I Have to Laugh

My grandmother, Dorothy Nixon, a couple of years after the War.

My husband walked the dog to the mail and returned with a manilla envelope addressed to me from a Vancouver Publisher.

I knew right away what it was, a rejection of a manuscript, but I had to laugh: I couldn’t recall sending it in.

I opened the envelope and it was clear I wasn’t suffering from memory loss. I had mailed the manuscript in in 2009, July.

The rejection letter, from Anvil Press, was a form letter, although the first paragraph apologized for this fact.

Weird.

Anyway, the manuscript was my Looking For Mrs. Peel Play and another press, long ago, told me they’d like to see the play in narrative prose form….the play is about my grandmother’s stint at Changi Civilian Prisoner of War Camp. Thousands of people have already read it, on the Internet.

 

Bizarre. Did it fall behind a desk, or did it actually take them 2 and 1/2 years to plough through submissions?

 

Oscar 2012 – How about a Twitter-Ticker Host for the Academy Awards next year?

Well, the Academy Awards for 2012 are over and some would say mercifully. The general opinion is that they were boring; as Billy Crystal stayed safe (and sounding very much the 70′s comedian, even with the racist jokes that weren’t considered racist back then.) And so many of the winners couldn’t speak English, which is ironic and what happens when a SILENT movie wins the Best Picture. No one is mentioning from what I see, that Clooney got shut out, despite practically owning the nominations. He did his best to win, all the talk shows and stuff. Can hardly feel bad for him, tho. And Tom Cruise, thanks to his renewed box office clout (with a seventies franchise,albeit), got to deliver the Best Picture Award and mentioned the ‘shared experience’ of movie watching. Crystal’s only modern joke, I think,  was about watching movies on a ‘big screen’ his iPAD.

The Laurier Palace Theatre on ste. Catherine Street east that burnt down in 1927, killing scores of children, and which made Quebec pass a law where no children at all could attend movies from 1927 to 1967. I couldn’t even see Sound of Music in 1966. Well, I think I sneaked in.)My e-play Milk and Water is about this era in Montreal History. My grandfather was Director of City Services and implicated in the whole business, in more ways than one.

Anyway, that means Christopher Plummer, the serious guy in Sound of Music who won best supporting actor for his very different role in Beginners, couldn’t see movies as a child, as he grew up in Senneville, on the Western end of the island. . They had a cinema in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, on the main drag,  I wonder if that cinema broke the rules and let in the rich kids from Senneville? Apparently, a cinema in Verdun did. My father in law, a little older than Plummer, had to take the bus from Westmount to this Verdun movie house, in order to see movies as a child.

(I have an idea to make next year’s Academy Awards relevant!)

Let the Twittersphere be the HOST! Have Twitter Feeds projected on a crawl or Twitter-ticker  high up above the stage. “Is that J-Lo’s nipple?  How come all the female presenters TOWER over the male presenters? Soon all the actors will be digital anyway.

Here’s a bit from a 1938 Montreal Star, that the Nicholsons of Richmond cut out. (They actually cut out the story on the back. In 1938, the year before a terrific year in Movie Making (1939, the year of the Wizard of Oz, which ironically was mentioned in a satiric sketch at last night’s Oscars and the studios’ penchant for testing movies with focus groups before deciding the final cut.)

A World Within Four Walls

Going to the ‘movies’ has become as much a part of modern life as going to work or going home to dinner. It is a habit that survives wars, strikes, political upheaval and national crises.

The first ‘movies’ were gaped at in much the same way as their contemporaries, the first automobiles. Today nobody stands at the curb to yell, “Get a horse!” at the streamlined version of either. The modern motion picture is as far a cry from the nickelodeon “flicker’ as the sleek, sixteen cylinder limousine is from its one-lunged ancestor.

This development was possible because going to the movies, like automobiling, became a national habit.

(In 1910, traditional theatre owners blamed the decline in attendance on both movies and the automobile.)

Why? Why do we go to the movies? It is because the motion picture has taken unto itself some basic functions in society. Motion Pictures intensify life!

For the younger generation, especially, an evening at the movies offers nearer kinship with other people – a greater insight into life – than a visit with neighbours.

