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Imagine the fifteen-year-old
Maud Montgomery's excitement when her father invited her to come to
Prince
Albert, Saskatchewan to visit--possibly to live permanently with--him
and his new wife. The trip began with an amazing treat. Maud was traveling
out West with her grandfather, Senator Montgomery. The Prime Minister,
Sir John A., and Lady Macdonald were traveling the Island and made
a special stop at the train station in Kensington to take his old
friend the Senator and his granddaughter on board. Maud recorded the
encounter in her journal and reverently preserved in her scrapbook
the flower (below left) Lady Macdonald gave her. With such a beginning
to a cross-country trip, Maud Montgomery had a rich introduction to
the spirit and breadth of Canada. She had been born the year after
Prince Edward Island joined Confederation (Canada) and had been brought
up in a political family and atmosphere. Her trip across the country
confirmed her belief in the beauty and power of her native land. All
her life she was proud to be a Canadian.
The year in Prince Albert was not a great success. Maud was enthralled with the wide-open spaces of the West, and loved seeing her father, but she did not get along with her stepmother and was terribly homesick for the Island. She made deep friendships with schoolmates Willie and Laura Pritchard and by a strange coincidence was taught by and proposed to by J.A. Mustard who was from a farm near Leaskdale, Ontario and would eventually become friends with the Macdonalds when they settled there after their marriage. She had the thrill of seeing her name in print for the first time when her poem "On Cape Le Force" was published in the Daily Patriot and was sent by mail to her father. Maud did not return to Prince Albert until 1930, but that trip gave her an opportunity to see how much Canada had grown since her 1890 visit when Prince Albert was still part of the Territories. |
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