Explore the real-world places that appear in Anne of Windy Poplars by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Windy Poplars, Summerside High School, The Pringle Family Home, Spook's Lane, Summerside Harbour and 8 more.
Spook's Lane, Summerside — Anne's tower room home
Windy Poplars is the charming old house on Spook's Lane where Anne rents a tower room from the widows Aunt Kate MacComber and Aunt Chatty MacComber, and their irrepressible housekeeper Rebecca Dew. From this cozy refuge Anne writes her long, loving letters to Gilbert Blythe, describing all of Summerside's peculiarities and her battles with the Pringles. The tower room becomes Anne's sanctuary — a place of lamplight, geraniums on the sill, and the wind singing through the poplar trees — and the emotional and narrative heart of the entire novel.
Summerside, incorporated in 1877, developed as a shipbuilding and trading town on Prince Edward Island's northern shore. Its residential streets were lined with Victorian and Edwardian homes featuring the kind of distinctive architectural detail — bay windows, gables, and tower rooms — that Montgomery lovingly described in her fiction.
Summerside retains much of its Victorian residential character. Heritage streetscapes around the downtown core feature homes that evoke the style of Windy Poplars, and the town actively celebrates its Montgomery connection as part of PEI's broader literary tourism industry.
Central Summerside — Anne's school as principal
Summerside High School is where Anne takes up her post as principal, the first challenge of her independent adult life. The Pringle clan — who dominate the school board and the town's social hierarchy — had wanted one of their own in the position and make Anne's early tenure miserable through passive resistance, social snubbing, and outright obstruction. Anne's eventual triumph over their hostility, particularly after she wins over the formidable Aunt Katherine Pringle by uncovering a long-buried family secret, is one of the book's most satisfying arcs.
Summerside has had a tradition of secondary education dating to the 19th century. Prince Street School and later institutions served the town's growing population as it became PEI's second-largest city. The idea of a young woman as school principal would have been progressive but not unheard of in early 20th-century Maritime Canada.
Three Oaks Senior High School serves Summerside today. The original historic school buildings have been replaced over the decades, though the town's commitment to education remains central to its civic identity.
Elm Street area, Summerside — seat of Pringle power
The Pringles are described as Summerside's 'royal family,' a large, interconnected clan that has dominated the town's social and political life for generations. Their grand family home represents the entrenched power that Anne must navigate and ultimately dismantle through charm, patience, and the discovery of old family secrets. When Anne finally wins over the clan's austere matriarch, Aunt Katherine Pringle, by returning a love letter that protects a long-dead Pringle's reputation, the entire family's hostility melts away and Anne is embraced by Summerside society.
Summerside's older residential streets near the waterfront were historically home to the town's merchant and professional elite, who built substantial homes to reflect their social standing. Family dynasties of the Pringle type — deeply rooted, interconnected, and fiercely protective of reputation — were a recognized feature of small Maritime communities in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Several of Summerside's historic homes from this era survive along streets like Summer and Central, some converted to bed-and-breakfasts or professional offices. The neighbourhood retains its quiet residential dignity.
Residential lane near Windy Poplars — Anne's daily walk
Spook's Lane is the evocatively named little street on which Windy Poplars sits, and it provides the atmospheric backdrop to many of Anne's letters to Gilbert. Anne describes the lane's moods through the seasons — its maples turning gold in autumn, its snow-drifted quiet in winter — with the lyricism that characterizes all of her correspondence. The lane's whimsical name delights Anne and contributes to the sense that Summerside, for all its Pringle-inflicted difficulties, is a place of genuine charm and wonder.
Small residential lanes with colourful local names were common in 19th-century Maritime towns. Montgomery had a keen eye for the atmospheric potential of named places and frequently used real PEI place-name conventions to give her fictional settings a sense of rootedness and local texture.
Summerside's older residential neighbourhoods still feature charming secondary streets and lanes lined with mature trees. The town's heritage district preserves much of the streetscape character that Montgomery drew upon for her fiction.
Bedeque Bay waterfront — the town's seafaring heritage
The harbour and the broad waters of Bedeque Bay form the atmospheric backdrop to Summerside throughout the novel. Anne frequently describes the view of the water from her tower room and mentions the smell of the sea and the sound of the wind coming off the bay. The maritime setting reinforces the novel's sense of Anne being at a threshold — between her college years and her adult life, between Prince Edward Island's rural world and the wider future she and Gilbert are building toward.
