Well by all accounts Tuesday 7 April we were very close to all out war with a nuclear attack by the USA on Iran, to save Israel. Trump made it very clear, he was going to wipe out an entire civilization some 5000 years of history and 95 million people. I do not see the American political system working as intended, maybe the 18th century model should be modernized. I know a lot of people were worried and talked about it. The price of gas is very high and my barber was telling me how much it cost for a full tank it is 100% higher in cost. I wonder what the effect will be on tourism this Summer.

Finished reading the book on becoming Green Gables or the story of how the national park at Green Gables was created following the publishing sensation of the book Anne of Green Gables in 1908. The end is sad in a way, Myrtle McNeill-Webb and her husband Ernest had sold the farm in 1936 to the Government of Canada but they thought the word of Gov Officials was sufficient to guarantee their staying at the farm until they died. Not so, they discovered too late, by 1945 the end of the war ended and lots of young men returning needed jobs, Myrtle and Ernest were of retirement age and were told to pack their things one week before Christmas 1945. The House itself would remain empty until 1948 when it was transformed into Green Gables of the book you read today. They had to give their 2 dogs away, and the furniture. They moved to Charlottetown to live with their children. Ernest died in 1950 but Myrtle lived until 1979 in the manse of the baptist Church in Cavendish. They never set foot back into the house and were shocked to see how the government erase any mentions of them owning the house or the farm before it became the Green Gables tourist site. This is true because prior to my reading this book I had never heard of them and always wondered how all this had come about. The Baptist Church is still on Cavendish road but the manse is gone. No wonder many tourists ask me how author Lucy Maud Montgomery came to choose this particular house. I have to make a link between Myrtle McNeill and her cousin Lucy Maud. They are all buried in the Cavendish Cemetery in the first row by the road.

I am now looking at Cavendish in a different way. From a farming community, it became a national park and part amusement park, in some parts a crass commercial project. Originally as of 1936, the McNeill-Webb farm saw the building of a golf course on the farmland with a restaurant and club house which would move into the house. It is only after 1948 that slowly a project was formed to make it into the house of the characters Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert of the book Anne of Green Gables. This was due to public demand on seeing the house as described in the story. In the 1970’s the barn which had burned down in 1932 was rebuilt and modified, modernized in 2020 with a new $10 million dollar visitor centre and gift shop, large parking for buses. After the storm Fiona in 2023, the park service had to remove many old trees and plant new saplings. Many of the trees of the time of author Lucy Maud Montgomery have been cut down in 1936 for the golf course. So what you see today is a fantasy place modelled to fit the book. Now I understand what my uncle said to me two years ago on his visit to PEI that the Cavendish site did not look at all like what he saw in 1960.

Myrtle McNeill and her husband Ernest Webb in 1940 at Green Gables in the flower garden.