Ebooks and Funding

 

Tighsolas in 1910 era

 

This is Tighsolas, or House of Light in Gaelic, the Queen Anne Revival Style Home that Norman Nicholson, my husband’s great grandfather built in 1896, the year Sir Wilfrid Laurier came to power.

 

I discovered letters belonging to this family in 2003, transcribed them and posted a website in 2005 Tighsolas with the letters in raw form and background about the Laurier Era.

 

And then I decided to write a digital trilogy around the letters, featuring each of the three Nicholson ‘girls’, Flora, 18 in 1910, Edith, 27 in 1910 and my husband’s grandmother Marion, 25 in 1910.

 

All of the young women were teachers in the era, not a ‘sexy’ profession, but, alas, the profession most well-educated middle class women went into in 1910 (despite the going belief that women had ‘made it’ and could enter any profession, although housewifing was the most desirable profession.

 

 

 

Threshold Girl   is the first book in the trilogy and it is available for free online. It tells the story of Flora Nicholson’s year at Macdonald Teachers College in Ste Anne de Bellevue during the ‘in their proper place’ era.

 

Marion and Edith figure incidentally in the story.

 

I am writing Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, Edith’s story, and it is almost complete.  It tells the story of Edith’s job at a Missionary School in Westmount, where Catholics, mostly French Canadians were educated and oft times converted to Protestantism. Not a slice of history normally discussed today.

 

It also tells the story of her stormy courtship with one Charlie Gagne, a former Roman Catholic for all I can see, who died in a hotel fire in Cornwall in 1910, the Rossmore.

 

In Flora’s story, I include a child labour theme; in Edith’s a eugenics theme. The suffragette movement is included in both books.

 

The trick is, I am being faithful to the 300 letters I have, but filling in the gaps with invented stories. I call this a ‘re-imagining’ of their lives.

 

Marion

Edith

 

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on in the letters with respect to Charlie Gagne, but once I did, I noticed gaps.

 

I have turned his story into a murder/mystery, which probably didn’t happen, but certainly could have. And then I can cover the drug issue for 1900. Opiates in medicines.

 

I haven’t been able to type out Edith’s story, as I have a neck injury, but once I do I will embark on Marion’s story, yet to be titled. Marion was already a teacher at the Montreal Board in 1910, at Royal Arthur School.  She was also helping out her family the most, especially financially. And from 1911 and 1913 she was courted by Hugh Blair, whom she married. She was also the most dynamic of the young women, later becoming President of the PAPT Teachers Union.

 

When all three books are written, they will complement each other, and also fill in gaps in each other’s story. For instance, Flora had no idea what was going on with her brother, she was protected. Edith had some idea, but since she had lost her love in a fire in May 1910, she too didn’t know it all. Marion, however, knew it all!

 

The social issue I am tackling with Marion’s story, possibly called The Push Pull of Biology and Ambition, or maybe just Biology and Ambition (yes!) is the Jewish Problem in schools. Jewish teachers were not allowed to work in the Montreal Board, however qualified.

 

Maybe one day I’ll be invited to the Blue Metropolis, the big ‘non-profit’ event in Montreal supported, of course, by Heritage Canada. People from Heritage Canada occasionally come to my website, (even downloading the ebook Threshold Girl)  but my project doesn’t fit into a comfortable niche, not with respect to Canadian politics. I’m guessing, anyway.

 

I’m discussing eugenics and suffrage in ways that only scholars have done in the past. Even the Two Solitudes issue. It’s shades of grey I like exploring.

 

Anyway, basically EVERY Anglo-Quebec initiative is funded by Heritage Canada, so what does that say? That it’s the only funding available, sure, but also, that they control the message. That’s what I think. How could they not, if  they are the only funding? I’ve worked with many non profits, I know how hard it is to get funding as a Quebec Anglophone Project, even for innocuous projects like literacy. (Whoops, that’s political here too.) We are a minority within a minority, that’s how the government sees us.

 

I’ve also written Milk and Water about Montreal in 1927, using my own grandfather, Jules Crepeau as a character.  This story is more of interest to French Canadians, I can already tell, but I must polish it before I can get it translated. In this eplay, I put a new twist on the infamous Laurier Palace Theatre Fire.

 

Teacher’s Little Helpers

Well, as I write Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl I wonder if I am being too harsh on Edith Nicholson, the heroine of  the Spinster story, as I make her an opium addict.

