Reverend performs Japanese weddings at P.E.I. tourist sites

One Wednesday in July, 2005 at Avonlea Village on the north shore of P.E.I., Chesley Boutlier was walking across the grounds.
The general manager, Sheila Curley, approached and asked to accompany him. That conversation changed his life and those of some visiting tourists since.
Boutilier, otherwise known as Reverend Ches, Padre and The Rev by those in his community, was about to perform a wedding ceremony as a volunteer on the site. Curley told Boutilier he should be working there.
“Do your wedding and come up to the office to see me,” she told him.
Boutilier did just that.
“By Sunday at 1:15, I was working there.”
Boutilier is an ordained United Church Minister. His first church was in Elkhorn, Man.
Then he spent 20 years full time at two churches in P.E.I., spread between Margate and Mount Stewart. That was followed by supply preaching in Cornwall. He was one of P.E.I.’s first marriage commissioners.
Curley said she has known Boutlier for a long time.
“When I was in high school, Ches was a substitute teacher.”
He later became friends with her father. It wasn’t unusual for her to go to her father’s house and find him at the older man’s kitchen table, swapping stories. Boutilier left home at 16.
“I’m 66 years old. I play Reverend Allen in the village. It’s a great place to go and be with people.”
Curley said the village was just thinking of getting into the wedding market and thought Boutilier would be a perfect fit as he is energetic and can perform legal weddings.
“We’ve got acres of gardens.”
“We’ve just hooked up with a professional wedding planner,” she said.
Boutilier sees his role as multifunctional. He gets to be a goodwill ambassador for the village and can travel around the world visiting the international tourists he sees weekly.
In the tourist season the site is open at 10 a.m., but likes to be there at 9 a.m. He also does weddings at Silver Bush, the Anne of Green Gables Museum, not far from his own home on the north shore.
Since 1988, he has performed over 500 Japanese weddings there. Although the season runs from June to October, the busiest season for Japanese tourists is the autumn. Japan’s climate differs from eastern Canada’s. Japanese schedule their holidays and weddings during their own prime tourist season.
They do not have the letter V in their alphabet, so the weddings do not include vows but promises, Boutilier said.
They come to P.E.I. for similar reasons. Engaged couples read P.E.I. tourist guides.
“They’re here because the groom has read it and has been intrigued by the picture they have of P.E.I.”
Curley is pleased with Boutilier’s contribution to Avonlea Village.
“He’s open minded and quite a lively character.”