I Preamble

This paper describes and contextualizes the four-year-old community of the Kind_Spirit Internet e-mail list in relation to the works and ideas of L.M. Montgomery (Liu et al., 1994). As M.I.T. psychologist Sherry Turkle's (1996) book Life on the Screen notes, recent recearch has led to a growing understanding of how communities form on-line through chats, bulletin boards and email lists. Her work makes it possible to see how e-mail discussion has formed a community of like-minded Montgomery enthusiasts in a pattern similar to other on-line groups, but in a manner particular to the ideas and writings of Montgomery herself.

II KS List

An e-mail list is a group electronic discussion that takes place among members. These lists predate what most of you know of as the Internet by many years. Members send e-mail messages or posts to a controlling email address such as Kind_Spirit@upei.ca. The message is then sent to everyone on the list from this one account. Members can then respond via e-mail directly to the original poster or to all members.

III History of the list

Kind_Spirit exists in 3 phases that co-founder Jeff describes as pioneer, village and town phases. The pioneer phase started during Jeff's visit to PEI in September of 1994 when he found a letter by Louise Bruck in the magazine Kindred Spirits. She was looking for kindred spirits to communicate with via e-mail. At the time, there was no place on the Internet that Montgomery fans could call their own.

Jeff, Louise, and Kate Lane hoped to set up some forum through which to share ideas, and an e-mail list turned out to be the best option. Jeff set up the e-mail list on a computer where he was studying at the University of Western Ontario. The name of the list, Kind_Spirit, consciously or unconsciously came from Louise's e-mail address KindSpirit@aol.com (Bruck, 1994, 10). The list officially started on November 2nd 1994 with 3 members and 2-3 messages a day (Smith, 1996).

IV End of the Pioneers

By February 1995, there were over 40 members and as many as 20-40 messages a day. This was too much for Jeff and his handmade list software, so he looked around for a new home for the list. A letter from Anna, opened discussions between list members & Lucy Maud Montgomery Institute (LMMI) to see if the institute could take over the list. By the middle of February, the new list was up and running at the University of Prince Edward Island. The pioneer phase of the list as a small dynamic group of individuals had moved into an official home.

The offical Kind_Spirit web page was started in February by Louise and Jeff, to document all the information that they had collected about the list and Montgomery on the net & elsewhere. The information from these pages formed foundations of the LMMI and Government of PEI web pages.

Kind_Spirit had become a village by March 1995, with about 100 members and growing all the time. The village phase was characterized, like a village getting its first church or schoolhouse, by its own charter (a FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions file), a growing community identity as Kindred Spirits, status within a governmental organization, and a sufficiently large population to facilitate different discussion threads, opinions, and a variety of interests too large for any one person to actively participate in all of them. By July 1995, Jeff gave up his participation in running the list to Anna MacDonald at the LMMI, who was now through with her apprenticeship as a list moderator (Coffins & Berge 1997).

V KS Town

By the summer of 1995, the Kind_Spirit community was growing into a town. This was not unduly fast, as Internet use was doubling every few months at this time. As new list members made Kind_Spirit@upei.ca their virtual home, they took ownership over the direction of the list. Much of the focus and tone of the list was moving away from the original intention of some of its pioneers. Whereas original members were wedded to discussions focusing directly on Montgomery's works & life, interest shifted to The Road to Avonlea TV series and what became known as TANs or tangential discussions of personal issues.Members talked about shows they watched, and discussed tea parties. Scholarship and literary criticism survived along with these new topics but as a secondary thread. There were some fascinating flame wars--agressive postings attacking comments of others--and obvious cliques or camps were developing. The pioneers now lived at the edge of this flourishing and dynamic "town". Many members neither knew nor cared about the "roots" of the list, and some early members departed. Others, like the authors of this paper, have gone into a retirement home in a quiet area in the town, and occasionally are heard shouting from our rocking chairs "I'm still alive!" The structure of the list has stabilized at this point. The list has continued to grow, however, to its present size of over 450 members.

VI Virtual Communities

The existence of virtual communities on the Internet that form around a specific theme or text have been documented by Howard Rheingold and Sherry Turkle and countless graduate theses in education, sociology, psychology and anthropology (Rheingold, 1995; Turkle 1995). Virtual worlds based on literary works by Ann McCaffrey, Tolkien, and Canadian writer William Gibson have also developed sustained communities (Benedikt & Ciskowski, 1995). And there are rumours of a virtual simulation based on ANNE OF GREEN GABLES which we are presently trying to locate and visit. These virtual simulations are text-based environments that allow people to "build representations of people, places and things and share them with others" (Nolan, 1998; Weiss & Nolan, 1998).These tend to be role-playing simulations that attempt to enter into characters and situations. The goal is to construct a meaningful social and virtual environment that reflects or re-constructs a literary environment and then communicate in real time as if you were a character in a living novel.

