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by Alexandra Heilbron, Toronto, Ontario

Source: The Avonlea Traditions Chronicle, Issue No. 21, Autumn 1997.

When I arrived at Toronto's Sheraton Hotel, Mrs. Luella Macdonald Veijalainen was already there, patiently waiting for me in an armchair in the main lobby. She smiled warmly as I introduced myself, and rose to shake my hand.

Active both socially and politically, she had an event to attend in the evening in a ballroom of the hotel, and had come prepared to meet friends whom she hadn't seen in awhile: she was proudly carrying a photo of her first grandchild - LMM's great-great grandson. Luella's only daughter, Karen, gave birth to Erik John Kenneth Allen on April 25, 1996.

Luella had brought another photo as well, this one at my request - a beautifully framed photo of her grandmother, LMM holding her, baby Luella in front of the Norval Manse in 1934.

What clearly comes to mind when you think about your grandmother?

"I remember my grandmother as just an older person and she had that older age palsy kind of thing, the shaking hands. It was probably the effects of veronal, but I don't think she was using those things all the time.

"She always made sure I had books to read. A book publisher from Australia contacted her for her opinion on some children's books. She thought, 'What better person to criticize kids' books, than a kid.' I remember one avidly, it was Blinky Bill, a koala bear. It was fantastic. Another one was People of the Dark, a story about aborigines. They stuck in my head. There were other ones but these two, I remember.

"Another thing about her, she always gave gifts that would last. I still have a little carnival glass plate that she gave me. I still use it to serve cookies on. Also a picture of Lover's Lane. They were both Christmas presents, something that you keep, not something you just play with and get tired of."

What was her usual demeanor - happy, serious, sombre?

"I really can't remember. The thing is, to me, she wasn't any different than my mother. Well, she was older, of course. But that's just the way we were. We weren't hanging from the chandeliers back then. We were, shall we say, 'the Scottish type.' Even if you're not living there, in Scotland.

"It makes me mad when I read something that she said about her 'stern grandparents.' That's what people were like then! Her grandparents weren't any different from anyone else. That's just the way people were. You acted the way you were supposed to. Of course, back in those days, too, if you were the last child left in the home, you were responsible for looking after the older person. That's the way things were done."

Did you have any idea when you were small that she was a famous person?

"Well, I read very early. I loved reading. So I was probably aware quite early on."

Do you have a favourite book that she wrote?

"I like Anne, and that melodramatic Kilmeny of the Orchard. When I was a kid, I loved that one. I would have probably been in grade seven or eight when I read it. I remember my mom getting it for me. In later years, I came across A Tangled Web. I like that, it was good. You see, there were different ones that I liked, for certain reasons."

How did she dress in daily life?

Well, just cotton dresses, like everybody else. Housedresses. That was the day of the housedress and an apron. Some dresses that you see on women now in the summertime, going somewhere, that was a housedress when I was a kid. The type of things that you'd be wearing to wash dishes. And you'd have an apron on. If you suddenly went running down the street, 'Oh, my god' you'd quickly take the apron off. Now instead of housedresses, people wear jeans."

Luella's father was Chester, LMM's oldest son. He married Luella Reid in 1933, and Luella Agnes Josephine Macdonald was their first child. They had another child, Cameron Craig Stuart, in 1936, but a few years later, Chester and Luella divorced.

Did your father visit you and your brother after the divorce?

"I only saw him twice. But that was the terms of the agreement. It was a long time ago and they thought, in their misguided way, that we would be better off if we didn't see the other half, that we'd be getting more upset or something.

"I would have been seven-and-a-half when the split came, and when I was eleven, my dad wanted to set up a visit. So my mom took us to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and we looked around first, then she sat us on a bench at the end of a long corridor and said, 'Now you sit there and don't you move.' Then she went to the other end of the corridor and watched until she saw my dad arrive near us, and then she left.

"We went out to dinner, to the Ontario Club. Then we went to the Royal Alexandra Theatre and saw Clarence Day's play, Life With Father.