The movies has given our eyes new ways of seeing. Because a star’s face appears before us on the screen in a hundred foot close up, we are more familiar with his features than those of our sister.

A portrait of a motion picture audience would show peace in the darkened theatre, happiness…freedom from care… hands held. As the audience reacts at what is taking place on the screen, it shares its feelings – and affirms that man is a social being. It is a group experience that is good for all of us, good for our individualities.  Motion pictures are the chief cultural possession of the average man and woman. Millions who are removed from the other arts find it in the film their literature, their expressions of beauty in form and design, their interpretations of the world about them.  While the motion picture theatre is itself a great classroom in which our generation has acquired matchless knowledge of far regions and understanding distant peoples. There is more than a passing connection between the American way of life and American leadership in the world of motion pictures. For the movie is by its very nature a democratic product – a cooperative effort of the talents of many people. Their work is subject to the approval of the box office – a referendum as accurate as that of the ballot box itself. It is in this pubic expression that motion pictures have found their greatest inspiration, their constant challenge to a new endeavor… Great stories, splendidly produced…love-filled romance, stirring drama, gay adventure, hilarious comedy, tuneful musicals, star studded casts filled with your favorites -new talents for which the world has been searched. One after another these fine pictures are coming to the screen of your favorite theatre, a world within four walls.

Edith’s Story: Chapter 1, Draft 1

June 20^th.

HBC has arrived.

He is sitting on the green corduroy chesterfield in our casual parlour, the back parlour, off the kitchen, just three feet from where I myself recline in the sturdy cherry wood rocking chair my Mother usually sits in. When she has time to do so.

She has draped it, I notice, to cover the threadbare cushion, in the canary yellow afghan I crocheted for her at Christmas.

HBC is staring at me with a look of confusion more than compassion, patiently, maybe anxiously, waiting for me to say something. This boyish man is politely allowing the shock of it all to sink in.

With his head of  straight sandy hair and the beige cardigan he is sporting over boney, broad shoulders, HBC, indeed, looks just like a school boy.

And he is so informally dressed, when compared to me, we are quite the ridiculous pairing.

But as he explained, he was heading out to a summer camp near Potton Springs with some Montreal friends, when he decided to hop off the train at Richmond. And I had invited him to drop by at the first chance, so he did.

There’s no one to bear witness as we sit so close together in the family room of Tighsolas. An awkward couple, despite our age-appropriateness. Both 27, you see. In another universe we could have become suitors.

HCB, the bank clerk, in my mother’s favorite rocking chair. Me, the school marm, in my father’s world-weary leather wingback.

HBC  in his casual summer country-outing attire and me in my formal white dress. I look like quite the eccentric, even Miss Havisham-like. Not a look I previously had aspired to, but quite fitting, these days.

When he first arrived, and I immediately invited him to come into the house to sit and talk privately in our parlour, I told him to spare me nothing.

I wanted to know all. All about the ‘mercy’ trip to Mexico. All about the job transfer t to Cornwall. All about everything leading up to and after the fire. That horrific fatal, fateful fire. The conflagration that converted me, in the space of one week,  from a blushing bride-to be to be, perhaps a little on the ripe side, to a opiate-addled spinster-in-training.

As he began, the small, subtle muscles on HBC’s smooth-shaven face, the one’s around his mouth and especially on his temples, pulled taut, so I knew there was more to this sad sad story than even I had guessed.  So much much more – as it happens.

I wanted to know, I had to know. Still, I wished on some level that he hadn’t dropped in this particular morning, despite his standing invitation to do so, despite his obligation to do so as Charlie’s closest friend. My dear fiance’s partner at work and leisure at the Bank of Montreal in Danville, Quebec.

Because as he ambled up the street, we were all in our white dresses, standing in front of the house, having our picture taken my Mr. Montgomery, our neighbour. Me, Mother, Marion and Flora.

We were all wearing our new spring hats, too. Well, Marion and I had brand new Easter Bonnets. Purchased at Ogilvy in Montreal on April 28, a day before the terrible event.