Summerside's harbour on Bedeque Bay was central to the town's 19th-century prosperity. It was a major hub for the PEI shipbuilding industry, with dozens of vessels constructed in local yards between the 1840s and the 1880s. The harbour also supported a significant trade in potatoes, lumber, and other island products.
Summerside Harbour has been transformed into a recreational waterfront with a boardwalk, the Spinnakers' Landing complex, and the Summerside Lobster Festival grounds. The waterfront is one of the town's most visited areas and offers sweeping views of Bedeque Bay.
Visit: Spinnakers' Landing (landmark)
Cavendish, PEI — Anne's true home, longed for throughout the novel
Though Anne is away from Green Gables throughout the novel, it haunts every page as the emotional anchor of her identity. Her letters to Gilbert are full of longing for the familiar — for Marilla, for the white-blossomed apple trees, for the smell of the old farmhouse — and it is the deep-rootedness of her Green Gables childhood that gives her the strength and warmth to triumph in Summerside. Green Gables represents everything Anne carries within her even as she builds her independent life.
The farmhouse that inspired Green Gables was the home of Montgomery's cousins, the McNeill family, in Cavendish. Montgomery spent much of her childhood near Cavendish and used the PEI landscape she loved as the setting for the Anne books. The property became a national landmark almost immediately after the publication of Anne of Green Gables in 1908.
Green Gables Heritage Place is administered by Parks Canada within Prince Edward Island National Park. The house has been restored to its late 19th-century appearance and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year from around the world, particularly from Japan, where Anne of Green Gables has a devoted cultural following.
Visit: Green Gables Heritage Place (historic site)
Windy Poplars, Spook's Lane — heart of domestic life
Rebecca Dew is one of Montgomery's great comic creations — the opinionated, sharp-tongued, fiercely loyal housekeeper of Windy Poplars who becomes one of Anne's most devoted allies. Her kitchen is the scene of many of the novel's warmest moments: Rebecca grumbling magnificently about the cat, Dusty Miller, producing spectacular meals, and dispensing her inimitable opinions on Summerside and its inhabitants. It is Rebecca who keeps the household running and who, in her gruff way, loves Anne wholeheartedly.
The figure of the devoted and opinionated domestic servant is a fixture of Maritime fiction and social history. In rural and small-town PEI of the early 20th century, housekeepers and 'hired girls' were central to the functioning of middle-class households, often becoming quasi-family members over decades of service.
The domestic traditions Rebecca Dew represents are celebrated at various heritage sites across PEI. The Eptek Art & Culture Centre in Summerside and the PEI Museum system preserve artifacts and stories of Island domestic life from the era Montgomery depicted.
Central Summerside — nerve centre of Anne's correspondence
Anne's letters to Gilbert Blythe are the structural backbone of the entire novel, and the post office is thus a place of profound narrative importance. Anne dispatches her long, richly detailed accounts of Summerside life — its characters, its gossip, its secrets, and her own emotional weather — and receives Gilbert's replies that sustain her through the difficult years of their long engagement. The novel is essentially an epistolary love story, and every letter passes through Summerside's postal system.
Summerside's post office has occupied several downtown locations over its history. Canada's postal system, federalized in 1867, was the lifeblood of communication in rural and small-town communities across PEI, connecting isolated households to family members, institutions, and the wider world.
Canada Post maintains a postal outlet in Summerside. The historic downtown post office building, a handsome federal structure, still stands and contributes to the architectural character of Summerside's central commercial district.
Visit: Summerside Downtown Historic District (landmark)
Province House & downtown — the island's capital city
Charlottetown represents the wider world of PEI that exists beyond Summerside's borders, and it is the city through which Anne would have passed on her journeys to and from the island. The provincial capital and its institutions — including Charlottetown's social and cultural life — form the broader context in which Summerside's own civic pride and social hierarchies make sense. Montgomery uses the island's geography to frame Summerside as a complete world unto itself.
Charlottetown, founded in 1765 and named for Queen Charlotte, is the capital and largest city of Prince Edward Island. It is famously the site of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, at which the Fathers of Confederation first discussed the union that became Canada in 1867. Province House, where the conference was held, is one of Canada's most historically significant buildings.
