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.
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.
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.
