"…the Lake of Shining Waters was blue — blue — blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past all modes and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquillity unbroken by fickle dreams."
-Anne of the Island
L.M. Montgomery's inspiration for Anne's Lake of Shining Waters was a pond at Park Corner just next to the Campbell Homestead, home of her uncle John Campbell.
It is a beautiful spot to visit. These days, there is a lovely little garden with benches and a gazebo nearby. The staff of the Anne of Green Gables Museum, which now resides in the Campbell Homestead, told us that tourists from all over the world come to be married at the shores of the pond.
The pond is certainly much smaller than the lake described in the Anne books, but that's the power of imagination. Montgomery admitted in her journals that some inspiration may also have come from the Cavendish Pond.
“‘The Lake of Shining Waters’ is generally supposed to be the Cavendish Pond. This is not so. The pond at Park Corner is the one I had in mind. But I suppose that a good many of the effects of light and shadow I have seen on the Cavendish pond figured unconsciously in my descriptions; and certainly the hill from which Anne caught her first glimpse of it was ‘Laird’s Hill’ where I have often stood at sunset,
enraptured with the beautiful view of shining pond and crimson-brimmed harbor and dark blue sea.”
