Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance at the unveiling of the L.M. Montgomery commemorative circulation coin

June 26, 2024 - Cavendish, PEI

It is so great to be back on PEI. I’m delighted to be here with my amazing colleagues, with Sean Casey, with my colleague Lawrence MacAulay. And thank you very much, Heath MacDonald, for welcoming us to your amazing riding. I am really happy that my fellow finance minister Jill Burridge is here with us today. Thank you very much for joining us.

I am very pleased to be here for the formal unveiling of this one-dollar coin in honour of one of our greatest Canadian authors—and certainly one who has left an extraordinary mark both on the international stage and on Canada’s national identity.

L.M. Montgomery truly is one of the brightest, one of the most influential authors in Canada’s literary history. Her vivid tales of her amazing, beautiful home province helped all of Canada discover and be aware of Prince Edward Island and have helped the world discover and be aware of and come visit Prince Edward Island.

What is really remarkable about her work is that, well over 100 years later, her work continues to inspire readers around the world.

I want to thank a few people who are instrumental in keeping L.M. Montgomery’s legacy alive. Kate Macdonald Butler, L.M. Montgomery’s granddaughter, is here with us today. Thank you so much, Kate, for being here and for everything you do.

We also have Dr. Kate Scarth from the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of PEI. I’m really looking forward to listening to what you have to say about this really great Canadian writer who perhaps was not celebrated as much during her own lifetime as she ought to have been.

I want to thank everyone at Green Gables Heritage Place, whose beautiful site we are gathered on today, and how wonderful it is to see so many people walking through this beautiful site and having a sort of lived, visceral experience of the world that L.M. Montgomery wrote about.

And I also really want to say I am very glad and grateful that Carley Fortune, another best-selling Canadian author, is joining us today. Thank you very much.

I am an L.M. Montgomery fan and I am a Carley Fortune fan. And like L.M. Montgomery, Carley’s novels are love letters to our beautiful country and to some of the most beautiful places in our beautiful country. I also really love Carley’s books and L.M. Montgomery’s books because both of these authors write about strong, smart, loving Canadian women, and they write about the issues that those women and girls face. That is so important, and I really believe that if L.M. Montgomery were here today, she and Carley would be kindred spirits.

I want to thank everyone for keeping L.M. Montgomery’s legacy strong, and thank you for all you’ve done on this important project.

I do want to thank the Royal Canadian Mint for the wonderful idea of honouring L.M. Montgomery and recognizing that her accomplishments deserve to be celebrated on a circulation coin.

The Royal Canadian Mint plays an important role in giving Canadians a better understanding of our shared history and heritage. When Canadians have this coin in their hands, they will be reminded of L.M. Montgomery and her works—ensuring her story will never be forgotten.

Coins are works of art in their own right, and that is especially true for the one we are unveiling and which we glimpsed already today. This one was designed by PEI’s own Brenda Jones. Thank you very much, Brenda.

Brenda’s design is the perfect homage to L.M. Montgomery, and I am just really looking forward to seeing these coins in the hands and pockets of Canadians from coast to coast to coast, to seeing these images become a part of our daily life, just as her books are, just as her characters are.

We have so many reasons to thank and pay tribute to L.M. Montgomery. I’m so grateful for her unforgettable novels like Anne of Green Gables, like Chronicles of Avonlea, like Emily of New Moon, and for her many poems and essays. I think we all thank her for having enriched and inspired us, for delighting generation after generation of readers, and for writing enduring books that define and celebrate who we are as a country.

I want to say two personal things about why I am an L.M. Montgomery fan and what she means to me.

The first is she is a quintessentially Canadian writer who writes about Canada, and we need our writers, we need our artists to help us understand ourselves and define who we are, and L.M. Montgomery has done that so beautifully. She is such a poet of place and it’s impossible to read her work without falling in love with PEI. But she is also a lover of community, and reading her books, I think a person also really understands how wonderful the communities of PEI are, how much community meant to her, and that is so precious. I think, in reading her work, we as Canadians understand better who we are, and she helps the rest of the world understand who we are.

I also want to say that I really love and admire the writing of L.M. Montgomery because she’s a Canadian woman writer and she wrote about the lives of Canadian women and girls. She wrote about their interior lives. She wrote about their friendships, including really passionate friendships between women. Her novels would definitely pass the Bechdel test. She wrote proudly about their concerns, including their domestic concerns. And that is such a wonderful thing about L.M. Montgomery’s writing, especially reading it as a Canadian girl and a Canadian woman, we see our own experiences reflected, celebrated, deemed important and worthy. And that is so valuable to her readers, both when she wrote them and to many generations afterwards.

In her own lifetime—I think in part because L.M. Montgomery was a woman who wrote about, and let’s be honest, principally for women and girls— I don’t think she was celebrated as much as she should have been, and that is one reason, one of the many reasons, I am really glad that we are able to give her her due today and really celebrate her as a truly great Canadian, as someone who has helped us tell and understand our story of ourselves.

So thank you very much everyone who has made this possible. Thank you everyone who is here to join me in celebrating a truly great Canadian writer.