"I remember that play - someone said 'damn' on the stage and I was excited because he said damn on the stage! I never forgot it! (Laughs) There wasn't too much of that except for the famous line from Gone With The Wind. So this 'damn' on the stage was really something."

What was it like to see him after all that time? Was it like seeing a stranger?

No, I enjoyed that day. I didn't feel uncomfortable or anything like that. He was good with kids. And of course, the divorce was long since so I wasn't really thinking of that, I wasn't thinking, Are we going to get back together."

Although Chester and his new wife had two children, Luella didn't see her half-siblings for many years. While attending an unveiling of a portrait of LMM, she saw a man across the room and thought that he looked a bit like her brother.

"It turned out that he was looking at me, saying to his wife, 'She looks like my sister.' We weren't introduced until later. That's the first time I met David [my half-brother]. It was funny because we were going camping down east, my husband and the two kids and I, and David and his wife said, 'Well, we're going down too!' So we camped together at Park Corner. Actually, my husband and kids slept in the tent and I slept in a room in the Campbell house, [now the Anne of Green Gables Museum]. I slept under the crazy quilt that my grandmother made, the one that's now in the glass case there."

Luella worked as a registered nurse for many years before recently retiring. She and Antti (pronounced Andy) had three children, two boys and a girl. John Erik, the middle child, was hit by a car and killed while delivering newspapers. He was twelve years old. Luella's oldest son, Lauri Montgomery, died only a couple of years ago and her husband a few years before that.

Despite the tragedy in her life, Luella has remained active and involved in the community. As a volunteer for the Big Sisters Organization, she has been a Big Sister for two girls at different times.

"I just got the thrill of my lifetime," Luella said with a delighted smile, "because I saw the person who's in charge of the Big Sister office in Welland and she said, Lori (that's my first little sister) has just joined the Big Sister Organization and she has a little sister now."

Has being LMM's granddaughter affected your life in any way?

"Oh, no. How do you mean?"

People wanting to talk to you about her, asking you to make public appearances at various functions….

"Oh, well, that's just been lately."

Can you relate a recent experience?

"Some young kids were putting on an Anne of Green Gables play in Welland. It sounded rather interesting, so I called to see if I could get a ticket. Before the thing started, it was announced that LMM's granddaughter was in the audience. There were some people there who knew who I was, but they don't make a big deal of it. Well, good heavens. And of course, I had to stand up.

"Intermission time, I was surrounded by kids and finally I had to say, listen, I've got to go and get a drink of water. They wanted my autograph, and I thought, 'I didn't do anything.' But they wanted me to sign their programs and stuff like that. Sometimes people go and buy one of my grandmother's books and want me to sign it, and I say, 'But I didn't write this - this isn't my book.' Oh well, reflected glory and all that."

Have you seen Road to Avonlea or Anne of Green Gables on television?

"I like the Anne of Green Gables series. Road to Avonlea, I enjoy it as a series, it's fun. But not as an LMM thing. The language they used is not the language that was spoken back then. The things they were talking about, tempers or emotions, they didn't use those terms. They might say, 'Control your temper' or something like that, but they didn't talk about stuff the way they did on the show. Language is different now than it was back then. I guess they were doing it for today's audience.

"I met Jon Crombie who played Gilbert when I was at a restaurant in Toronto with my Little Sister. I couldn't resist - I said, 'Look, there's Gilbert.' He ended up staying for ages. We were talking for so long that he was squatting at table level, he was so interested. We had a very pleasant chat."

When your grandmother died, you were only eight years old. Did you go to the funeral?

"Oh, no. I just read about it in the newspaper. I remember getting weepy and crying. We didn't know until it was in the paper."

Regrettably, it was time for Luella to go to the ballroom for the reception and our chat came to an end. I was extremely touched when she generously left the beautifully framed photo of her grandmother and herself with me, for use in the magazine, to be shared with the readers of The Avonlea Traditions Chronicle.

The photograph usually hangs on a wall of Luella's home devoted to her grandmother, right beside the Lover's Lane photograph that was a Christmas gift to a small, appreciative girl so many years ago.

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