Kevin Sullivan explained that he set the third Anne of Green Gables film, The Continuing Story, in the time period of the first world war because he wanted to make viewers aware of how attached they had become to the innocent world of Anne’s childhood. Their appreciation for its loveliness would be heightened if the story touched on stark areas of contrast in Anne’s mature life. In this way, An Avonlea Christmas produces the same result because it focuses on the war and exactly how it affected the King family.
It is worth taking a look at the life of someone who actually did live through this transformative time, when a peaceful country like Canada became tangled up in international tragedy. L.M. Montgomery, author of the Anne novels and the books that inspired Road to Avonlea, recorded in her journals and letters exactly how she felt about the politics of the war, its outcomes and ultimately the effect it had on her own peace of mind.
On August 2, 1915, she wrote to her friend G.B. MacMillan, who lived in Scotland.
“You began your letter in April. It seems a century since then. If we ‘should count time by heart-throbs’ I, and I suppose all thinking people have lived several eons since this day year. For a year I have not wakened one morning without miserably asking ‘What will be the war news to-day?’ For a year I have never seen my husband going out for the mail without a horrible sinking of the heart and a dread of his return. Lately, it has been so terrible—this German sweep against Russia. And nothing elsewhere to offset it. What are the Allies doing? Why is it that they have seemingly been able to make no effort where they should have made most. It is a sickening query. It seems to me that the situation is more critical than it has been ever since the Germans were so near Paris. Canada seems in a veritable war-flame. We are awake to the seriousness of the situation at last. But is it in time? At all events it is certain that we are in for another winter of war, with all the strain that implies.”
To read more about Montgomery’s views on the war, take a look at The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921.
Source: My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery
