What's so Special about Prince Edward Island?

Most people know my Prince Edward Island story, but I’d like to tell it again, start to finish, in one place. Well, hopefully it’s not finished yet, so I guess I should say from the beginning and up to now.

Really, it all began innocently enough. Early in our married life, my husband bought the Anne of Green Gables books for me. R.J. was (and continues to be) the type to read anything and everything, and he had discovered that he liked the style of prose presented by Lucy Maud Montgomery. The language and the characters in the books engaged him, and he shared that with me. I read the series from beginning to end, loving it as much as he did. Then came the 1985 & 1987 WonderWorks miniseries, highlighting the first few books of the series, which we watched a few years after it came out. We loved Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie as Anne and Gilbert. We loved Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth as Marilla and Matthew. We loved the scenery of the movies, some of which were filmed onsite in that far-off place called Prince Edward Island. We watched those movies with our kids, and we shared the books with them. (Movie trailer below)

Somewhere around our 20^th anniversary (2003), we started tossing around a dream. Wouldn’t it be fun to travel to Prince Edward Island, on the occasion of our 30^th anniversary? We picked that far off date because we figured all the kids would be grown and gone by then, or at least able to fend for themselves. We didn’t take the dream too seriously at first, but it was something we talked about occasionally, usually around the time of our anniversary. When our 25^th anniversary rolled around, we started talking more seriously about the possibility of actually going on a big trip like that. Could we swing it? It was a long drive from our Minnesota home. How much time would we be able to take?

 

Our family, in 2003, around the time of our 20th anniversary.

(Photo by Sarah Peterson) This is us on our 25th anniversary. Kids are getting older....

Years passed by and details were added to our trip. Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to see the Baseball Hall of Fame on our way to PEI? How about Niagara Falls? Ooo, with a little change to our route we could visit Mackinac Island as well! Who do we know that we could visit on the way? These were all the little things we talked about when life at home was not quite exciting enough. For a while, it was hard to wrap our minds around the fact that we might actually DO this, not just dream it. However, for the last year before the trip actually happened, we fully believed. In about November or December of 2012, I made reservations for the following summer, for a week on PEI. We planned our route. We changed the plan. We communicated with friends on the route. We looked at PEI on Google Earth and Streetview. In a beautiful gesture of kindness, R.J. started reading the Anne books aloud to me. It was amazing to hear the books again, flawlessly interpreted, as we approached the reality of a visit to Anne’s beloved Prince Edward Island.

It was decided that we would take three weeks for this trip and really do it right. We would travel out for a week, spend a week on the Island, and then travel back for a week. As often happens with me, I got a little nervous as we approached our big trip. This was a massive road trip, and we had never traveled alone, just the two of us. Would I like traveling without the kids? Would this just be too long on the road? And in an added twist, R.J. was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes just weeks before we were scheduled to depart. What complications would that add to the trip? Would we even be able to safely go? After consulting with dietitians and doctors, we decided that yes, we should go. We planned carefully, and finally, the day of our departure arrived. We left a houseful of young people, our own offspring as well as a couple of their guests. We took a deep breath, and made it as far as Illinois the first day. The adventure was afoot.

 

Our "kids" as we were getting ready to leave them. 

I’d love to say the trip was perfect. It wasn’t, but those imperfections are dear to me as well. This story would be too long to read if I talked about the road trip as well, so I’ll stick to the PEI part of the adventure. On the eighth day of the trip, we got ready to cross the eight-mile Confederation Bridge that would take us to Prince Edward Island. It was an experience I can picture in detail. We approached and tears filled my eyes at the thought of our dream coming true. There is a cool thing about Prince Edward Island. You don’t pay to go there.  The only ways there are by ferry or by this long toll bridge, but there is never a fee to get TO the island; you only pay when you leave. We crossed and enjoyed every second. We stopped almost as soon as we crossed the bridge, at a little Gateway Village. We walked around in 65 degree temps on a sunny, mid-June day and knew we had found paradise – oh, and Cow’s Ice Cream.

