Following her heart
Published Saturday August 23rd, 2008
Lots of people have a favourite book from childhood that they still can recall. But few have taken that book, and its author, and made a career out of it.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Epperly is a Lucy Maud Montgomery historian. This year, the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, has been a special year for Epperly and for all Montgomery fans.
Epperly's love affair with one of Canada's most renowned authors dates back to her childhood in the small town of Martinsville, Virginia.
Epperly would become so enthralled with Anne of Green Gables and the tales of Anne Shirley, that she left her home state and her country and went to live on Prince Edward Island, the setting for many of Montgomery's novels.
Eventually she would even surrender her U.S. citizenship to become a Canadian.
The Anne books are famous all over the world so it is not so surprising that a father in a small town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains would be reading a Canadian book to his five-year-old daughter, just as his father, Epperly's grandfather, had read them to him.
Her father was an Anne fan and later on Epperly learned there was some rivalry between her parents because her mother was a fan of the Emily series, also written by Montgomery. She was introduced, on the sly by her mother, to the Emily books.
"It just kept growing, this fascination with Montgomery," says Epperly.
From her early years, Epperly was one to take on the tough challenges and continued that throughout her lifetime. She chose a private school for high school for a greater academic challenge.
"I was worried the public school was too easy and my brain would atrophy. I wanted to be a writer."
She could not know then she would devote her life to Montgomery's work. But Anne Shirley helped comfort her in a time of great sadness.
Just before she left for boarding school, her parents separated. She borrowed a copy of Anne of Green Gables from the school and reread it. She now had something in common with the orphaned Anne Shirley.
"It was how I got through the homesickness and the heartache," recalls Epperly, who now lives in Fredericton.
The school had excellent English teachers, which undoubtedly influenced Epperly.
In June 1968, Epperly first set eyes on Anne's beloved island.
"My mother and I drove up to Prince Edward Island. My mother had never driven that far by herself."
They explored the island and on June 21 it snowed in Cavendish. Her mother was not impressed with the weather but it did not dampen her daughter's enthusiasm.
"I thought that was the way it was. I thought this was a magic place."
As an accomplished student, Epperly was expected to apply to one of the top girls' colleges in the U.S. Instead, she applied for the virtually unknown Prince of Wales college on P.E.I. No surprise, it was the college Montgomery had attended.
That caused an uproar at home and her father was not pleased.
Then Epperly got a letter saying the college no longer existed. It was 1969, the year Prince of Wales and the Catholic college, St. Dunstans, amalgamated and became the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI).
Undaunted, Epperly was the first student to enrol in the new university. When her father dropped her off in Charlottetown, he handed her a cheque for the fare home. He didn't think she would last the year.
Neither daughter nor father could imagine then she would one day be president of this new and untested university.
At first Epperly, light years ahead of her female peers, wanted to be a scientist and a gemologist.
"I had no idea I wasn't gifted in the sciences," says Epperly/
At UPEI, under accomplished English professors, she discovered her gift in English and writing.
"And by then I had fallen in love with the place."
She finished her undergraduate degree at UPEI, did a masters in English at Dalhousie University in Halifax and a PhD in England.
She returned to UPEI and in 1976 became a sessional and part-time instructor for eight years. Around this time she decided to get her Canadian citizenship.
"I intended to live in Canada and I didn't think it was right to be living in a country and to take a full-time salary from a country that I wasn't prepared to swear allegiance to."
At that time the U.S. law did not allow its residents to have dual citizenship. The law has since been revised and Epperly now has dual citizenship but with no plans to return to live in her birth country.
"I'm very glad to be a Canadian citizen. It's very different from the U.S."
Wanting a permanent position, Epperly accepted a job at Memorial University in Newfoundland and later became head of the English department there.
She took a leave during that time and returned to the island to write The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass, an academic work and first ever full-length study of Montgomery's 20 novels. It was published in 1992.
She has had eight books published, five of them on Montgomery, in addition to four unpublished novels, and written numerous academic papers and speeches.
After 16 years of waiting, a full-time professorship in English finally opened up at UPEI. Epperly got the job and eagerly returned to the island.
During that tenure, in 1993, she established the Lucy Maud Montgomery Institute to preserve Montgomery's legacy.
"It was designed to promote the study and the informed celebration of L.M. Montgomery's life, works, culture and influence," explains Epperly.
Based at UPEI, it continues today to promote study, research and scholarly works on the author and her writings and hosts international conferences.
In 1995 Epperly became the fourth president of UPEI and the first woman president. "Believe me it was not a time when that was a welcome thing," says Epperly, who was one of only nine female university presidents across Canada.
UPEI was in a mess financially and academically and faced a 10 per cent cut in government funding. Epperly, the woman who loved challenges, took it on. But there would be a cost to her personally.
"Someone said to me 'You know why you got it. Someone had to clean it up.' They always give that job to a woman," laughs Epperly.
Over the next three years, she did turn the faltering college around, but her health suffered and in 1998 she had to quit.
She found it difficult to live so close to the university and not be part of it. Two years ago she moved to Fredericton where she and her partner, Anne-Louise Brookes, have a number of mutual friends. They now live in a comfortable townhouse in the centre of the city.
Epperly calls herself retired. But with the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables looming, she was thrown into the flurry of activity leading up to this year's celebrations.
She was invited to do Imagining Anne, The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery, in time for the anniversary. Published by Penguin Canada, it contains over 100 facsimilie pages from Montgomery's scrapbooks and Epperly's companion interpretation of the pages in the author's life.
Full of poems, newspaper clippings, announcements, invitations, pictures of flowers and bits of cloth, with notations in Montgomery's own handwriting, Epperly calls it a visual autobiography.
"You can actually see her creative imagination at play."
She was curator for a virtual exhibit of the scrapbooks which can be seen at www.virtual musem.ca She was also a consultant to writer Budge Wilson, commissioned by Penguin Books to write Before Green Gables, a prequel to the Anne books and the fictional story of Anne Shirley's life before she came to live with Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert.
And Epperly put together an exhibition for the anniversary called Imagining Anne. It is still on display at Confederation Centre in Charlottetown.
Continuing on in her version of retirement, Epperly has adapted one of her own novels for the screen and is looking for a producer. In October she travels to Regina to give a speech on Montgomery.
She recently discovered the University of New Brunswick archives has the papers of Loretta Shaw, a Canadian missionary who gave the Japanese a copy of Anne of Green Gables. A translated version became part of the Japanese school curriculum. Epperly is now researching Shaw's papers.
Like Anne Shirley, Epperly is a great storyteller and has a great sense of curiosity and wonderment."That's the one thing I hope to keep alive for the rest of my life," she says in a recent interview.
She feels at home in Fredericton but the island will always be her dream place.
"And a part of me will always live with Montgomery. Montgomery is a part of my daily life."
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