Another version of the virtual community is a socially constructed community of like-minded individuals such as The Well, one of the oldest on-line communities out of San Francisco (Rheingold, 1995). Forums such as The Well use chats, e-mail and bulletin boards to communicate. The key elements that characterize these communities are that they are run by consensus, and people interact in personal and social ways that develop over time as particular habits, character traits and experiences are shared. They exhibit a strong desire for 'real' interaction, and they exhibit the trait of rallying together in a time of need (Rheingold, 1995). Kind_Spirit's interactions contain elements of both roleplaying and social communities, primarily doing so through letter writing and journaling, modes of communication that were among Montgomery's favourites. But the letters are electronic and the journals are collaborative (Harasim et al., 1995). Text-based communication may seem a poor cousin, and limited amid the graphic rich nature of the Internet, but as Anne herself remarks, "when you are poor--there are so many more things you can imagine about" (Montgomery, 1908, p. 252).

VII Tangents

As the list has grown in membership and volume, it has grown in the scope of the topics considered. From the pioneer focus on Montgomery and her writings, Kind_Spirit has grown to include TAN messages that can be seen as expressions of the Island way of life that Montgomery wrote about. Tangental topics are what makes Kind_Spirit the complex community that it is. Kind_Spirit is full of personal events, triumphs and tragedies of the lives of list members. Birthdays and personal discoveries figure highly, as do postings of events in Montgomery related places, and non-list happenings such as Wilda Clark and the Leaskdale Manse restoration; Montgomery Christmas and the Crawford's cookbook from Kathy Gastle in Norval, and most recently with the appearance of Jack Hutton on the list, regular news from the Bala Museum.

VIII Beyond E-mail

The list has grown beyond its own boundaries into real life and web pages. Dozens of home pages exists around the world. So many that Tansy Patch has had to index them, and Meghan has set up a webring to link them all together. While some, like Yuka's LMM in Ontario page, focus on places Montgomery lived in and visited, and Tom is building his dictionary of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES characters, others allow us to visit into the lives, images, and diverse interests of Kind_Spirit members. It is even possible to join Kindred Land, a village of web pages with specific neighbourhoods for pages on Montgomery, the Kind_Spirit list, and Avonlea.

Other examples of tangental activities are listed on this overhead.

IX Literature

In light of the broad definition of 'literature' that this conference embraces, Kind_Spirit is an on-line work-in-progress that continually echoes and interweaves the writings of Montgomery and elements of her life into the ongoing drama of this community; both inseparable from the virtual island on which it has grown, and an intricately woven extension of the writings and life of Montgomery. A possible motto for the community might be, from ANNE OF GREEN GABLES: "Let you and I have a story club all our own and write stories for practice" (Montgomery, 1908, p. 227). The few hundred Montgomery enthusiasts from around the world who discuss her published works, writing and life amid the lively and diverse interactions common to any community, call themselves Kindreds because they see themselves as part of Montgomery's world. They construct consistent characters (Rheingold, 1997), adopt names that reflect Montgomery's characters, such as "Becky of Rainbow Cottage", "Diane of 48 acres", "Ginny of The Buckeye State", "Melanie on the Red Road," and dress up web pages with pictures of themselves in postcard-like situations. They identify with Anne's remark: "Kindred Spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world" (Montgomery, 1908, p. 174). They take up many of the issues that concerned Montgomery and look back with nostalgia to the world she created. Like Montgomery, list members draw from the island experience and past literature's to construct a communal space for the "race that knows Joseph" (Montgomery, 1922, p. 38). This is particularly important in light of the fact that much of Montgomery's writing took place somewhere else (Leaskdale & Norval), and the P.E.I. that she created was a virtual representation in her mind of the community she had lived in. Kind_Spirit members continue in this vein to relocalize Montgomery's world of PEI within their own, much to the consternation of some.

X A Dialogue

The Kind_Spirit list itself has functioned as an ongoing and complex dialogue, a communal literary adventure in which writers come and go, images, references and debates take form and are resolved or forgotten, only to reappear months later. Within the list can be identified all the elements of life that can be found in Montgomery's novels and in her journals, with particular emphasis on the imaginative construction of self and context that is so prominent in ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (Rubio, 1975). Issues of gender, race, and power can be seen amid discussions of commercialism, community and traditional lifestyles "embracing contradiction" evident in Montgomery's own work (Robinson 1995). While much of the list is taken up with 'sentimental' topics like the birth and death of cats and other important events in Kind_Spirit's lives it is perhaps in the depiction of these apparent trivialities that the list members reflect on and embody Montgomery's spirit. A qote from one of Montgomery's letters would not be out of place on this list in 1998, "How dreadful it would be not to love a cat! How much one would miss out of life" (Bolger & Epperly , 1992, p. 164). In her writing, Montgomery showed not only the path of skillful resistance through compromise within a patriarchal system, but how this political act served to build safe spaces for the personal and social experiences that found their way into her writing. Accordingly, the Kind_Spirit list is a 'how to' guide on keeping communication playful and personal at a time when so much that we read and see is mediated by corporations and professional broadcasters.

