P.E.I. is the island Anne Shirley identifies as home not by birthplace but by love: as she crosses away from its shores for Redmond, her memories of arriving there and her sudden homesickness make the place a measure of belonging.

Home and Memory

On the crossing toward Kingsport, Anne Shirley looks back at P.E.I. and recalls her first arrival by boat from Hopetown, seven years earlier. She remembers exploring the decks and cabins in a dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat, while the island’s red shores gleamed in the sunshine. The recollection sets the wonder of that first arrival against the uncertainty of leaving: she has long wanted to study at Redmond, yet now wishes she did not have to go.

Anne Shirley distinguishes the island from the place where she was born. She allows that Nova Scotia may be her native shore in the literal sense, but understands a native shore as the land a person loves best—and names P.E.I. as hers. Her description of the eleven years before she came to the island as seeming like a bad dream gives that chosen attachment particular weight, while the remembered crossing makes arrival part of her personal geography.

Birthplace and Island Identity

When Philippa Gordon tells Anne Shirley that she is from Bolingbroke, Anne recognizes it as her own birthplace. Philippa treats that connection as making Anne a Bluenose, but Anne rejects the inference: being born in a place, she argues, does not determine what one is. She insists that she is Island to the core. The exchange makes P.E.I. more than a setting recalled from the departing boat: it is the home Anne Shirley claims as an essential part of her identity, even while acknowledging that her birth belongs elsewhere.