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books, Elizabeth Hillman Waterston, Halifax NS, homesickness, Hurricane Juan, L.M. Montgomery, L.M. Montgomery's Journals, literature, Mary Henley Rubio, Point Pleasant Park, The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years
L.M. Montgomery went for a walk in Point Pleasant Park in the early evening of Saturday, March 15, 1902, feeling miserable and lonely, and the pines and the spring air cured her of her terrible homesickness—at least temporarily. She was in Halifax for a year, working as a “newspaper woman” at the Daily Echo, and while there were parts of the job that she enjoyed, she disliked the city (“Halifax is the grimiest city in Canada—I know it is!”) and she missed the countryside around her home in Cavendish, PEI.
Point Pleasant Park on March 14, 2014
She writes of the contrast between the “fine and sunny” day, and her feeling of being “oh, so lonesome! There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the two ideas in that sentence and there isn’t. It just came so. There were hundreds of people in the park and I didn’t know one of them. For awhile I hated life!”
It wasn’t until she left the busy shore road and “fled up into a wilderness of pines and along the Serpentine [path] until at last I found myself alone—and then I was no longer lonesome!” She writes, “It was delicious there. The fresh, chill spring air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam and the sky over me was clear and blue—a great inverted cup of blessing. How glorious it was to see the sky once more, undarkened by rows of grimy houses!”
Serpentine Road, March 14, 2014
Pines are her favourite of all trees, Montgomery writes here, and next to them, fir trees. “There is something in these trees—some indefinable charm—that is not found in deciduous trees, beautiful and lovable as these are, too.”
The land at Point Pleasant Park belongs to the British Crown, and the lease is one shilling a year. Many of the trees were destroyed in Hurricane Juan in 2003, but careful management has since revitalized the park and its beautiful forest. The park is one of my favourite places in Halifax — a great place to run, walk, or picnic.
Quotations are from The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1901-1911, ed. Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Recent posts on L.M. Montgomery:
L.M. Montgomery’s Literary Pilgrimage to Concord, Mass.
L.M. Montgomery at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts
Sarah Emsley 
It’s great to hear that PPP is being revitalized. It looked so awful after the hurricane. I can imagine that LMG would be very happy with the improvement. When your parents took us there the first time PPP seemed very special. LH
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It is indeed a very special place. I hope you’ll be able to come back and visit it (and us!) again someday…. The park looked very beautiful yesterday — I’m glad I got those blue sky pictures before the rain started. Today it’s pouring.
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Thank you for this post, Sarah! I am so glad to start my day with the opportunity to reflect on it a bit. There are several things that really strike me. One is that I love (and have always loved and admired) how L.M. Montgomery identifies her need to be alone before she can be free of her lonesomeness, how it is in the solitude that her soul finds peace. But not just peace: freedom from “lonesomeness”. I also love how she says “There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the two ideas in that sentence and there isn’t”. For someone who struggles to always order my thoughts and be clear in my writing, this line of hers always leaps out for me. It is very freeing (if not also a bit rebellious) to give oneself that permission, to say “I can put down these different thoughts and feelings that are in me and I don’t have to make a connection, I can allow them to just be”. Also, it is lovely to be reminded of how fortunate we who live in Halifax are to have Point Pleasant Park.
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You’re welcome, Lisa. I’m happy that you enjoyed reading it, and I share your feeling that we’re very fortunate to have such a wonderful park in our city. It was a real pleasure to read that volume of LMM’s journals — thank you again for suggesting that I review it for ABT. I like what you say about the apparent contradictions in what she says in this passage. When she’s lonely, she’s even more keen to be alone. And where does that idea come from — that sense that one ought to be happy on a sunny day?
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The problem for me is that reading your post has made me miss…Halifax! Thanks for the visit to PPP through LMM’s eyes. From Calgary….
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Thanks for visiting, Sandra. I’m glad you enjoyed the post — and I’m sorry to have reawakened your homesickness for Halifax! On my first trips to Point Pleasant, as a child, I found that the park intensified my own homesickness — because I was homesick for Alberta, and walking by the ocean only made me miss the prairies more. But now I think of both Nova Scotia and Alberta as home. I hope you get a chance to come back to Halifax before too long.
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What is the cure for the all too common affliction of being homesick FOR Point Pleasant?
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That is an excellent question, and probably not one Montgomery considered. Although, given that we know how much she liked Concord, I’d say that if she lived in Boston, like you, she’d go for a walk in Concord to try to cure her lonesomeness. Or perhaps for a walk along the Charles River? Lovely as living in the Emerald Necklace is, I can see why you miss PPP.
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And to all, a good year!
L&L
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Hello and best wishes to all of you for a great year as well. Merry Christmas!
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Weird that many went and not all! Hope it makes it there this time. LH
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