Famed Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery lived her final years in this Toronto home

While she grew up on Prince Edward Island, famed Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery lived her final years in Toronto.

Montgomery, whose 150th birthday is this week, lived in a home in Toronto’s west end.

Best known for Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery published 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems and 30 essays. Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, and sequels live on through television and theatre adaptations.

Born on Nov. 30, 1874 in New London, Prince Edward Island, Montgomery lived in many cities and towns across Canada.

In 1911, Montgomery married Reverend Ewen Macdonald and the couple moved to Leaskdale, Ontario. MacDonald took a job as pastor at a local church. They moved to Norval, Ontario in 1926 and finally to Toronto in 1935 after Macdonald’s retirement.

The couple chose Toronto because Montgomery wanted to be closer to the city’s literary scene, according to the Anne of Green Gables blog.

Montgomery around 1930. Photo: Toronto Public Library Archives

Montgomery purchased a home at 210 Riverside Dr. in Toronto’s Swansea neighbourhood for $12,500. She named the home “Journey’s End” and wrote her last novels Anne of Windy Poplars, Jane of Lantern Hill and Anne of Ingleside in the home.

The four-level, old English-style home is under private ownership today. It was listed as a heritage property in 1979.

Just down the street is a small park named in her honour with a Heritage Toronto plaque.

Sadly, her final days were not happy.

Kate Macdonald Butler, Montgomery’s granddaughter, wrote an essay for the Globe and Mail in 2008, which revealed the author suffered from depression.

Montgomery died in her Toronto home in 1942 at the age of 67. The official cause of death was listed as heart failure but Butler said the family believed Montgomery died by suicide. Butler said the family hid a suicide note but she wanted to come forward to lift some of the stigma around mental illness.

There are several events to mark Montgomery’s 150th birthday.

Prince Edward Island has a special photo exhibit, Montgomery’s birth home has an open house, and there is an island scavenger hunt and other activities.

Maud’s “Big Birthday Party” is on at the Uxbridge Arena, which is just south of Leaksdale and an East Coast Kitchen Party in Leaksdale on Nov. 30.

In Toronto, there is an exhibition, Maud’s World: Celebrating 150 Years of Lucy Maud Montgomery, at the Toronto Public Library’s Lillian H. Smith Branch, 239 College St.