There’s going to be a Catastrophe – “Predicting the Laurier Palace Fire”

My grandfather Jules Crepeau, Director of Services, Montreal 1921-1930.

“One of these days there’s going to be a catastrophe. If a fire breaks out these days, many of those inside will not be able to get out.”

Constable Conrad Trudeau at the Coderre Probe into Police Impropriety, December 13, 1924.

Well, well.

As I write Milk and Water my story about Montreal in 1927, featuring a long conversation between my French Canadian Grandfather, Jules Crepeau and my husband’s anglo grandfather, Westmount businessman Thomas Wells, I’ve been wondering about the Laurier Palace Fire that happened in January of that year. I am thinking of adding a word or two to my play to show that my grandfather has his suspicions about the fatal event.

According to one eye-witness account, a child’s, the fire started in the projection room, with melting celluloid, as happened in theatres. But it was asphixiation that killed most of the kids in the Ste Catherine East movie house. They succumbed to the smoke or were  crushed to death by panicking patrons.

Only one adult died, so it appears that adults trampled kids. Or there were few adults at the Sunday showing.

I haven ‘t read the complete details of the Boyer Inquiry into the fire, though.

But as I read the testimony of this Coderre Report, from 1925, I am struck by the testimony of one Constable Conrad Trudeau.  He claims he is a super-conscientious cop, whose efforts are being thwarted at every turn – and he singles out  my grandfather, Jules Crepeau the Director of Services. Trudeau is charged with watching coal weights and inspecting motion picture theatres. He says he has not been supported in his work, that charges are dropped or tiny sentences meted out, without him giving evidence.

Trudeau’s testimony on December 13 against by grandfather (as reported in the Gazette) has to do with coal, but Juge Coderre, in his final report, reveals that my grandfather also interfered in motion picture ‘actions’ or citations. On numerous occasions.

This Trudeau guy  is especially against children attending motion pictures, where he says that boys first learn about guns and thievery. He says that certain people hang out outside theatres and purchased tickets for the underage kids. “There has been an epidemic of allowing children to enter the movies,” he claims. (This is nothing new to cities. Young boys all across North America were attending motion pictures without a guardian. I’ve read statistics that suggest that as much as 30 percent of all theatre attendance were such kids.)

Well, as it happens, Conrad Trudeau is also in a bit of a pickle. He has ‘loaned’ money to an alderman in the hopes of getting a tavern license for a relation.

As it further happens, he is FIRED for this, by my grandfather, BEFORE the enquiry ends in March. Juge Coderre cites the incident as  in his final report.

Later on Trudeau asks for his loan back. LOL!

And then in January 1927, there’s a terrible (game-changing) fire at a theatre, (directly across from a firehouse) just as Constable Trudeau predicted to the Coderre Inquiry. So now the Presbyterians, Catholics and Nationalists get their way: no children under 16 AT ALL can see Hollywood movies.

What I find especially odd is that my grandfather’s part in all this (his brother was a VP of a theatre company)is never brought up, not during the Inquiry into the Fire and not later, by the Houdists, in 1930, when they wanted so desperately to get rid of him – and succeeded. And yet it all had been printed in the Gazette and Star, and likely in the French papers. Sure, Camillien Houde often brought up the Laurier Fire in his speeches, even at the rowdy session of City Council in December 1930 where my grandfather’s ‘resignation’ was debated and finally accepted. But he never mentioned  the specifics about my grandfather interfering in police work with respect to motion picture by-laws regarding under age patrons.

My grandfather is ousted in December 1930 and then in 1931  Jules’  Brother, Isadore, VP of United Amusements, falls out his St James Street office window. Hmm.

Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. (Or maybe not)

Bag Lady RANT No. 3

My beautiful double reinforced recyclable grocery bag from Whole Foods in the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco. May I never get it wet.

I brought it home to Montreal and used it, the other day, to take home groceries at my local IGA. I have nothing against my local IGA, per se. They hire young people from the area and my own son’s girlfriend worked her way through college slicing salami and ultra lean smoked turkey at the deli counter there.

But I do HATE their ridiculous policy of charging 5 cents for plastic bags!

I complain about it each and every time I buy groceries there.

“How is this saving the environment?” I ask. I then go on and on about all the over=packaged goods available in the store and all grocery stores like it.