One particular event illustrates both the diversity and solidarity of the list members. A member posted to the list about an Anti-LMM page that she found. Many flocked to see this christian right rant. While we were all offended by the intolerance, others were also embarassed at the radical attack on their beloved Montgomery and Anne that cited their own Christain beliefs as justification. One member's thoughtful and passionate response is particularly worth noting:

These Kindred Spirits have learned from Montgomery's example, found their own voice and carved out a safe space together amid fragmented social experiences and the high-tech commercialism of the Internet. Marilla's own words can be used to describe the incongruity of electronic Kindred Spirits "...but it weren't no wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there never was in the world, that's what" (Montgomery, 1908, p., 268 ).

Kind_Spirit is itself a literature of an island, a virtual island, and members share many characteristics of physical island dwellers. The list is an island of shared belief, choice, and experience, created by and for members in their own image. And it reflects what they image living in Montgomery's fictional world would be like: "I've always heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living there, but I never expected I really would." (Montgomery, 1908, p., 21). List member's language is a particular combination of informal chat, technical discourse, and phrases from Victorian, biblical, and east coast sources that develops in the particular isolation of on-line discourse. They love the list and the expression it affords them no matter who they are or where they are in the world; Kind_Spirit allows them to share in Montgomery's fictional world of PEI.

XI Community Relations : The Island from Afar

As Montgomery wrote about a PEI that was rapidly changing under the pressure of the 20th century, she actually wrote much of it from Leaskdale and Norval in Ontario. There she wrote of a world that David Weale describes in the Island Magazine (1986) as "a traditional folk society, with an inherited integrity and character, and it provided in its own way for the needs of its in habitants. There was much to extol, and much to criticize." Anne may have sometimes lamented that her island left "no scope for the imagination", however it served her well. Kind_Spirit members are working on the edge of the 21st century where communication is instant and narrative can be communal. And they are writing in a communal place that exists only in the collective consciousness of Cyberspace about the shared experiences as self described members of this "Race that Knows Joseph". They look back to yesterday's created fiction with tomorrow's technology.

This is a community of conflict and commerce, support, gossip, events and tangents, and even the odd academic query. Communication consists of updated versions of topics that can be found in Montgomery's letters and journals. Always alive and ever changing. To quote Anne, "You don't know what's going to happen through the day, and there's so much scope for imagination." (Montgomery, 1908, p., 40). And though people come and go, the list is most often a place that evokes in new members an immediate sense that they have come home to a place of like-minded people that they never thought they would find.

[Insert overhard here. OH - 11 Overhead selection of Smith ]

Can a community be constructed? Is an e-mail list an island? What justifies describing it as these thousands of e-mail messages as a village or a town? Probably the best answer is to look at the people who invest so much of themselves in the day to day goings on in the list. The very public friendship of parennial Kind_Spirit mother figure and her "heart-daughter" Zoie, which reminds many of the relationship of Marilla and Anne, is a wonderful illustration of how the list helps form the community spirit. Mary Evelyn Smith has herself met other 50 Kind_Spirit members in real life. And the drive for members of electronic communities to meet 'in real life' has been well document by Howard Rheingold and others (Rheingold, 1995).

Their community has many of the strengths and weaknesses Montgomery wrote about; touching moments of support and trying events of conflict.

XII The Global Anne Clan

In one sense, nothing is more intentional and constructed as this global community. As Elizabeth Epperly noted, in an address to the Montgomery Clan, "The Montgomery readership clan now has millions of members" (Kindred Spirits, Autumn 1995, 14). With few physical links, they have only their own voices with which to forge a communal sense of identity. But the literary expression of this collective is more rich and diverse than could ever arise from a single pen or keyboard. The community spans the globe, as you can see from the overhead, and members are all looking for "A bosom friend-- an intimate friend, you know--a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul" (Montgomery, 1908, p. 65). As Laura Robinson notes, "Montgomery shows individuals who successfully manage to achieve a level of community acceptance and individual freedom; however, she clearly suggests that clan and community are constructs" (Robinson, 1996, p. 1). The community 'feeling' Montgomery constructed from her experiences and memories of life in P.E.I. is what energizes this group of Kindred Spirits. Like Anne, they desire nothing more than to have a home; "I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home." (Montgomery, 1908, p. 85). They also strive to be part of a community, "But I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself" (Montgomery, 1908, p. 88), yet Anne becomes a beacon of the island community. Like Anne's first forrays into island life, tentative, fragile and full of social faux pas, many members tentatively 'delurk', join in the conversations, and eventually gain prominence among Kindred Spirits.

While our thesis may be hard for some to accept, we think that all you need is a little exposure to the list and its wonderful folk, and you will see that Kind_Spirit "is hard to understand in some respects. But I believe she'll turn out all right yet. And there's one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that she's in." (Montgomery, 1908, p. 116).

As Anne followed Pippa, the community of the Kind_Spirit list makes the world a more rich and dynamic place; Anne's on-line, and all's well with the world.

Postscript The Next Generation

I would like to conclude this paper with an announcement. As of June 1998 there is now a new list called LMM. This new list is entirely focused on Montgomery scholarship sponsored by the Osborne Collections of Early Children's Books of the Toronto Public Library. This list will be moderated, all messages will be read by the list moderator and only topics directly related to Montgomery scholarship will be forwarded to members. We all hope that this forum will integrate well with the myriad of paths that Kindred Spirits have found on the Internet.

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