My husband’s great Aunt Edie was a prim and proper Presbyterian, after all, a tee-totaller, in her youth at least.

But then I have a 1911 Na-Dru-Co Atlas to prove my point.

Na-Dru-Co was the National Drug Company of Canada and they sent around a thick promotional brochure in 1911, the time of both my ebooks. I found this brochure in the Nicholson collection.

Most of the products they are pushing remind me of medicines “Granny Clampett” used, sarsaparilla, or parilleeee as she said.

The cough syrup contains licorice, linseed and chlorodyne. I looked up chlorodyne to see that it contained opium and cannabis. Bull’s Eye!

Oddly on a testimonials page someone claims they give it to a baby of 8 months. Another person says she knows someone who got cured of a cough and only used one bottle.

Edith had tonnes of colds and she was always on some medicine. Everyone was afraid of dying from pneumonia or TB!

And then came the horrible tragedy that took the life of her fiance and the Principal of the School where she worked, who was also a medical doctor, fixed her up with ‘heart medicine.’

There’s a product called Nervozone advertised in this brochure with the following blurb:“In the strenuous rush of commerce, the severe strains of depressing social conditions, overstudy, changes of female life, or impending attacks of disease, the nerves become impaired. Irritability, brain worry, Sleeplessness ensue, accompanied by lack of Energy, Emissions, Impotency, Nervous Dyspepsia, Partial paralysis, palpitations of the heart,incontinence…NA-DRU-CO nervozone is specially prepared to cover all such cases…”

I wonder what this concoction contained?

Another blurb about it in the book says “Teachers and especially women teachers are the most fit subject for rest and vacation than any other workers in the country.  One day of worry in the school room is more trying than  a month of hard labour… The best advice we can give teachers is to keep a box of Nervozone in their desks…Tsk Tsk.

I have to have Edith read this..

Ironically, in a 1909 letter, Edith says the doctor has told her – once again – to give up tea. LOL

Family Life by the Numbers

The Nicholsons 1892. Edith standing.

 

I finally saw the movie Withnail and I, after seeing it on some many Best of British Cinema lists. Didn’t  recognize any of the actors, but I did liked the movie a lot. Small budget movie with big budget acting, rambling script (that parallels the lives of the protagonists) a sink  most students or ex students can relate to. And the two lead actors, although playing down and outs, have beautiful faces to contemplate.

I’ll recommend it to both my sons. I don’t think it came out in Canada, and if it did, in 1987 I had a little baby and one on the way. Saw a lot of tv movies in that era; don’t recall any of them.

This is the beginning second chapter of Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, (draft 1). The first rough chapter is HERE. This ebook is the follow up to Threshold Girl

 

But let’s go back to the beginning.But which beginning?  The beginning beginning? The I AM BORN  beginning? To once again invoke  David Copperfield. (You probably now assume that is my favourite novel, but it isn’t. Middlemarch is.)

 

That’s easy, I am born January  1884. In a green clapboard rental house in Melbourne Quebec but  10 months after my parents’ marriage.

 

I know because I have been told, I was born on January 2nd. But the real proof resides in my father’s Store Books, or Household Accounts, which he kept from before his marriage in 1882 to a month before his death in 1921.

 

It could be said that  story of our family is told in these books, the practical side, the earthly side, at the very least.

 

I am born in early January, 1884 because the store book reads: Inserting baby’s birth, on the 7th. 25 cents. Under that Breast Pump 75 cents. Then Breast shield 25 cents. Along with one quart of milk, 5 cents, a loaf of bread, 10 cents. I gallon coal oil, 25. two cords of wood 8.35. 11 lbs of oatmeal, 38 cents. 1 doz herring. 20 cents. 1 1/2 pounds stake (steak) 15 cents. Oh, and rent 25.00 a month. The usual.  On February 19th, a baby cradle  is purchased for 3.00. And some flannel and some cotton for my baby clothes. Oh, and on April 28, baby’s pictures, 25 cents. I have officially arrived.

 

On June 27, 1 baby’s carriage 6.37. A year later, baby’s first shoes.1.20.  I am now, officially,  a financial burden on my parents. Children’s shoes, boots and rubbers (and the mending of same) were  a major expense for my parents all through their child-raising years. No wonder so many poor children must do without.