“There’s more packaging in this store than food,” I say, pointing to the aisles.

One tiny filet of salmon wrapped in three layers  of cellophane. A 10 oz ham and asparagus quiche in a aluminium pan, swathed in industrial plastic and then sold in a cardboard box.  The pyramids of bottled water!  Well, my play Milk and Water touches on that troubling subject.

That’s how grocery stores make their money these days, overpackaging small amounts of vegetables, meat and such and selling them at greatly inflated prices.

“And who gets the 5 cents?” I demand to know from the cashier, who usually stares at me as if I am nuts.

No one knows. I’ve heard it goes to a special environmental fund. I’ve also heard it goes to charity.

“Well, this is just to appease the conscience of us slothful garburating suburbanites, driving our gas guzzlers two blocks to the grocery  and stocking up on over-processed convenience food CRAP. But we’re good little citizens, ’cause we pre-purchased this heavy-duty plastic bag, for 99 cents -which lasts at least 2 weeks, if the cat doesn’t climb into it.

Ironically, this plastic bag policy which has caught on at grocery stores across North America and Europe, started as an initiative by school children in, of all places, San Francisco.

Rogue plastic bags defile the environment..and in a very in-your-face way.

Now, Whole Foods sells some of those heftier multi-use grocery bags. I wanted to buy one, as a souvenir, but was in too much of a rush to enjoy the California sunshine.

But they give the other paper bags out for free. And that’s the point.

When I brought my lovely paper bag into the local IGA, the salesgirl admired it. “What a nice bag.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I got it at Whole Foods in San Francisco, where they DON’T  charge for plastic bags.”

I got to say what I wanted to say, yea for me. To some pretty young brunette, working the weekend shift, to pay her way through college.

I reminded myself of Liz Lemon on Thirty Rock.

10,000 Pages – Coderre and his Report and My Grandfather

Jules Crepeau, 1922. On his way to Atlantic City with family for a vacation.

Well, I guess I have to bite the bullet and go into Montreal to visit the Bibliotheque National to pore over the Coderre Report (all 10,000 pages) and maybe the Boyer Report into the Laurier Fire.

I’m sure they’ll be plenty of interest there: I imagine City Hall managed to keep a lot out of the papers, even the Montreal Star.

1925 was the  year of the Coderre Report.

And then I can start working on the second draft of Milk and Water

Good Grief.

Here’s the opening of the first draft.

1927 was Canada’s Jubilee year, the 60th anniversary of Confederation. To celebrate, 2 Royal Princes, David (the future Edward VIII) and George (the future Duke of Kent) took a month long tour of Canada. Upon arrival, at the beginning of August, they were feted, along with UK Prime Minister Baldwin, at Montreal City Hall. A public ceremony was held in front on the steps of the recently refurbished Hotel de Ville, with Mayor Mederic Martin standing in state in his long purple robes. My grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of Municipal Departments and his eldest daughter, my Aunt Alice, watched from a perch higher up on the steps.

The Royal Princes would stay in Montreal only 36 hours, then travel across Canada, to return to the City on the St. Lawrence at the end of the month for four days of rest and recreation before returning to England.

This setting of this play, Milk and Water, takes advantage of this fact.

In 1927, the City of Montreal was at the peak of its influence, a bustling industrial and transportation centre, even if some Torontonians disparaged the city, claiming that, although happily situated for business, it was corrupt to the core, French and “so hopeless.”
In the 1920’s the Americans had Prohibition and reportedly many crime bosses headed up North to control their empires from Montreal.

Montreal had no Prohibition, although the sale of hard liquor was controlled by a Provincial Liquor Commission. Liquor licenses were handed out primarily to taverns, as well as to restaurants and hotels. According to the Coderre Inquiry into Police Corruption, conducted in the city in 1924 and 25, there were about 1,000 establishments in Montreal serving hard liquor without a license, not speakeasies in the traditional sense, but still operating outside the law.

Montreal, Quebec, September 2, 1927.
A warm autumn night.

