One of my first jobs in Canada, after arriving from London in the late 1990s, was working on the set of the Road to Avonlea television series in Toronto. Many of the crew and cast members had been involved in this production for years and were like family members; it reminded me of English soap operas such as Coronation Street. I had never heard of Anne of Green Gables and was intrigued to hear of its so called importance to Canadian culture. I tried reading the early 20th century novels but found them asinine and sugar-coated. I struggled to understand why they were so significant, because to me, they were on a par with Enid Blyton stories. Of course Sullivan Entertainment does an amazing job of popularizing its "Anne" television series but still, a Canadian icon?

Now as I analyze the phenomenon again I begin to understand Anne's relevance to Canadian culture. She filled a void for immigrants of belonging (within a new province and new family) and provided a sense of home - a feeling of familiarity and comfort. According to Elizabeth DeBlois, the director of the L. M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, the only academic institute for a Canadian novelist: "In a sense, everybody can identify with something in Anne's world. We're not all orphans, thank goodness, but a lot of people can sympathize with the things she's looking for in life because they're things everybody wants. She wants a home. She wants people to love her and she wants friends. Who doesn't want those things? It's a universal message."

I found there was a wide discrepancy between the reactions of men and women to the novels. On the one hand many male readers said they were trivial and not relevant to their own experiences, but on the other hand, women described them as important and supportive, particularly during their most formative years. Was this another sign of men being out of touch with their feminine side or are the books specifically aimed at women as central to the idea of home?

There is no question that those who do support Anne often do so strongly and passionately. "I never did see Anne as a goody two-shoes because any kid who takes a slate and slams it over somebody's head because of their temper can't be," says Megan Follows, who at the age of 16 played Anne Shirley in the Anne of Green Gables TV movies. She also disagrees with those who dismiss Anne as a pretty period piece. A self-described Wizard of Oz fan who only read Anne of Green Gables when she auditioned for the role, Follows believes Anne's story tackles the challenges of gender and class. "It's easy to put a Pollyanna stamp on Anne, but I think it's a generalization which does a disservice to what Lucy Maud wrote. The sense of the authoritative voice of the elders, or the rigid black-and-white environment that that child comes into, is not romanticized. What that little girl does out of necessity, and for her survival, is create an extremely rich inner life. And it's her saving grace. It saves her when she's up against a tremendous amount of rejection, and what she falls back on - and what I would imagine is what Lucy Maud herself fell back on - is her creative spirit and the fact that she could see a tremendous amount of beauty in times and environments that could have been quite stark."

It has been said that Anne has a feminist edge too and former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who is on the international advisory board of the L. M. Montgomery Institute, agrees: "I think it is a feminist book. Anne makes sacrifices in the book. Anne does not go straight on to teachers' college because Marilla is left alone when Matthew dies and she decides she'll stay home and help Marilla. But that in no way holds her up because later on she goes to college after she's got everything settled. She manages to make that balance between the personal and the professional, which is still a lesson to everyone." Clarkson says that at age 10, "I identified with her. To me she was somebody who helped me - and I think does help a lot of immigrants' children - understand what Canada was like."

Canada's immigration policies in the 19th century were highly restrictive and based on racial discrimination. The main purpose of the legislation was to restrict certain races or groups from entering the country. For example, the 1885 Chinese Immigration Act was an attempt to restrict Chinese immigration by placing a head tax on every immigrant from the Chinese mainland. Those who were allowed to immigrate in the 19th century kept to themselves and held on to their traditions and culture. It was only later in the 20th century that the federal government encouraged multiculturalism, to be followed by an attempt at integration. Those arriving in the 19th and early twentieth centuries in fairly isolated areas, such as Prince Edward Island (PEI), clung to their previous lives and found comfort in the sense of belonging that came from their shared histories. The strong sense of church, school, storytelling and book learning were brought over from Scotland. In her novels Montgomery continues this tradition and builds upon it. Thus an immigrant arriving from afar, or even a young girl from an orphanage, can take comfort in finding the sense of a homeland and a feeling of belonging to both a family and the province as a whole.

Samantha Currie who plays Anne in this production says about her character: "I think she has so many qualities that are appealing to so many people. I find her very magical, inquisitive, intelligent, full of faults (making her VERY relatable), joyful and unintentionally funny. She represents the child in all of us. And maybe she is compelling or loved because she is so relatable. We want her to succeed. Feeling her heartache, love, joys and defeats, she and the other characters of the story take us right along with them, sharing their adventures and their way of life . . . a little slice of what might have been."

When Montgomery published her first novel, Anne of Green Gables in 1908, it became an almost instant bestseller in Canada and the work has remained in print for just over a century in English as well as in many other languages. She published 22 novels and books of short stories, as well as a poetry book, and a brief autobiography. She left behind many published and unpublished articles written for various magazines. Thousands of tourists visit PEI annually to see the "sacred sites" of the novels and the imagined landscapes. A concomitant industry exists in Anne-related commodities that adds to the televised series, a musical and an animated series.

In 1923 Montgomery became the first Canadian woman to become a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in the United Kingdom. In 1935 she was elected to L'institute de France and in the same year received an Order of the British Empire (OBE). Montgomery was declared a person of national historic significance in 1943 and for many people L. M. Montgomery is Canada. There is no escaping the fact that Anne is a force to be reckoned with!