 

October 1884, one crib, 2.75 cents. Some wool for Edith, 2 dollars, 60 cents.

 

In 1886, June, at 2 1/2 a child’s broom is purchased, 15 cents, and I begin to pay for my keep. In those days they began early teaching young girls the womanly art of sweeping.

 

Also purchased that month, too, believe it or not, baby’s first book! (We are the Nicholsons, after all.)

 

 

 

50 years of family accounts!

 

Talk about mixed messages! But might as well start getting used to them, I was showered with mixed messages most of my female life.

 

Then it continues, with school fees, 25 cents a month,  and the occasional slate 05 cents. And bottles of cough medicine, 25 cents. (cough medicine had kick in those days.)  And later scribblers,  5 to 7 cents. 10 cents for the skating rink. 05 cents for a soda treat at Sutherland’s drug store. Soda pop had kick in those days,too!

 

And later, I got an allowance of 05 cents a week. I was doing more than sweeping by then. Oddly, my brother Herb’s allowance is put down as ‘wages for Herb.’

 

I guess boys must be taught the value of labour.

 

 

 

 

Receipt School feels 1894.

Teaching in the Titanic Era!

The B.C Legislature has passed a bill to stop the teachers strike.Here’s the article in the Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/bc-legislature-passes-bill-to-end-teachers-strike/article2370908/

That, I guess, is good news for me, as my Threshold Girl Story, Threshold Girl

about a College Girl in 1911/1912 Quebec, and my Tighsolas website are used primarily by classrooms in BC. Go figure!  OISE (the Ontario Institute for the Study of Education) has printed out a copy for their stacks,because the girl, Flora Nicholson, is studying to be a teacher at Macdonald Teachers College, in Ste.Anne de Bellevue (McGill Normal School.) This story is ALL about teaching! They still used slates back then. Today they use iPads! Think about the changes that teaching has gone through. Marion Nicholson, Flora’s older sister who is already teaching in Montreal in 1911, went on to head the Montreal Teacher’s Union during the war! I’m writing her story, too, as a follow up.

Anyway, I am an education writer, or was one, and I dug us this little piece I wrote about 10 years ago, in support of teachers. I was a writer (a PAID writer) for a new online venture called Moms Online, which got folded into Oprah’s Oxygen Network and then dissolved.

What Makes a Great Teacher?

What makes a great teacher? We all have our opinions. Some say great
teachers are born, that it’s “in the blood,” while others assert great
teachers are made — that teachers enter the profession with little knowledge
and experience and require a great deal of practice and mentoring by more
experienced teachers to be successful.

An active parent-volunteer once told me that the only reason she began
volunteering in her son’s school was to keep an eye on things and to make
sure he got the best teachers.

We’ve all been there; we’ve all heard it: parents gossip about how great one
teacher is, and how bad another is.

I’ve always tended to leave the decision of where to place my child with the
principal, who once told me that it’s more important to match a child’s
temperament and learning style with a teacher’s temperament and teaching
style than for any child to get “the most popular” teacher.

Still, working on another assignment last summer, I had the privilege of
interviewing some terrific teachers as well as the parents and principals who
admired them. Despite the fact that these teachers represented many
different grades and levels of experience and came from a wide range of
geographical locations, they tended to exhibit many of the same qualities:

- empathy and enthusiasm;
- dedication to the profession and a love of children;
- the ability to see each child as an individual and to bring out the best in
each child;
- the ability to challenge the children;
- a firm but fair teaching style;
- and the wherewithal to bring parents into the process, communicating early
and often, before major problems arise.

It seemed that good teachers exhibit many of the same qualities as good
parents: I was humbled, I tell you, hearing about these gifted
professionals. I decided to investigate a little deeper…

I phoned a representative of the National Teacher of the Year organization
who agreed: past National Teachers of the Year tended to have these very
qualities, cited above. I looked up the web site of the Prime Minister’s
Awards for Teaching Excellence, in Canada, our equivalent of National Teacher
of the Year. The web site claimed that teachers were selected on the basis
of their ability to “achieve outstanding results with students; to inspire to
learn and continue to learn; to equip them with the knowledge, attitudes and
abilities that they will need to succeed in tomorrow’s society and economy.”

Esther, a poster on the Moms Online Education Board, offers this opinion:
“My kids have had all kinds of teachers. The best ones had two things in
common: they knew and treated each child like an individual, and they could
see The Big Picture.”

