Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it.” 
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Lucy Maud Montgomery fell in love with Reverend Ewen MacDonald, the  minister of the local Presbyterian Church and agreed to marry him on the stipulation that the wedding take place after her grandmother’s passing.   This was in 1906; they were eventually married on June 11, 1911.  In the interim, Anne of Green Gables was finally published.  Maud received her first copy on June 20, 1908.   It was the beginning of a prolific writing career.

On top of the six sequels to the Anne series, Maud had more than twenty novels and short stories and produced three of the miniature biographies in a volume called Courageous Women.  As for her poetry, there was only one volume of collected poems that was published entitled, “The Watchman and Other Poems.” Continue reading →

“Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Lucy Maud Montgomery qualified for her teacher’s license at Prince Wales College in 1895 and spent a few years teaching at Bideford, located in the western portion of Prince Edward Island.  Her grandfather’s death in 1898 brought her back to work at the post office with her grandmother.  Ever resourceful, Maud arranged for one of her cousins to take over her responsibilities so that she could embrace the heady excitement of being the editor and proof-reader of the Halifax Echo’s society page.  There was a joyful anticipation within her life until, in 1902, news that her cousin and grandmother had a falling-out caused her to return to Cavendish. Continue reading →

“It’s not what the world holds for you. It’s what you bring to it.” 
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

As a child, Lucy Maud Montgomery spent much of her time in the care of her grandparents, Lucy and Alexander Macneill, who ran the Cavendish, PEI post office.  After her mother died, her father spent most of his time travelling until he settled with a new wife in Saskatchewan when Maud was thirteen.  Two years later, Maud moved to Saskatchewan to be with her father, which was when she wrote her first poem, On Cape LeForce, a story about an eighteenth century buccaneer.   Imagine her excitement when she received news that The Daily Patriot, a PEI local newspaper, would publish her work.   (I have yet to locate that poem, however will continue my search.)  Continue reading →

All life lessons are not learned at college,’she thought. Life teaches them everywhere.” 

 L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Maud to her friends, writes from her life experiences.    The daughter of Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, she experienced loss at a very early age.  Her mother, stricken by tuberculosis, died September 1876 at the age of twenty-three, when Maud was not yet two years old.  Many years later, Maud would recall her mother’s wake and the coldness that she felt when she touched her mother’s cheek.

Maritime fishermen face the uncertain ocean every time they head out into open waters.  Even today, there are many who are lost at sea.  Lucy Maud Montgomery captures the feeling of anxious anticipation and loss in her poem, Before Storm.

Before Storm

By Lucy Maud Montgomery

There’s a grayness over the harbor like fear on the face of a woman,
The sob of the waves has a sound akin to a woman’s cry,
And the deeps beyond the bar are moaning with evil presage
Of a storm that will leap from its lair in that dour north-eastern sky. 

Slowly the pale mists rise, like ghosts of the sea, in the offing,
Creeping all wan and chilly by headland and sunken reef,
And a wind is wailing and keening like a lost thing ‘mid the islands,
Boding of wreck and tempest, plaining of dolor and grief. 

Swiftly the boats come homeward, over the grim bar crowding,
Like birds that flee to their shelter in hurry and affright,
Only the wild grey gulls that love the cloud and the clamor
Will dare to tempt the ways of the ravining sea to-night. 

But the ship that sailed at the dawning, manned by the lads who love us­
God help and pity her when the storm is loosed on her track!
O women, we pray to-night and keep a vigil of sorrow
For those we speed at the dawning and may never welcome back!

We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed.  Life would be a sorry business without them.  With them it’s grand and great.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery is one of Canada’s most cherished authors, best known for the world-renowned Anne of Green Gables.  Born in 1874, she was raised in the Maritimes on Prince Edward Island, famous for its red soil, potatoes, traditional Celtic music, and idyllic lifestyle.  I live on the opposite coast of Canada, but once I visited the Maritimes, I felt it was home.

This month OTR celebrates April with the poems of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

An April Night

By Lucy Maud Montgomery

The moon comes up o’er the deeps of the woods,
And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,
Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds
Over the pools and the whimpering rills;

And with her the mists, like dryads that creep
From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,
Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,
With the wind on the hills their gay revellings.

Down on the marshlands with flicker and glow
Wanders Will-o’-the-Wisp through the night,
Seeking for witch-gold lost long ago
By the glimmer of goblin lantern-light.

The night is a sorceress, dusk-eyed and dear,
Akin to all eerie and elfin things,
Who weaves about us in meadow and mere
The spell of a hundred vanished Springs.