Tag: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Royal Canadian Mint Honours LMM and Anne

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On June 26th, 2024, at Green Gables in Cavendish, PEI, with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as special presiding guest, Brenda Jones’s winning coin (design) of Montgomery and Anne was launched.  Montgomery is the first artist to appear in Canada on a circulation coin: a fitting tribute in this 150th birthday year. Here I (in white) am speaking with artist Brenda Jones (daughter of Green Gables’ own Pauline Webb Jones) while Dr. Kate Scarth (UPEI/LMMI Chair in L.M. Montgomery Studies) and UPEI Vice-President, Academic and Research, Dr. Greg Naterer, stand in front of a replica of the new coin.

Brenda Jones designed a beautiful illustration for the Royal Canadian Mint’s tribute for Montgomery’s 150th birthday: a one-dollar circulation coin, featuring Montgomery dreaming up Anne, with a glimpse of colourful PEI landscape beyond. I was a consultant on the various texts for the image. Click on the coin below to go to the Royal Canadian Mint website to learn more.

Image from: mint.ca

Notice the details of the coin: Montgomery’s pen, her famous cat-image signature.  The “BJ” identify the artist.  This is also the very first Canadian circulation coin to bear the image of King Charles III.  Thanks to the Heirs of L.M. Montgomery, Inc. for including me as a consultant for this Royal Canadian Mint project.

– Betsy

Happy 150th Birthday, L.M. Montgomery!

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2024 marks the 150th anniversary of Montgomery’s birth, and the L.M. Montgomery Institute is broadcasting 150 special tributes to Montgomery over the course of the year, culminating in a huge celebration on Montgomery’s actual birthday, November 30th.

To mark the 31st anniversary of the launching of the L.M. Montgomery Institute in April of 1993, the LMMI invited me (founder of the LMMI), the Chair of the L.M. Montgomery Institute management committee (Philip Smith), a former committee member and long-time Montgomery enthusiast (Rosemary Herbert), and former Senator and Premier Catherine Callbeck (who supported the launching) to offer our tributes to and about Montgomery. https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/news/Maud150/Anniversary-LMMI-Launch

All of the tributes will be posted here: https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/maud150

LMMI’s New On-Line Open-Access Journal

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On June 5th I got this wonderful piece of news from the editors, Dr. Kate Scarth and Dr Emily Woster, of the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s new on-line, open-access journal:

“We’re delighted to announce that the journal is now live at journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca!

Thanks to all of you for your work on and support of the journal. On the website you’ll find our Welcome Message, a video announcing the journal, an article by Elizabeth Epperly (“Reading Time: L.M. Montgomery and the ‘Alembic of Fiction'”), and an article by Julie Sellers (“‘A Good Imagination Gone Wrong’: Reading Anne of Green Gables as a Quixotic Novel”), as well as the static content that many of you have given feedback on. Acknowledgments are here. There’s more content coming soon!

Just a reminder that the journal accepts and publishes submissions on a rolling basis so keep those submissions coming and encourage your colleagues to submit too.

Thanks for all,

Kate and Emily”

LMM and the Matter of Nature(s) Awarded the Gabrielle Roy Prize

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L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s) 
at McGill-Queen’s University Press

Early in June this fabulous news came through from the editors, Dr. Rita Bode and Dr. Jean Mitchell, that their essay collection (inspired by an international biennial L.M. Montgomery Institute conference at the University of Prince Edward Island) and published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2018, has won the Gabrielle Roy Prize (English) for all of Canada.  I am thrilled, as one of the contributors to the volume, and delighted that the judges made a special point of commenting on Montgomery’s relevance to current scholarship and life:

” _LMM and the Matter of Nature(s)_ has been awarded the Gabrielle Roy Prize_. This is an award for each and every one of us for the outstanding work that makes up the volume. This is a wonderful recognition of our collective hard work and a superb recognition of Montgomery’s important place in cultural and literary history.

Here is more information on the award including the criteria of evaluation:http://alcq-acql.ca/prizers/gabrielle-roy-prize-regulations/

The citation for the volume includes the following comments from the jury: members:This well-curated collection of essays approaches the intersection of humanity and “nature” from diverse and exciting perspectives.  Although the individual essays come from a variety of fields, including (but not limited to) literature, animal studies, and law, the collection is both concise and coherent.  These excellent analyses of familiar texts and figures provide new and useful insights into individual works and the larger field of ecocritical studies generally.  L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s)illustrates what anyone familiar with the orchard in Anne of Green Gables already knows–that Montgomery’s flair for pastoral writing is among her finest attributes as a serious writer.  However, the conceptual underpinnings of the collection shed new light on how this relation between place and character is part of a more sophisticated ecology of beliefs and behaviours that are urgently needed in a world facing widespread environmental degradation, accelerating climate change, and mass extinctions of flora and fauna.”