The Mayor of Montreal from his office at City Hall: Allo. Mr. Crepeau. C’est Mayor Martin. Vous etes rentrer chez vous. Bien.
Jules Crepeau (from his home at 72 Sherbrooke West): Comment peux je vous aider, Monsieur le Mayor.
Mayor: Monsieur Crepeau. I will speak in English as I have a representative of the Royal Prince in my office.
Jules: D’accord. Your Worship. So will I answer in English. What is the problem?
Martin. Problem? No problem. I have a personal favour to ask of you, on behalf of our esteemed Royal guests. All in the strictest confidence, of course.
Jules: Comme Toujours. As always
Martin: Do you remember that Westmount bloke with the bottled water company, the one with the bullshit name?
Jules: Thomas Wells? What’s bullshit about the name?
Martin: Not that name, the name of his company. Laurentian..ah
Jules: Spring Water.
Martin: Yes, the company that sells water it pumps from under Craig Street. Near our giant sewage collector. Not from the Laurentian Mountains. So, bull shit.
Jules: Yes, well, I believe I have met him just recently at the Royal Reception.
Martin: He’s the short older man with the very very tall young wife.
Jules: Oh, yes, the amiable man with the very tall and very thin and very outspoken young wife.
Martin: The same man.

Jules: What about him?
Martin: Well, we need some of his bottled water delivered tonight to a certain dance club in the midtown.
Jules: Why?
Martin: Because the Royal Prince might turn up there later on.
Jules: I understand.
Martin. The thing is, I would like 3 gallons delivered, merely as a precaution of course, but no one is to know. No one except this Mr. Wells – and you.
Jules: So he is to deliver it himself. Alone? The President of this company?
Martin: Yes. Discretion is of the utmost importance.
Jules; I see. But how am to reach him on such short notice.
Martin: I’ve already taken care of. The thing is, ah, I would like you to meet him at 11.pm in front of the Mermaid Cafe.
Jules: 11. pm. The Mermaid Cafe? But, I just got in, myself. There was a meeting of the City Improvement League. And you know how those ferocious Presbyterian ladies never let you go home.

Martin : Unfortunate. Do you know the address of the Mermaid?
Jules: How could I not? It’s got a (clears throat) certain widespread reputation.
Martin: Well, well. You are speaking about the excellent dance music, I presume. But the Prince will not show up until after midnight. He is tied up at some stuffy dinner party at the top of the hill, probably at Ravenscrag.

Jules: May I ask, with all due respect, why can’t His Royal Highness get his own people to bring the water. The Ritz Carleton has hundreds of bottles stored in the basement, I’m sure, what with this latest typhoid scare. The Radnor People of Three Rivers are the Official Suppliers.
Martin: The thing is, this, ah, is not an official kind of outing. The Royal Prince is hoping to slip away from his handlers for a few hours.
In fact, this is a personal favour he is asking me, as a personal friend. Don’t worry, I will send over one of our more ambitious young police officers, un grand gaillard, to perform the heavy work.
All you and Mr…ah…Wells, is it? have to do is can stand outside with the water and wait. You don’t even have to go in. The Prince and his party will enter by the side door. Only then do you have the jugs delivered.
Jules: If it’s after 12am, everyone enters by the side door, I imagine.
Martin: Well, be that as it may. Apparently, there’s a very good Jazz band playing tonight, the Harlem Kings or Kings of Harlem. The Prince is young. He has a keen interest in modern forms of music.
And you recognize all the city reporters.
Jules: But they recognize me, too, as the person who, just a year ago, announced to the entire Montreal Press Corps the firm new closing hour of midnight for dance clubs.
Martin: Jules. It’s the Royal Prince. Que voulez-vous?
Jules: Yes, of course. I understand.
Martin: You will be pleased to know, he specifically asked for you. His people thought you did a wonderful job organizing the official reception at City Hall a month ago.
Jules: You mean where we invited about 1,000 too many guests and where the Prince kept glancing at his watch and yawning between handshakes. I’m still fielding angry letters from society matrons who never made it into the reception line.
Martin: Well, yes, yes, That’s done then, I can count on you.
Jules: Certainement, Your Worship. (He hangs up the phone.)

Toujours quelque chose.