Kelly, another poster, agrees. “I personally like a teacher who can teach to
the individual… a very difficult thing when there are 25 students in one
room.” Kelly prefers teachers who are organized and who can communicate
openly with parents. She doesn’t think teachers, necessarily, have to invite
parents into the classroom as volunteers.

Moms Online member Shelly claims that a good teacher is one who understands
the needs of the individual students, who is up-to-date on teaching
techniques and curriculum, and who sets reasonable and appropriate goals for
students and communicates these to the students and their families.

LDRS MOM Tea, Education Board volunteer host, says, “The best teacher my son
had called up every parent during the first week of school and asked them
what they thought were their children’s strengths, weaknesses, and needs. I
felt included from Day One.”

As with last month’s query “What is the purpose of education?,” the answer to
“What makes a good teacher?” is far from simple or clear-cut.

Granted, the teaching profession has changed over the years and is still
changing: What it takes to be a great teacher today is quite different from
what it took forty years or even twenty years ago. More is required of
teachers today. In the past, a teacher’s job was to “lecture” and make sure
the kids learned the subjects; today a teacher must also be an empathetic,
caring individual… sometimes to the extent of being a social worker. Older
teachers point out that kids have changed dramatically too — they don’t
respect authority as much.

One aspect related to teaching, however, hasn’t changed and is not likely to
in the future: ALL teachers (master teachers or not, award-winning or not)
have the power to turn lives around — and that is an awesome power indeed.

Dorothy Nixon is a Montreal-based freelance journalist and longtime Moms
Online contributor who got her start as a hack penning 30-second radio ads to
impossibly tight deadlines. She got her “online” break right here at Moms
Online many, many moons ago. Today, Dorothy writes about many cultural and
social issues, focusing more and more on education. She edited an education
quarterly in Quebec for 4 years in the ’90s and just completed a 4-year stint
on the board of the Center for Literacy, a Montreal-based think tank and
training center for treachers. Dorothy studied Communications at McGill in
the ’70′s. Her favorite book in high school was Brave New World — and that
probably explains more about why she is writing this column than anything
else.

White Wedding Dresses?

Here’s the ‘iconic’ pic from my website TIGHSOLAS, www.tighsolas.ca that contains the Nicholson family letters from the 1910 era. It is a detail of a ‘tea party’ on the grass in front of their comfortable brick-encased Queen Anne style home in Richmond, Quebec.
I like the picture because it is pretty, but it really does embody the hopes and dreams of the middle class in Canada in 1910.

I watched the show Sunday Morning, yesterday, taped and the comedic editorialist (I don’t know her name) talked about her upcoming marriage and the high cost of weddings and wedding gowns. She setttled on a off white number, floor model.

She mentioned that white wedding dresses didn’t originally signify purity; that Queen Victoria got married in white to promote the lace industry in her country

I suspect white came to signify purity around 1910, as we had the Purity Movement, which I have written about extensively on this blog.

The comedienne also mentioned that white was worn by some women because white cloth was more expensive, and hard to wear (stains) and hard to wash, hence wearing it was a sign of prosperity. Bingo!

That’s what these white dresses meant to the Nicholson Women, who did their own clothes washing most of the time, despite aspring to a genteen lifestyle. In 1911, it takes Flora Nicholson, 19, TWO days to wash and iron her white dresses on a weekend she returns from Macdonald Teaching College.

So this all underscores the points I want to make with my ebook Threshold Girl, about Flora at School in 1911/12 and based on the Nicholson letters.

Threshold Girl is about a lot of things pertaining to Laurier Era History, but it’s mostly about women and clothes and what these clothes mean to them and what their clothes lust means to other less fortunate working women in the textile trade.

http://www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

The picture above is deceptive. It is of Marion Nicholson, my husband’s grandmother, who went on to lead the Teachers’ Union in Montreal. She was no slacker: she had tonnes of energy and directed it in many useful ways. I will write about her later, in another book, which will deal with the Jewish question in Montreal schools.. Edith Nicholson, the subject of my next novellette was more of a dreamer, although she could could be a woman of action, if necessary. I’m turning her into an opium addict for in my next book, The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.

Colporteurs, Night and Day

This is a picture of Paul Villard, MA.MD DDS as it says on his 1927 book Up to the Light which I just purchased off abebooks.

