Green Gables Post Office

When we stopped at the Green Gables Post Office in Cavendish, I was reminded that before Anne of Green Gables could become one of the world’s most beloved books, the manuscript first had to make a very real journey off Prince Edward Island.

Lucy Maud Montgomery completed Anne of Green Gables in 1905. She submitted it to several publishers, but it was rejected. Discouraged, she put the manuscript away in a hatbox. Two years later, she took it out, reread it and decided to try once more.  In 1907, she sent the manuscript to L. C. Page & Company in Boston.

Today we could transmit a manuscript to a publisher almost instantaneously. Montgomery’s manuscript had to physically travel hundreds of miles from a small community on Prince Edward Island to a publishing house in Boston. Its journey began near Cavendish. The package would have entered the Island’s postal system and traveled by horse to Hunter River, about 18 kilometers away. From there it could be placed aboard a railway mail car, where postal clerks sorted and processed mail while the train itself was moving.

The train carried the mail toward Cape Traverse on the Northumberland Strait. From there it had to leave Prince Edward Island and reach Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick. Depending upon the season, even that short stretch of water could be a formidable barrier. After reaching the mainland, the package continued through the transportation network toward Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and then by steamship to Boston.Anne of Green Gables was published in June 1908 and became an immediate success. Within months it had gone through multiple printings. Montgomery’s story eventually crossed far greater distances than the manuscript’s original journey to Boston, reaching readers throughout the world and forever associating Prince Edward Island with Anne Shirley and Green Gables.

Somewhere among the thousands of letters and packages moving through this system was an unpublished manuscript about an imaginative red-haired orphan named Anne Shirley. It eventually landed on the desk of a reader at L. C. Page & Company. This time, the answer was yes. Anne of Green Gables was published in June 1908 and became an immediate success. Within months it had gone through multiple printings. Montgomery’s story eventually crossed far greater distances than the manuscript’s original journey to Boston, reaching readers throughout the world and forever associating Prince Edward Island with Anne Shirley and Green Gables.

There is another part of the postal story that seems particularly appropriate. Montgomery loved writing letters. For nearly forty years she corresponded with Ephraim Weber in Alberta and George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland. At a time when very few Islanders had telephones and telegrams were expensive, letters allowed her to maintain friendships and exchange ideas with people thousands of miles away.

The Green Gables Post Office sign therefore represents something more to me than a place to mail a postcard from Cavendish. There is a wonderful circle to the story. In 1907, Montgomery’s manuscript traveled away from this small corner of Prince Edward Island in search of a publisher.