Little Girl: Papa?
Jules: Tu es encore debout, Marthe? Ou est Maman?
Girl: Elle prie dans le salon, avec Florida and Cecile.
Jules: Tu dois prier aussi.
Girl: Je n’aime pas prier. C’est ennuyeux. Peux-tu me raconter un histoire?
Jules: No, Il faut que je sorte.
Girl: Juste une courte. Je pars pour couvent demain, tu sais.
Ah, Je ne peux pas ma chouette.
Mais je veux que tu restes. S’il tu plait.
Jules: Nous avons eu de bons temps à Atlantic City, il y’a deux semaines.

Marthe:Tu n’étais presque jamais avec nous autres. Toujours des meeting.
Jules: (He kisses his daughter). Les rendezvous. Bonne nuit, ma petite. Je promet de t’ammener au couvent moi même demain.
Slam of door.

Setting: Outside a dance hall, Montreal somewhere South of Ste. Catherine, east of University and West of St. Lawrence Boulevard.

Two men, similar in age and build, both 60 ish, both about 5 foot 8 inches. Both with trim, athletic builds. Both sporting tall bowler hats.
Under his tall bowler, one man has thin black hair and a deep receding hairline, and under his tall bowler, the other man has a healthy head of curly almost wiry hair that is receding only slightly but greying most noticeably.
Both men are well dressed, in white shirts with high-necked collars and dark blue flannel business suits. The balding man’s lapels are notched and thin, to match his tie. The curly hair man’s lapels are peaked and wide- also to match his cravat.
The balding man’s outfit is a more conservative cut, but the style worn by the anglo businessmen of his circle. The curly man’s suit more a la mode, as they say, although still very appropriate for a man of his age of his stature.
These are men of the Upper Middle Class. One English Canadian originally from Ontario. One French Canadian born in Laval. Both men live with their bossy wives in three storey townhouses in tony sections of Montreal, one on Chesterfield in lower Westmount, one on Sherbrooke Street just a little West of St. Lawrence Street, or St. Laurent.
The English man is Tom Wells, a businessman and President of Laurentian Spring Water. The French man is Jules Crepeau, a high-ranking City civil servant, the Director of Municipal Departments.
Crepeau arrives in a taxi. A Black Lasalle. He exits the car quickly without paying. Wells drives up in a Bentley, its back seat holding three giant clear glass bottles, the front passenger seat a stack of yellow boxes.
The two men meet and shake hands on the curb in front of The Mermaid Café and Dance Club.
Tom: I brought the bottles myself, as the Mayor Instructed. But I can’t lift them, you know. Sciatica. Curling injury.

Jules: A constable is to arrive shortly.