Mother’s hat was a year old, refurbished with a few pink silk apple blossoms and Flora’s, well I can’t recall when she got hers. It was of an ordinary sort, with no up to-date flourishes, no velvet ribbon, very a la mode in the 1910 season, just a few faded sprigs of some imaginary bloom, so likely she trimmed it herself with remainders from the basket in Mother’s sewing room.

It was Mothers’ idea to get all dressed up and have  a tea party out on the front lawn, as we had done in the past, although much later in the summer. Usually as a way to to escape the clinging heat in the house.

But it was not hot this day, in June.  Mother was desperate, that’s all: desperate to save me from my spiraling sadness.  Desperate too to forget her own escalating set of  family problems.

So after church (Mr. Carmichael’s sermon was on the Garden of Eden) we ceremoniously donned on those white dresses, a fashion from the turn of the century, white dresses being  genteel dresses, for they stained easily. And that was the point.

People with white dresses, dresses that showed the dirt so easily, had maids and washing women.

We didn’t. It took  us two days to wash, dry and press our white dresses. Our  genteel impractical white dresses.

As we sat there, teetering on kitchen chairs on the grass, my mother’s brainstorm had a negative effect on me.

I could see, through my fog of depression,  how ridiculous we looked, how pretentious, in our fashionable over-sized hat and ridiculously anachronistic white dresses. Queen Victoria, Victoria Regina,  had started the fashion, decades before, in an effort to promote British lace to the world.

I felt out of body and I could also see how pretentious we looked, from the street, and I suddenly I hoped no one was  watching.

With the card table and kitchen chairs set out on the lawn and or best china and silver, too over a fine linen tablecloth embroidered in blue, on display, like animals in a zoo.

“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen: on view The Canadian Middle Class. Of Prime Minister Laurier’s Time. Aspiring to the finest lifestyle, theatre, opera, music recitals, afraid of falling into the lower class. Working Class, really, on paper, but with an education in Latin, Botany, History and Euclid’s geometry. Tennyson. So instilled with an appreciation of beauty.

Relying on creams and potions to disguise the rough and reddened skin of their hands.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these specimens are unique to all Canadian Society in that they WASH THEIR OWN CLOTHING.
(Sometimes it felt that way.)

But before I could feel too ashamed I saw him, HCB as I coyly referred to him in letters home, walking up from College Street and the station. “I was on my way to Kingsey Falls  to see, so I dropped by,” he said. “We’re’re off by the 3.10 to Potton Springs. A group of fellows from the bank. I am sorry, I decided right there on the train, about five minutes before the Richmond stop,there was no time for a telegram.”

“Yes, but I told you to drop in anytime. So please don’t apologize.” I said, wondering if he wanted the Oyster Canapes we had prepared for our tea or should I offer him some cold tongue.

We couldn’t ask him to join us for tea, that would have been absurd and uncomfortable.

And that wasn’t the point, anyway so we quickly went into the empty house. Straight to the parlour. The casual parlour, as there was not time to prepare the formal parlour for a visitor.

He asked only for a glass of water.

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” he repeated. “You are celebrating something. A happy occasion? A Birthday.”

“Quite the opposite,” I assured him.

I brought him the glass of water, in a light green glass tumbler. And then I asked him to proceed. Without further delay.To tell me all he knew of the circumstance of the death of my Charlie G,  right from the beginning, from that Trip to Mexico in November up until that dreadful night, the night Haley’s comet ominously passed directly over Cornwall, Ontario.

I wanted to know all the details of all Charlie was doing the three months since our informal engagement over Christmas, especiallywhat he was doing that he didn’t tell me in his letters.

He couldn’t have spent all his off work hours in the Presybertian Church on 2^nd street as he claimed to me.  Even I knew he wrote that just to please me. To prove his conversion to the WAY had stuck.

So HCB began, leaning back on the couch, his right elbow at right angles to his body as he combed the hair on the back of his head with his hand; his bicep was a muscular one, much more muscular than Charlie’s, I guess you call men like him wiry, deceptively strong.

But then suddenly taking on a posture and air of a much older man, possibly imitating his own father or a beloved Academy professor, he opened his mouth to speak.