 

Crossing Confederation Bridge

Gateway Village

While on PEI, we did all the touristy things. We saw the official Anne of Green Gables house. We walked on Lover’s Lane and in the Haunted Wood. We found Lucy Maud’s cemetery plot. We drove on red dirt roads. We walked on red sand beaches and white sand beaches. We had an encounter with a PEI fox. We saw lighthouses and took scenic, coastal drives. We were there when the lupines bloomed. We enjoyed it all, and seven days later, when it was time to cross that bridge again (and pay to do it), I cried the whole 8 miles – and actually, much of that whole day. Even as we were heading home, I was begging to come back again.

 

The Anne of Green Gables House

Island life perfection

I had been home for a year or more when a friend of mine mentioned that there was an elderly gentleman and his daughter living just down the street from us who visited Prince Edward Island every summer. I thought that was interesting, but really didn’t think too much more of it. Sometime later, the friend followed up and sent me the email address of the daughter. I sent that first, fateful email and contacted (Elizabeth) Anne Woolner. Her first return email opened my eyes to the fact that they didn’t just visit PEI each summer, they were PEI. Anne told me how her father was related to Lucy Maud Montgomery (their grandparents were siblings). She told me how her dad had grown up on the island, attending Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown (Queens, in the Anne books). He went on to get his medical degree at Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Redmond, in the books). She ended that first note with, “I would love to meet you at some point.  My father is now 101 and counting and still living in our house.” That house was literally at the end of the block where we live (house number 1601 to our 1651). Wow. I immediately wrote back to try to figure out a time when I could meet Anne and her dad, Dr. Lewis Benjamin (LB) Woolner.

Dr. Woolner and I got acquainted on a spring day in 2015. This wonderful, vibrant, 101-year-old man welcomed me into his home. He took my hand in his and held on tightly as he told me many stories about his life, growing up on Prince Edward Island. I soaked up every minute. I returned as often as life would let me, over the next year and a little more. I heard Dr. Woolner play harmonica and piano. He read me prose and poetry. He told me stories and laughed with me. When he struggled to remember a detail, or when he repeated the same detail over and over, it didn’t matter one bit to me. I was enamored with him. I saw our beloved Island through his eyes and cherished every minute I got with him.  I learned things about Prince Edward Island that I could never have learned through a book or a travel site. I fell even more in love with the place that could make a man like Dr. Woolner.

My time with Dr. Woolner and his daughter Anne was precious.

When you don’t meet someone until he is 101, you cannot expect to have a long friendship. Dr. Woolner passed away in June of 2016. We were on a family vacation at the time of his funeral, so I didn’t get to attend. I made a commemorative video to memorialize the time I spent with him and the man he was. After the service here in Rochester, MN, Dr. Woolner’s remains were returned to PEI to be buried in Cavendish Cemetery, alongside his wife (and not far from Lucy Maud Montgomery). I’ve been to that very cemetery and stood near Lucy Maud’s plot, not knowing the history or connection I would have to another stone in that cemetery.

 

Cavendish Cemetery

As I mentioned earlier, my heart still yearns to return. R.J. and I have begun to plan our next trip. (Let’s be honest – I started planning the next trip almost as soon as we returned the first time.) I am excited to experience the Island again, this time with Dr. Woolner’s stories echoing in my ears, along with Lucy Maud’s stories. Dr. Woolner's daughter Anne has promised to show me around their homes on the Island. We plan to visit the Cavendish Cemetery again, this time finding the Woolner headstones.  It’s a happy-sad to think of going there and mourning his loss all over again, while at the same time celebrating all that he was. Age and loss temper us and make us better people, and that is certainly what I feel about my time with Dr. Woolner. I am a better person now than I was before I met him. He did that for me, and I am so thankful for who he was and for my time with him.

So, though I’m not one to want to rush time or skip over the precious moments of today, I am eagerly awaiting June of 2018 (our 35th anniversary, if anyone is counting). That is the time that we are planning our next trip to my precious Prince Edward Island. You needn’t wonder whether you’ll miss it. I am sure to take hundreds of pictures and write many stories about that time. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.