In September of 1937 the two Grandmothers – Myrtle McNeil Webb and Annie Ellice Laird Lowther host a tea for the girls – at Green Gables – the first year the Webb home is a National Park. Ina and Louise are the last tourists of the first year of Green Gables National Park. The sisters are only one and two years of age – we don’t have a photo of the occasion – the photo below is taken a few years later.
The two grandmothers are good friends. As you can see in the photo below taken many years earlier in 1905 at Myrtle’s wedding. The bride, a young Myrtle on the left, and her bridesmaid a young Ellice on the right . They wouldn’t have dreamed that someday they would both be grandmothers to the two girls above.
Your Mother dies very young. You lose a potential brother. Your Dad leaves you to go to Ontario. How bad can it get?
But here’s the thing. Yes, he is leaving you with your Grandparents – in the home he grew up in – but it just so happens to be the most famous farmhouse in Canada – maybe the entire world. It is now a National Park. It is Green Gables. The home of Anne. How many young girls around the world would love to be able to say they spent a year growing up at Green Gables?
And No – it’s not Matthew and Marilla – it’s even better – it’s Ernest and Myrtle.
Welcome to the Cavendish year.
It all starts in September 1944. Keith has sold the farm in Chelton to Jack Sobey. Everything else goes in an auction sale. Keith and sister Anita head to Ontario on September 22nd. Ina and Louise are left on their own.
They start Grade Two at Cavendish school. A much shorter walk this time through the woods on the Webb Farm. Their grandfather Ernest has even made a path for them.
Lovers Lane – U of Guelph – LMM Collection
The height of the tourist season is over. The sisters have Lovers Lane, the Haunted Woods, the Babbling Brook and an entire Championship Stanley Thompson designed golf course all to themselves. The photo below is the only time I have seen Ina with a set of golf clubs, but even at that age she thinks it is a stupid game – and refuses to touch a club. Louise on the other hand started golfing at a very young age. No wonder in later years she always wins the annual Reed Fenske golf tournament at Red Sands in Margate.
Ina caddying for her sister Louise at Green Gables Golf course (photo taken earlier than year being described)
The sisters attend Sunday School. Aunt Anne and son, first first cousin David,visit from the south shore as much as they can. Aunt Pauline, the lone Webb Aunt still on the island, is also a frequent visitor.
Reverend Coffin is often a guest. Myrtle is the church organist. Hymn sings are an evening activity.
Just before Christmas Reverend Ewan MacDonald, husband of L.M. Montgomery, and former Minister at the Cavendish Presbyterian Church, passes away. Chester and Stewart MacDonald bring their father’s body from Toronto to Cavendish. The funeral is at the Webb house. The body and coffin are placed in the parlor right below the sisters bedroom. Listen to the second Ina session to learn more.
At Christmas the girls are all excited to be participating in the Cavendish School Christmas concert. Myrtle proudly reports that the girls did very well. Grandad Ernest almost freezes his face off when he goes to Hunter River to get the Christmas gift that has arrived from their Dad in Ontario. Listen to the second Ina sesson to find out what the gift is.
The girls visit their Uncle Edward Lowther and Aunt Mary McNeill Lowther on New Years Day.
Aunt Lorraine comes home from Ottawa in late March. Louise remembers looking out the kitchen window waiting in anticipation of her arrival.
In the spring both girls get the chicken pox. Their Aunt Anne is expecting. Uncle Charles comes all the way from the other side of the Island. Charles is very excited to share the news of the arrival of a baby girl cousin – Margaret Elizabeth MacFarlane -with Ina and Louise. Due to the chicken pox the girls have to quarantine a long agonizing eighteen days before they can meet their new cousin. The classic photo below is the last one taken of the girls before they leave PEI to join their father in Ontario. Two days later they are on a train to Ontario.
David , Louise, Beth and Ina – May 28th , 1944 from the Aunt Anne Collection
Earlier photo of the girls and the entire family – with the exception of Marion – at Green Gables. Left to Right back – Anita, Lorraine, Keith, Pauline. Front – Louise, Myrtle,Ernest & Ina.
Our second significant Ina Session – recounting her days in Cavendish. One of her favourite years – and – thanks to the book “Anne of Green Gables” will probably be the one remembered by family 100 years from now. Did you know my 4th great grandmother lived at Green Gables one year?
Ina Webb recording of – “A year at Green Gables”
Ina Webb recording of – “Churning and Quilting”
Louise recollections
I can remember visiting our great grandmother, Ada, in their home. She was in bed and her hair looked so white on the pillow and she looked very tiny.
During the winter, the living room at Green Gables always seemed to have either a rug in the frames or a quilt and neighbor ladies often came to work on them in the afternoons. The little cast iron stove was set up in there during the winter and it was nice and cozy in there.
Ethel Moore was the teacher when we first got there, I think. Jennie (not Jessie) was in one of the higher grades.
The green for what is now Hole#11 was right beside the house and golfers had to shoot across the hollow there. Ina and I had a swing at the edge of the green. It’s a wonder we were never hit by flying balls!
Aunt Nete’s car was always put in the barn in the winter.
Ina said Grandad never disciplined us. He disciplined me once. I deserved it and it hurt him more than me! Gram was going to Institute with someone and I walked home with Bessie Moore after school . Unfortunately the car Gram was in went past us and I got home before her but when she got home she was really upset with me! That evening Grandad sat beside me on the kitchen couch forever and when I finally stood up he gave me a little swat on the bottom. I have never forgotten it!
Grandad made us fish hooks out of safety pins one time and rigged poles up for us. We would walk down Lover’s Lane and fish in the brook. I can remember seeing fish in the brook but can’t remember ever catching any.
I don’t think we ever had skates. I tried roller skating in Toronto when I was in my teens. I never did learn how to stop without running into the wall!
The MacNeils used to come to play cards withGram and Grandad and their two sons, Eric and Alvin would come with them. They were a year or two older than us.
That time when Aunt Lorraine was coming we were knitting in the kitchen and watching the lane for her arrival. I kept dropping stitches and Gram wasn’t very happy with me.
I remember the coffin being open and the cat being right in with Ewan MacDonald. I shooed it out.
I also remember walking to Uncle Edwards for dinner one night. Seemed like a very long way.
Grandad used to go to the Lake of Shining Waters, #16 on the golf course, in the winter with other neighborhood men and they’d cut the ice into blocks to be stored in the ice house in sawdust. Don’t think we had an icehouse. It was where you guys spent the summers.
