Literary Tourism in Atlantic Canada

On our recent trip, I looked around Summerside, Prince Edward Island, and wondered how much it had changed since Anne Shirley was the high school principal. The fact that Anne, being fictional, had never actually taught in Summerside bothered me very little. I still wanted to see Windy Poplars and figure out which one of the islands in the distance was Flying Cloud.

Visiting Prince Edward Island was my first real foray into literary tourism and I realized I didn't know how to go about doing it. I gushed at the red soils and birches and spruces and white sands because Anne's enthusiasm alerted me to look, but then what? Would I feel any closer to my favorite character if I went on "Lake of Shining Water Paddle Boats"? Did I really want a young woman dressed as Diana Barry to invite me for tea with red currant wine? Should I eat at the grand old Dalvay by the Sea hotel because Anne once elocuted there? Green Gables Golf?

In the end, I read the first three Anne of Green Gables novels right before we left (and had read most of the rest of the series in January), visited Green Gables, part of Prince Edward Island National Park (where we walked through Lover's Lane and the Haunted Wood, saw the house, watched a puppet show* and drank raspberry cordial), drove by Dalvay Hotel, and otherwise just thought about Anne. While at Green Gables, I was shocked by how well the place matched my vision of it. Parks Canada should be commended for this, but most of the credit is due to Lucy Maude Montgomery who described the world of Prince Edward Island with such accurate detail that it fits 100 years later and historians could easily replicate the scene. If planning a visit to Prince Edward Island, it is really worth reading the books

I've never read a book so exactly at the right moment as I did with No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLleod. I was on the ferry from Prince Edward Island to Pictou, Nova Scotia as I was reading about the landing of the the MacDonalds in Pictou in 1779. That evening, on the west coast of Cape Breton, after watching a "family ceilidh" run mostly by MacDonalds, I was sure the island lighthouse discussed in the book was the one right out my motel window. The fictional action had taken place 50 years prior to my being there, but I felt right in the middle of it. I think I would rank No Great Mischief as a great book even if I was not right there then, if I hadn't visited Toronto and Sudbury last summer, if I hadn't lived in Glen Coe and if I didn't have an inkling of Scottish history. However, I'm postmodern enough to believe that what I brought to the reading experience makes a difference. I brought a lot of scattered knowledge and left with far more. Highly recommended for anyone travelling to Cape Breton or Scotland, and overall recommended for anyone willing to see the history of a people through the saga of one family.

Fog Magic, a 1942 Newberry Honor Book by Julia L. Sauer, prepared me for the mists of the Nova Scotia coast. The Mister was surprised to find southern Nova Scotia enveloped in fog in the summer. Based on my reading of one short children's novel, I knew that it was more common in summer than winter on the Digby Neck. The book is sweet but refreshingly not simple. Issues are never resolved, the fishermen barely eek out a living, the threat of war hovers, and yet childhood is still full of wonder. A fine read.

What prompted the idea of literary tourism (apart from going to PEI, where it is hard to avoid Anne stuff), was a book given to me for my birthday, Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks form Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West by Schmid and Rendon. Unfortunately, the beautiful book is too fragmented to sit down and read and too dispersed over the world to be of much help in travel planning. Still, it is worth flipping through to see if a planned vacation takes you near a favorite author's summer residence or what about Prague has changed since Kafka's time.

*the Mister and I try to fit at least one puppet show into all of our travels. We managed two on this trip. The Green Gables puppet show was awful, but amusing, and the Fort Louisbourg show included a singing cod fish, which makes it hard to beat.