Summer
Here are some of the pictures I took this summer in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.
On the ferry to PEI at the end of June, on my way to the L.M. Montgomery Institute conference in Charlottetown and the unveiling of the Project Bookmark Canada plaque honouring Montgomery’s poem “The Gable Window” in Cavendish:
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Wood Islands Lighthouse, PEI
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Charlottetown sky
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“The Gable Window” Bookmark, Cavendish, PEI
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PEI lupines (which always make me think of Barbara Cooney’s book Miss Rumphius: “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”)
Back in Nova Scotia:
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In the garden at the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm, Nova Scotia
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Hiking at Graves Island Provincial Park, Nova Scotia
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The view from Graves Island
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The Halifax Public Gardens
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Government House, Halifax, Nova Scotia
A few photos from a run at Point Pleasant Park in Halifax:
After I read Charis Cotter’s novel The Painting (Tundra, 2017), part of which takes place at a lighthouse in Newfoundland, I wanted to visit a lighthouse, so I chose one that’s close to home—Peggy’s Cove. From the novel:
I sat on my bed and looked at the painting of Newfoundland on my wall.
It was just as beautiful as ever. The road was so inviting—as if Maisie was saying come in, come here, come into this world and walk along the road to the lighthouse, and you will find something you have always wanted. I realized that that was what it always said to me. It was the promise of a different world, a world of heartbreaking beauty where everything was right and seabirds flew against the sky and the wind blew patterns in the tall grass.
But it wasn’t really that wonderful world. Now I knew how unhappy Claire had been there.
This section is from the perspective of Annie, one of the two heroines. I loved the epigraphs from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, and Claire’s passion for the Bookmobile that visits the remote community where she lives: “I don’t know what I would have done without that Bookmobile…. I never felt better than when I walked home from school with my eight new books weighing down my knapsack, with all that new reading ahead of me.” Claire’s favourite books include Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and novels by L.M. Montgomery (“I wiped away my tears and reached for Emily of New Moon and Anne of Green Gables. I was just about an orphan now, so I might as well read books about orphans.”)
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Peggy’s Cove
Walking along the St. John River, on a short trip to Fredericton, New Brunswick:
The last few photos are from a day trip with my daughter to River John, Nova Scotia, to visit one of our favourite bookstores, Mabel Murple’s Book Shoppe & Dreamery:
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