My name is Blair (without an “e” if you please) Macdonald and I am a great-grandson of Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for Anne of Green Gables. When I’m asked how it feels to be related to Maud, my answer is always the same … humbling.

It amazes me that people have any interest in me given that I simply ride on her coat-tails in the literary kingdom she built. While I am an accomplished writer in my own mind since one of my short stories was featured on Write Stuff on TVOntario when I was in Grade 6, I haven’t quite seen the same success as Maud.

But I’m only turning 50, so who knows what the future will bring?

Lifetime of memories

Today, I find myself looking back through a lifetime of memories and feeling a need to share them with friends, family, and even strangers. Some might call it a classic midlife crisis, but I prefer to think of it as a midlife enlightenment.

Increasingly curious about it all, I finally read a paperback copy of my great-grandmother’s iconic novel. It was a good read but no competition for the fantasy and science fiction volumes that then dominated my personal bookshelf.

Every time a fan of Maud asks me for an autograph, photo, or simple conversation, it is an honour for me. I have attended the Emperor of Japan’s birthday party at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto, the opening night of Anne of Green Gables – The Ballet in Halifax, and too many events and productions to list in a short article.

Truth be told, I’ve done nothing to deserve the experiences afforded me other than being adopted by parents with the right lineage — my late father David Macdonald was the son of Maud and Rev. Ewan Macdonald’s son, Chester. But I accept the opportunities with grace and profound appreciation.

Travels to P.E.I.

It was the early 1980s, and I was about age seven when I first learned that my great-grandmother had written Anne of Green Gables.  But back then, I was more interested in making friends with the right kids at Holy Name Catholic Elementary School in King City, Ont., than in a red-haired girl from rural Prince Edward Island. In fact, I doubt if I would have been able to recognize the cover or title of one of Maud’s books had I come across it in the local library.

The first trip I remember to P.E.I. wasn’t Anne-centric in any way. We stayed in a bed and breakfast owned by my Grade 3 teacher, and I have no idea where it was located on the Island. We’d travelled to P.E.I. previously, but that trip is only a memory — a vacation that I can only recall through the many photographs in an album that I’ve thumbed through countless times.

In one photo, we’re at Cavendish Beach. In another, we’re digging for clams. A third captures me on a cod-fishing expedition, way too long for a boy with a short attention span. I also remember visiting Park Corner, Green Gables and the Homestead. As for the significance of the sites to my life? I hadn’t a clue.

We even attended Anne of Green Gables – The Musical by Don Harron and Norman Campbell. Unlike the fishing adventure, I left the show with an “ice cream” smile on my face.

Finding my place

Fast-forward a couple of years and the mini-series starring Megan Follows as Anne Shirley (every fan’s ideal for the role) aired on CBC.  Now the feisty redhead wasn’t just a topic that my dad mentioned to me in passing but the centre of dinner table conversations and family get-togethers with Grandpa Chester’s daughter, Aunt Cathie, and his wife, Grandma Ida. The business side of the Anne world was also then emerging as part of my family’s daily life, and I was intrigued.

Increasingly curious about it all, I finally read a paperback copy of my great-grandmother’s iconic novel (with an image of Megan as Anne on the cover). It was a good read but no competition for the fantasy and science fiction volumes that then dominated my personal bookshelf.

I wouldn’t dip into any other books by or about Maud for decades. The legal disputes surrounding “ownership” of my great-grandmother’s work dragged on for years and weighed heavily on my dad, both mentally and physically. Still, I have cherished memories of our father-and-son trips to P.E.I. during that era, such as the time he presented the L.M. Montgomery Literature Award for Children. Sadly, he passed away in 2017.

When my mom asked if I would be willing to take his place in the Heirs of L.M. Montgomery and the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority, I felt a sense of duty that is hard to explain. I suppose it was an opportunity for me to find my place in Maud’s continuing story, and to honour my father and the Macdonald legacy he tried so hard to rebuild in the aftermath of the one his dad had left behind. I’ve since met wonderful people in the greater Maud community – scholars, museum operators, and everyday fans who had known my father, or at least heard of him.

Passion for Anne

In June 2018, I attended my first L.M. Montgomery Institute conference, a biennial event that has been held since 1994 on the UPEI campus. The gathering attracts a wide range of people from all over the world. Despite differences in race, gender, class, and sexual identities, they share the common denominator of being, as Maud and Anne put it: Kindred Spirits.

It was at the first conference while listening to a panel presentation by Halifax journalist Evelyn C. White that I discovered that Aretha Franklin, the late, legendary Queen of Soul, had been an ardent fan of Anne Shirley and longed to visit P.E.I.

As White told it, Franklin, in 2014, had proclaimed her passion for Anne of Green Gables to a Toronto Star reporter who’d failed to recognize the cultural significance of Franklin’s revelation.

As a Black journalist who’d tracked Franklin’s career for years, White said she would have definitely asked the singer, who’d die in August 2018, how she’d heard of the novel.

At a reception, I later introduced myself to Evelyn (we now fondly think of each other as “cousins”) and we commiserated over the reporter’s squandered opportunity.

Dream bigger

I’ve since been deeply moved by other presentations that women of African descent have given at the conference. In 2024, University of Michigan professor Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas delivered a riveting keynote on how Maud’s work has prompted her to “dream bigger.”

This past June, Toronto-area writer Vilma Blenman recited her poem “Meeting Anne Shirley.” The captivating piece recounts her experience of reading my great-grandmother’s novel during her childhood in Jamaica. Sitting in the UPEI auditorium with other conference attendees that I’ve now come to know, I was left in tears.

Although Maud wrote about a time, place, and characters who would have existed in a world where diversity was discouraged rather than valued, I believe her spirit rejoices, as I do at the half-century mark, in the many voices that now celebrate her life and literature.

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