In 1989, a young girl named Sara Stanley skipped across the TV screen in blond curls and a pinafore, and into the hearts of thousands of viewers.
Played by the Toronto-based actress Sarah Polley, she was the star of the seven-year, Lucy Maud Montgomery-inspired series Road to Avonlea, which aired in Canada on CBC Television and in the United States on the Disney Channel.
When it ended its run in 1996, fans were distraught, mainly because it was one of the few remaining feel-good family shows -- cut from the same cloth as better-have-a-hankie-handy programs such as The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.
Unable to turn their backs on the bucolic, turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island town of Avonlea, fans in far-flung locales around the globe stayed connected through the Internet, chatting about their favourite episodes and characters such as the inimitable Hetty King (played by Jackie Burroughs), the geeky but decent Jasper Dale (R.H. Thomson), and the handsome boy from the wrong side of the tracks, Gus Pike (Michael Mahonen).
Then two years ago, one diehard Road to Avonlea supporter, Ruth Williams of Southfield, Mich., had an idea: She'd organize the first Avonlea Convention. Last July, Toronto's Black Creek Pioneer Village hosted the inaugural event, which drew fans from across Canada, the United States and Hungary. This year, the two-day Avonlea pow-wow -- which has been shortened to AvCon 2005 -- will be held from tomorrow through Sunday at the same venue.
Williams, 45, hopes to attract several hundred Avonlea aficionados. "I figured if fans can organize conventions for Star Trek [the 19th-annual Toronto Trek convention took place recently]and Andy Griffith [thousands flock to Mount Airy, N.C., to celebrate that show's anniversary each September during Mayberry Days] then why can't we?", Williams asks.
Soon after coming up with the idea, she set up an organizing committee of a half-dozen people.
First, they wrote the show's creators at Sullivan Entertainment to ask permission. Once they received the green light from the Toronto company, Williams and the others put together a rather lofty mission statement: "To celebrate Road to Avonlea and Anne of Green Gables's creator, Lucy Maud Montgomery, while working toward improving the quality of life for all."
Last summer, Williams and her husband hopped a train from Windsor to Toronto. Highlights of the convention (which can be found at ) included talks from some of the show's former stars such as Thomson (who spoke of, among other things, the state of television today with "too much violence and too much cleavage"), Harmony Cramp (the first Cecily), and Mahonen (his Gus Pike character enticed a handful of young women to come to Toronto last year from California).
Polley, the most high-profile member of the cast, could not make it in 2004 because she was shooting a film last summer in Vancouver. Regretfully, Williams explains, the actress is otherwise engaged again this year. However, AvCon 2005 attendees will get to meet the former married Dales, Olivia King Dale (played by Mag Ruffman) and Jasper Dale (Thomson), as well as hear from the show's musical composer, John Welsman.
Delegates also heard lectures on turn-of-the-century dress, and took day trips to some of the program's best-known locations, such as the King family farm near Uxbridge, Ont. They also held a charity auction of show memorabilia, including a hat worn by Hetty King and an original script.
Williams says she got hooked on the TV show about midway through its run when she happened to catch an episode broadcast on the CBC from nearby Windsor. "I'd been a big fan of the Anne of Green Gables books as a kid, and I love the Victorian era and the simplicity of life back then. The stories remind me of tales my grandmother used to tell."
The biggest headache, Williams adds, was getting approval to start a convention from the federal and provincial governments. In the end, organizers set it up as a non-profit organization, which last year supported the American Cancer Society and the Ontario chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This year, AvCon is sponsoring Toronto-based ShakespeareWorks as well as Doctors Without Borders.
Bobby and Lynda Naranjo, who live in Mississauga, attended AvCon a year ago and will be back at this weekend's meet-and-greet. Ironically, Bobby Naranjo says their passion for the TV show was responsible for them meeting -- and six months later, marrying -- in the first place.
Naranjo, a retired 62-year-old telephone technician from New York, got hooked on the show in the early nineties. He joined some chat lists on the Internet, and found out about an Avonlea tea (apparently there are many of these genteel soirees held annually by Avonlea fans around the world) that Lynda was hosting in Ontario in August of 1998. He and roughly a dozen other Avonlea fans drove north for the weekend.
He met Lynda, who is now in her late 40s, and the rest, as they say, is history.
He says he's glad he's had the chance to see some of the show's stars.
"It was amazing to meet Cecily [Harmony Cramp]" Naranjo says, "and see how she's grown up."
He adds that the girls from California were thrilled to meet Mahonen, who is from the former mining town of Kirkland Lake, in northeastern Ontario. "After he spoke to us, we all went out for dinner with him to Kelsey's," he recounts. "The Americans were floored that he'd do that. You don't do that with American actors, you know?"
After AvCon 2004, the same group of young women travelled to North Bay, Ont., where Mahonen was appearing in a local theatre production of The Tempest.
Naranjo says he and his wife are fans of Road to Avonlea because of the intrinsic sweetness of the stories and the emphasis on family values. "There just isn't enough of that type of programming made any more."
Gayle MacDonald