The front door of the cafe opens and out pour two dozen or so patrons, mostly young men and women, the women in form-fitting flapper dresses with flying fringes and colourful cloche hats, and young men in shiny high-waisted suits with baggy pant legs.
In the background, a song is plays on a Victrola. It is Hello Montreal by Willy Eckstein. A trio sings:
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink; Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the sink, the sink;
The good old rusty sink;
But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?
Oh, “We Won’t Get Home Till Morning” Is the best song after all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
There’ll be no more Orange Phosphates,
You can bet your Ingersoll,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
The front door closes as the last couple straggles out, just as a tall young policeman in dress blues, broad-shouldered and burly, arrives on foot. He crosses the street and walks toward the older men standing in front of the big black Bentley.
Jules walks up to meet him a few paces from Tom and whispers a few words to the cop.
He returns to stand beside Tom. The cop takes up position beside the front door a few yards away, standing at ease with his arms behind his back and legs slightly apart.
Tom: How long do we wait, then?
Jules (shrugging) As long as is required.
I have some crates, then, in the trunk. For us to sit on.
Jules nods.
He waves the constable over. Instructs the young man as to the matter. Tom gives him some keys. The Cop goes to the car, opens the trunk, grabs a medium-sized brown crate in each hand and carries them past the sidewalk, and places them on either side of the café’s front door.
The cop resumes his position a few yards away. The older men sit on the crates. LAURENTIAN SPRING is written in upside down green lettering on the crates.
The more than middle-aged men squirm and fidget, turning away each other, turning towards each other. Tom examines the streetlights, Jules the road directly in front. Tom adjusts his hat, Jules his tie. Then the two almost identical looking men turn to face each other – but obliquely.
Between them, the café front door opens and two 30ish women, looking the worse for wear, exit on wobbly ankles.
A voice from inside: C’est l’heure de fermeture. Rentrez chez-vous, mes Pitounes.
Another voice, more drunk sounding: Go home flour lovers.
The two men inspect the women as they might a stray cat or dog, without any perceptible change in their expression.
Then a lock on the front door is banged shut and a sign goes up window over Jules’ head: CLOSED! Over Tom’s head: FERME!
There’s a long pause as the men adjust to this slightly uncomfortable situation. Then finally….
Tom: Yanking at his tie knot. Too hot for an autumn night.
Jules: Some like it hot..What does it mean, flower lover?
Tom: Too much make-up. Flour as in face powder. (He makes a motion with his right hand, as if powdering his cheeks and he does this he purses his lips.)
Jules: Ah.(After another long pause) So, you are the one who put that crazy advertisement in the newspaper?
Tom: What advertisement. What do you mean?
Jules: The advertisement that said “Don’t drink filthy germ laden city water. Laurentian Spring Water is always the same, pure and wholesome. Do not wait until you are sick to drink it.”
Tom: My sad Aunt Sally. That particular promotion was placed over 4 years ago. You can’t possibly remember it word for word.
Jules: I remember it perfectly, believe me. This is my special gift.
Tom: Well, then, you must certainly be aware that we haven’t run anything quite like it since.
Jules: The letter from the City’s Avocat en Chef might have had something to do with your change of heart.
Tom: No. The fact is, we’ve changed our advertising policy, right about then. We started pushing our new line of soft drinks. (He pulls out a bottle from each side-pocket and shows them to Jules.)
Jules: (inspecting bottles) Soda water and Sweet Ginger Ale.
Tom: No sir, we certainly didn’t cave to the threats from over at City Hall. (He returns the bottles to his pockets.)You know, we’ve only ever received one lawyer’s letter from you people. Ever. And we’ve run a slew of newspaper ads along the same lives over the years in promotion of our bottled water. No, the most trouble ever we got, before that letter, were a couple of huffy phone calls from Dr. Laberge’s department.

Jules: Of course, The Health Department
Tom: Your guys couldn’t catch us on anything.
Jules: Yes, all your clever wordplay. “What chances you take if you don’t drink Laurentian water.” “The Safest plan is to drink Laurentian Spring water.” Never quite lying, never quite telling the truth. Not slander, not in the legal sense. But slippery lies are lies just the same.
Even the name of you company is a sort of lie. Laurentian Spring Water. Your aquifer is under Craig Street. Right downtown in the business district. And there are underground springs all over the city.
Tom: Sure, but our well has the purest water, it’s a proven fact. The scientists at Macdonald College tested back it in 1909, the year of the last typhoid epidemic.
Jules: Pure, Purer, Purest. Mere words, once again. What does the word “pure” really mean, exactly?
Tom: Now, what’s wrong with the word Pure? It’s a great word. A beautiful word. Everyone likes it. Everyone uses it.
Jules: That’s precisely what’s wrong with it. (Pause) A word that everyone uses can’t be a good thing. A word like that means too many different things to different people. And if something is pure, then something has to be impure.
Tom. Picking words to pieces. Now, aren’t you a typical lawyer.
Jules: I am not a lawyer.
Tom: Really! With a big position like yours? Director of Municipal Departments. And not a lawyer? Not in the Club?

Malibu Cybele and Me

Here I am at the Getty Villa in Malibu. If I recall what the tour guide told us, this Villa is an exact reproduction of one found at Herculaneum.

It’s right by the ocean and free to visit (they don’t even ask for donations).

As we sat in the terrace, my cousin and I tried to recall the details of the Getty abduction, so many years ago. We were both in our teens.

But, as it happens, she had a smart phone so she looked it up. A grandson of Getty’s got abducted in Italy. The old man refused to pay ransom, but then the kidnappers cut off the kid’s ear. It got in the papers. He was returned, but died recently.

Not very pretty. Not like the villa. Then again, a lot of nasty business happened in these beautiful spaces.

I liked the statue of Cybele best. Malibu Cybele, a lot more substantial than Malibu Barbie, even if she lacks a left hand.

An Earth Goddess. A priestess. A sage. Only a high born woman would have posed for the statue.

A very round face to symbolize the circle of perfection. (I recall that from Art History Class, 30 years ago.) A small mouth to symbolize a temperate nature.

