Canada's Green Gables Museum Hopes for Early Return of Asian Tourists

CHARLOTTETOWN, CANADA - Canada’s decision to reopen its borders to international visitors is encouraging tourism operators in tiny Prince Edward Island, who are hoping the Asian visitors who have become a mainstay of the province’s economy will soon be back. Best known in Asia as the setting for the “Anne of Green Gables” novels, this province in Atlantic Canada has long been a magnet for visitors — especially from Japan and more recently China — who come to visit the house where the century-old children’s stories are set.

But travel restrictions imposed by the federal government last year in response to the coronavirus pandemic brought all of that screeching to a halt, reducing overall visits to the island by 70% compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to provincial officials. Prospects brightened this month when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that fully vaccinated Americans would be able to enter Canada for nonessential travel beginning on August 9, and that visitors from other countries would be admitted as of September 7. That is good news to George Campbell, who operates a museum in the real-life house where author L.M. Montgomery set the early 20th-century stories that have more recently been made into a movie and a Netflix series. Fans of “Green Gables” from China are an important part of his clientele. “We are eager to have Chinese tourists visit our province and my museum,” Campbell told VOA ahead of a reporter’s visit to the white clapboard house with its iconic green gables. “It is wonderful that they will travel so far to come and visit.”