Province House National Historic Site has been meticulously restored and reopened after a major restoration project. Charlottetown's downtown remains the cultural and governmental hub of PEI, featuring the Confederation Centre of the Arts — which has staged the long-running musical Anne of Green Gables since 1965.
Visit: Province House National Historic Site (historic site)
New London, PEI — where Montgomery's life began
Though not a location in the novel itself, the small house in New London where Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on November 30, 1874, is the origin point of the entire Anne universe. Montgomery drew deeply on her own experiences as a young woman navigating society's expectations, the longing for love across distance, and the challenge of professional life — all themes central to Anne of Windy Poplars — and her birthplace is where that sensibility first took root.
Montgomery was born in this modest home to Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. Her mother died when she was 21 months old, and Montgomery went to live with her maternal grandparents in Cavendish. The New London birthplace remained in family memory as the starting point of a remarkable life.
The L.M. Montgomery Birthplace in New London is operated as a heritage site open to visitors. It contains original Montgomery artifacts, including her wedding dress and personal scrapbooks, and is one of the key sites on PEI's L.M. Montgomery heritage trail.
Visit: L.M. Montgomery Birthplace (historic site)
Waterfront Drive, Summerside — celebrating Island history and culture
While not a location in the novel, the Eptek Centre stands on Summerside's waterfront as the modern custodian of the town's history and culture — exactly the kind of civic pride that the Pringles and other Summerside families embodied in Montgomery's fiction. The social world Anne encounters in the novel, with its deep investment in family reputation, local history, and community standing, is precisely the culture that institutions like this preserve and interpret.
The Eptek National Exhibition Centre was established in Summerside to celebrate PEI's history and culture. The building itself is a heritage structure on the waterfront, and it has hosted exhibitions ranging from Mi'kmaq cultural history to the story of Summerside's shipbuilding era and its 20th-century aviation heritage at the former CFB Summerside.
The Eptek Art & Culture Centre continues to operate on Summerside's waterfront, hosting rotating and permanent exhibitions on PEI history, culture, and art. It is part of the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation network and is open to the public.
Visit: Eptek Art & Culture Centre (museum)
Prince Edward Island National Park — the island's wild shore
The red-sand beaches and wild dunes of the PEI north shore are woven into the fabric of Anne's imagination and identity throughout all the novels. In Anne of Windy Poplars, the island landscape persists as a presence in Anne's letters — she compares Summerside's gentler bay views with the fierce beauty of the north shore she grew up near, and the landscape is always a register of her emotional state. The sea is both comfort and restlessness for Anne, a reminder of home and of the wide world.
The dunes and red-sand beaches of Cavendish have been shaped over thousands of years by the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The area was home to Mi'kmaq peoples for millennia before European settlement. The national park was established in 1937, incorporating the lands that Montgomery knew from her childhood and immortalized in her writing.
Prince Edward Island National Park encompasses the Cavendish beaches and dunes and is one of the most visited national parks in Canada. The area offers swimming, hiking, and the famous red sand shores that have become an internationally recognized symbol of PEI.
Visit: Prince Edward Island National Park — Cavendish Beach (park)
Borden-Carleton, PEI — the island's threshold
In Anne's era, passage to and from Prince Edward Island was by ferry, a crossing that marked a real and symbolic threshold between the island world and the mainland. Anne's journeys between Summerside and her life at Redmond College in Nova Scotia, or her travels back to Green Gables, all involved this island-crossing — a moment of transition that Montgomery's characters always feel keenly. The island's separateness is fundamental to the psychology of isolation, community, and fierce local identity that Montgomery depicts so precisely.
Before Confederation Bridge opened in 1997, PEI was served by ferry crossings from Borden (now Borden-Carleton) to Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick. In Montgomery's time, the crossing was made by steamship or ice boats in winter, a journey that could be arduous and unpredictable. The island's isolation shaped its distinct culture profoundly.
Confederation Bridge, opened May 31, 1997, is the longest bridge over ice-covered water in the world at 12.9 kilometres. The Borden-Carleton gateway now features the Gateway Village, a complex of shops and services. The bridge fundamentally changed PEI's relationship with mainland Canada.
Visit: Gateway Village (landmark)
More by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables locations map · Anne of the Island locations map · All Lucy Maud Montgomery books