Malibu Cybele. Made of marble. Dignified. Daunting.  Malibu Barbie. Plastic. Frivolous. So our culture goes.

 

1920′s Photo Album -Mobsters and Garconnes

These are pics from my Aunt Alice’s photo album, scanned at 300 dpi. The faces are not clear, but I’m not certain scanning them at 600 would have made it better. These three girls are dressed like boys: I guess that was the style. They are posing in front of the house my grandparents rented in Old Orchard Beach. The girl on the left, possibly my Aunt Cecile, is taking a picture of the picture taker.

My grandparents, Maria (ROY) and Jules Crepeau posing on their way to Atlantic City (the album says).

My mother posing in front of family group. The girl on left is same girl as on top.  I don’t know who the woman is next to her. She’s in the next picture. Not much fashion sense. And the pretty girl next to her looks like a family member, but I can’t identify. So I’ll guess the poorly dressed woman is Grandmaman’s sister and the two girls her daughters.  Alice and Cecile peeking out on either side of my grandmother.

That same woman and her shabbily dressed husband and my grandfather? (although it doesn’t look like him. It looks like a mobster with a gun in his pocket) and my mother.

Imitating the Silver Screen 1922

 

In my eplay Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, I speculate about whether ‘good’ French Canadian girls went to the motion pictures. They certainly weren’t supposed to.

 

1927 is the year of the Laurier Theatre fire that killed so many children, and which ultimately led  the government to ban children from motion picture houses for 4 decades. I couldn’t see a movie until I was 14 growing up. Well, I snuck in, as I was tall.

 

This all  was really about protecting Quebeckers from American influence. Both the Protestant and Catholic churches supported this law, though. They were losing their customers to the motion pictures.

 

But if the Crepeau women, most in their early twenties, didn’t go to the movies, they were certainly influenced by them.

 

You can see it in the poses they struck for the camera.

 

These pictures were taken in 1922 and 1923, when motion pictures were still young, but very popular in Quebec. Indeed, the Tachereau government was lamenting all the bad American influence, such as open mouth kisses (ironically enough).

 

There were scores of motion picture houses in Montreal in the early part of the 20th century, mostly at city center, St. Catherine and St. Laurent, but just a hop skip and a jump from 72 Sherbrooke West, where the Crepeaus lived!

 

Ernest Ouimet had the most famous cinema, the Ouimetoscope. On Ste. Catherine East. Mr. Ouimet was fighting the Sunday closing laws, as Sunday was his best day for business. He said movie houses were exempt as a precedent had been set since the early Nickelodeon Era.

 

At about this time they started building ‘suburban’ movie houses, often lavish movie palaces. In 1927 two giant motion picture palaces were being built around NDG, the Granada and (I believe) the Empress. These movie houses were where I saw movies when I finally could go legally. I always thought they were a tad over the top… I could never figure out why they had those ‘balconies’ with no seats… like at opera houses.

 

 

 

Over a barrel: considered sexy in 1927.

 

This looks like a scene from a D.W. Griffith movie! It’s my Aunt Alice, my Mom (the little girl) and my aunt Flo, the woman adopted as a waif off the streets, a story straight from D.W. Griffith. She came to beg at the door so often, my grandmother just took her in.

Vintage View from Mount Royal, “Old” Montreal

The View from Mount Royal in 1922, April, a page from my Aunt Alice’s photo album. Click on it for bigger.

I’m not sure, but this looks like the view from the Mountain Street Look Out, as I can see water.  It’s not the view from the Look Out facing East, the one now named after Mayor Camillien Houde, which is ironic, considering the part that man plays in my eplay Milk and Water. Milk and Water is  about  Alice’s father, Jules Crepeau Director of City Services and  takes place in 1927, the era of US Prohibition.

I read  a doctoral thesis that claims that, early on,  Mount Royal was considered a park for rich anglos – that is until the 1920′s when it was reclaimed by French Canadians, at least symbolically, with the installation in 1924 of the famous Cross atop it. That didn’t mean that poor French Canadians started going to the park, as it was too far away from their neighbourhoods and impossible to access without transportation.

