly a century.