About Mexico, about Cornwall, about… the circumstances of the Rossmore Hotel fire.…I think it took over an hour in all, but I can’t be sure, and then when it all began to sink in, the horrible truth, the numbing realization that I had been protected from the truth this past year, protected by Charlie and HCB as we older siblings protect our little Flora from the unpleasant truths of our own dear, devoted but deeply troubled family.

I had been protected from the real reason Charlie went to Mexcio to help out that Canadian concern after the typhoon and protected from the real reason he got transferred away from Danville to the Cornwall branch immediately upon is return. And worst of all I have been protected from knowledge about myself, my self-centeredness,  my  female narcissism. My shallow solipsistic existence.

I had spent the past year believing myself to be a woman misused, mistreated. Because I enjoyed the part of being tossed in love.  I had taken to my bed like a wealthy Victorian lady in novels and guzzled heart tonics, to elicit pity more than to recover from grief.

HCB told me in plain English, that everything Charlie had done the last few months he had done for me, for love of me. Out of a desire to marry me, and as soon as possible.

He did not get cold feet in October! We was not trying to weasel himself out of our understanding in March.

Charlie was trying to make this marriage happen – and as soon as possible.

How could HCB  look at me, now. How could I look on myself?. I wasn’t a victim. I was the victimizer.

And I knew he had to be thinking the same thing.

This handsome man of the middle class, son of a farmer, nowa bank clerk, like Charlie, (although not as handsome as Charlie, nor as charming) stuck in a respectable but decidedly dead end job.

A well educated man with no serious connections, so no real hope. A young man thinking of moving out West, to Alberta or Saskatchewan, like just about everyone else around, including my own father.

And what he didn’t say was even more hurtful. (If it hadn’t been for YOU,  Charlie would still be alive!

He’d still be alive._ And through wall of my pitch black state of mind, my depression, I still felt sick to my stomach. Because the truth was truly shocking. The appallingness of it. The Uncleanliness..

So that’s why Charlie spent his off hours in the Presbyterian church.

Not to please me or to impress me, but to hide from those who would harm him?

So HBC just sat there, letting it sink in. Not knowing what more to say. Perhaps trying to stave off his growing repulsion for me. He examined the dark oak moulding around the doors and windows of the parlour, the Moulding my father had installed himself in 1896, with such pride for decoration like this added greatly to the cost of a house.

Then he spoke. “You must  know. He wasn’t doing anything illegal.  He’d want you to know that. Opium is legal to buy opium in Mexico.  I’m telling you this because he wouldn’t want you to think ill of him.

And with that HBC sprang up to leave.

Think ill  of Him? How could I?  I was the villainess in all piece. Not dear Charlie, dear dead Charlie.

Burned beyond recognition. Immolated.They identified his body by his tie pin, found nearby. In that stairwell. Half of  his body, anyway

“I have to catch the next train,” he said. He actually had a full hour and it was only a 15 minutes walk to the station, but I merely nodded.

“Are your sure you  don’t want us to make a pulled pork sandwich for your trip.”

No, we’re planning on getting an early supper at the Hotel in Potton Springs..

And as this  was getting set to walk out the door, I knew I  had to ask him one more question. It was loathsome, but there was no keeping me from it.

He was  turning toward the door, pirouetting elegantly on his lithe legs. Athletic young man.

” I’ll see myself out.”

I could tell he was dreading passing my family out on the lawn.

So, I stopped him, extending my arm.  ”Henry?”

“Yes.”

“I have something more to ask you….Do you know where I can get any, for myself. The opium.,  For my own use? My own medicinal use.”

And now it was his turn to be shocked.

I continued.

” It’s not like in Montreal where it’s easy to get prescription medicine. This is a small town and everyone knows me. The drug store is owned by Mr. Sutherland, and Dr. Moffatt is related to me by marriage….You say it isn’t illegal for us, only the Chinese.”

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” he replied, stuttering. “Edith. I’m sorry.”

He folded his straw boater in his hand. And then he rushed out the front door. And right by my silly-looking sisters and Mother taking tea on the front lawn.

Without so much as tipping his hat to them. Well he couldn’t possibly as he had twisted it like a dirty rag between his pale fists.

End of First Chapter

Edith’s Story is the follow up to Threshold Girl and is based on the The Nicholson Family Letters

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.