There was a campaign to get a trolley route up Mountain, but Camillien Houde, then in the Quebec Legislature, came out against it, saying that no French Canadians (or working class, as he put it) would not send their children up there anyway as it was too far away. He understood that working class parents didn’t accompany their children at play; older siblings did. He claimed it was just a money grab by the tramway people, whom he hated, of course.  Ah, politics.

Still, a while later, as Mayor,  he championed the idea of public transportation to the Mountain, because the Anglos were against it.

But that didn’t stop my bourgeois French Canadian aunt, 18 or so, from going there,  with her beau on a pretty day in April  1922 and talking pictures for posterity.

1920′s Photo Album, Milk and Water

On the Road to Atlantic City 1923, my aunt’s photo album.

I’ve discovered this album, at my California cousin’s house and it proves Jules Crepeau went to Atlantic City in 1923, the early days of US Prohibition.  Jules was Director of Services at that time, as he was all through the 20′s.

in Milk and Water my eplay about Montreal in 1927, I say Alice and her father, Jules saw the Prince of Wales, (David, future Edward VIII)  during his visit to Montreal City Hall. I describe the reception, too, apparently The Royal Prince got bored at the reception line, shaking hands.

My cousin says she always heard that Jules was deliberately run over in 1937, by a police constable. My mother didn’t think so, but she was 16 at the time and she might have been protected from this information. It sure seems likely.

Here’s another pic, taken by a camera. I’m going to scan the pages, maybe tonight. The pics below are taken on Mount Royal. So that’s the caleche they had back then.

 

 

 

 

 

The City of San Francisco All to Ourselves.

 

This lady works in Sonoma, California.  Where we went for a taste of the wine-tasting experience.  Before we headed for San Francisco, where we stayed at a bargain motel, with free parking, not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s called the Columbus and it is on Columbus.  The rooms were great!  And as it was Superbowl Sunday and Monday, the other tourists stayed away and we had the place. I mean the city,  to ourselves.

 

This man advocates for the working man at Coit Tower, San Francisco. He’s a detail in a mural. Here’s another one.

 

 

And here’s another

 

 

And here’s the Whole Foods at Haight Ashbury, kind of ironic, ain’t it? It was my first visit to the Whole Foods chain. This was a small store. I will visit the one in Redondo Beach soon.

 

We bought some sandwiches and ate them in Golden Gate Park.

Here’s  a nice house  in San Fran.. One of bazillions. I took the trolley and one person was talking to another, saying he was looking for real estate. The other replied, “Yes, a nice place to live if you are a member of the 1 %.”

California Here We Come

Aunt Kit, Uncle Peter and Me.

Well, last year, to get my through the February Blues, I watched Youtube videos of drives in Malibu, sunny Malibu, on the big screen. To make me happy.

It worked. It is the “Mamma Mia” effect.

And what do you know, this year, in two days, I am off to California with my husband to see my cousins. In LA, Redondo Beach.

And my younger cousin, who works for NASA, is going to drive us up to San Francisco and  then to wine country Sanoma, and then the next week, when she’s back at work, my husband and I  will drive to Malibu and eat at some place recommended by the movie critic at my husband’s TV Station.

Yesterday to check out the weather, I watched that LA station available on the satellite, with Mark Kriski, a former employee at CFCF Montreal, now called CTV. It’s gonna be nice. My cousin was afraid it would be rainy.

All things come together. My beautiful Aunt Kit and Uncle Peter (who are really first cousins) are elderly now. We will visit them.  I haven’t seen them since 1997 or so. How awful of me.

In the pic above they are holding me, a month old newborn. It’s Christmas 1954.

I just found the negative my happenstance last week, and ‘developed’ it in the printer, hence the poor quality.

They were a beautiful couple and both of them as bright as they were beautiful and they left Montreal in 1964, before all the BS happened and got a small stucco house with a spectacular view of LA and, the story goes, they were loathe to spend so much on such a flimsy cereal box of a house, as their previous home in Notre Dame de Grace (NDG) in Montreal was a solid brick structure and they sold if for less than the stucco box cost.  But a brother in law told them the purchase would be the best investment they ever would make, and he was right. Location, Location, Location.

Peter is my mother’s nephew, the son of Alice, the girl who sat on the steps of Montreal City Hall to watch the Prince of Wales in 1927. In my Milk and Water eplay about Montreal Politics in the Roaring Twenties.