Unlike the book about French Methodist, written in 1907, it exists in a few places. Two copies were available online; Mcgill has one and so does Westmount Library.

I’m glad I bought it though because if I have to write Edith Nicholson and her work at Westmount Methodist I need to know this, how Protestant Missionaries in Quebec felt bout “Romish” French Canadians. It is a great story, I think, a Nature Nurture debate story, Evangelicals want to convert people and Eugenicists think it is worthless to do this. Edith will meet up with Miss Carrie Derick suffragist and supporter of eugenics who is quoted as saying ‘inferior’ humans tend to have large families, which sounds very much like a slur against French Canadians.

Edith will ask her why bother to teach anyone then?  And Edith will explain that her ancestors, the Isle of Lewis Scots had large families…

But in the “you learn something new every day” department.. growing up in Montreal, I noticed that many many many apartment buildings had a sign in the lobby, or in the vestibule with the buzzers, “pas de colporteurs’.. I remember thinking it sounded like Cole Porter, (although was more a Monkees kind of girl.)

And I must have asked because I thought I learned it meant, no peddlers. But colporteurs are a special kind of door to door salesmen in Quebec. Protestant evangelicals.

Colporteurs means hawkers, too. Of course.
Hmm. Anyway…

Edith’s Story or The 1910 Diary of Edith Nicholson: Confirmed Spinster is in the works at www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

which is a follow up to Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

 

Some other Elite Richmondites

Mr. Bieber.

In a 1911 letter, Mr. Bieber has a car accident and his wife is seriously injured. It’s an interesting letter (Look up CAR ACCIDENT on this blog ) in that cars were a new phenomenon, but speeding and wreckless driving was already invented…As I wrote in that post, 14 miles an hour was the speed limit in 1910 in Quebec, in the Country. But the roads were not terrific and the ET was very hilly to boot, so driving a car was both thrilling and dangerous.

I found a Who’s Who for E.T. (post war or during the war) which included a blurb on Mr. Bieber, who lived near the Nicholsons in the fancy part of Richmond, Quebec.

Mr. Bieber, (I wonder if he is an ancestor of Justin Bieber, who is also Canadian)was born in England and came to Canada and was educated at Bishop’s College, Lennoxville and then worked for the Edison General Electric Company in Sherbrooke (how interesting) then went over the the Molson’s Bank (travelled around to Brockville, Victoriaville, etc) and then came to Richmond as the Manager of the Molson’s Bank there. He married and Edith Henry and named one of his sons Earnest Tobin, which makes you think he was good friends with E.W. Tobin…

Marcus George Crombie also has a listing. The Nicholson’s owed their mortgage to him and I believe he moved into the Skinner’s house when they moved out West- and he did a vast renovation.

Crombie was a lumber and mill owner, born in Melbourne. Apparently he took part in the Fenian Raids. He had been Mayor of Melbourne and Brompton Gore and Kingsbury (and I believe he ran for the Conservatives at one point but then went back to Liberals… if a letter I have from 1920 is correct.

He’s Richmond Liberal Association VP in war time Who’s Who.

John McMorine is also in the book. Listed as a merchant and owner of one of the largest retail firms of the area. He was also Mayor or Richmond for four terms in and around 1900 and a big player in the Masons, where he was a member of “ancient Scottish rite.”

And other “player” in Tighsolas listed is George Alexander. In 1912, he sells an insurance policy to Herbert which causes all kinds of financial woes. Herbert takes no responsiblity claiming he was tricked into buying it, but it is likely just an excuse. That was Herbert.

George Alexander lived on College Street (with the fanciest houses) and his was one of only two area homes that had a live in maid in 1911, according to the 1911 Census.

He too is of Scotch heritage and opened his insurance business in 1897, which spread country wide, according to the blurb. Alexander is civic minded and very interested in “the good roads movement” and immigration.

Just to say, the Nicholsons thought themselves part of the elite of Richmond, at least on the Anglo Side.

On one hand, that was good, as it gave them connections but on the other hand it must have been hard, as they had NO MONEY.

When Norman died in 1922, his obit in the Richmond Times Guardian called him “one of the most respected persons of this place.”

I wonder who wrote that line.

Paris Exposition

nf842 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

This should go to a beautiful picture of the 1900 Paris Expo.