Pretty in pink and blue and gingham and galatea

The August 1911 edition of the Delineator has a feature on children’s outfits, so I thought I’d scan them for those who might be interested. In Threshold Girl I weave in a tale about a woman working at Dominion Textile in Magog.
The second dress on the left is a practical school dress, if developed in serge or flannel. Unlike many of the sailor models, the five gored skirt, which is attached to a belt or underbody, is fitted about the waist and left quite plain except for the inverted plait, which is made at the back. The blouse is regular naval style and may be slipped over the head or closed in front.

The dress on right is very simple in construction and it is particularly effective in poplin or pique, when a contrasting colour is used for the collar and trimming bands. A very lovely reproduction of the design, which closes in front, was composed of white linen, with a sailor collar and belt of lilac linen, the edges of the collar, belt and peasant sleeves and and closing were finished with a scallop worked in lilac floss.

Nice writing! I wonder if Theodore Dreiser wrote it. He was editor of this magazine, which also covered many of the social issues of the day, focusing on ‘child rescue’ …adoption. (Nah, his style wasn’t as nice!) He got fired when he, ahem, had an affair with a underage woman… or something.

Well, these clothes were for the Middle Class and higher, I imagine. Marion’s children, students at Royal Arthur in Montreal’s Little Burgundy, were working class and probably dressed more like the above pic of poor kids vacationing at Camp Chapleau.

If any kids in Marion’s board dressed like the magazine kids, it was at the new Roslyn School in Westmount.

In September the schools reopen and you mothers are already beginning to find that the question of pinafores and school dresses is much on your mind. For children who live in the City, where there are steam-heated houses and schoolrooms, the smartest materials for their dresses are the linens, piques, poplins, repps, galateas, percales, ginghams, chambrays and cotton drillings.

Of course, for children who live in country districts where furnaces and radiators are unknown, wash dresses in Winter are out of the question. They should wear pretty little dresses of serge, flannel, or any good woolen material and washable pinafores and aprons.

I haven’t shown a boy, there are only  few pictured, but they are wearing knickerbockers or shorts, not skirts. In Richmond, Quebec, at least in and around 1910, Flora’s nephew, Stanley Hill still wore a skirt. And her brother Herb wore one in 1889 or so.

Not sure who kids at bottom are or when it is taken. The Dalmation may be Floss around 1909, but the Nicholsons may have had an earlier Dalmation. It is possibly Stanley Hill younger, so 1905ish?

The coat: A serviceable box coat for a girl is displayed. The model may be made in full or 7/8ths length with the fronts closed to the neck and rolled open.  Many of these coats for girls are made with striped or plaid weaves and they look very smart when the collars or cuffs are faced in a one tone contrasting material.

In the Laurier era in Canada the vast majority of children lived in poverty. Many of their moms could sew, but they did so in factories, making clothes for the burgeoning middle class.

Margaret Nicholson made her daughters’ clothes, until they got into working suits, then she made just the ‘waists’ or blouses and skirts. However she bought her son’s and husband’s clothes.

Below, Nicholson invoice 1901, sewing notions

Love of Love and Luxury, pitfalls of young women in the city.

I am in the process of writing Biology and Ambition, the story of Marion Nicholson’s life as a teacher in 1908-1913 Montreal, the follow up to Threshold Girl about her younger sister Flora and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster about her older sister Flora.

In September 1912 Flora writes home that she has seen Everywoman at the Princess and been enchanted. Is is the best thing she has ever seen. Everywoman is a popular ‘morality’play making the rounds: it is a cake and eat it too morality play, preaching about the dangers of youth and beauty, while featuring many beautiful young actresses in gorgeous clingy clothing to gawk at. A reviewer in the New York Times pointed this out.

It is a play aimed squarely at young women like Flora Nicholson, working in the City.

It was made into a 1919 movie and then the story fell into obscurity, unlike say Peter Pan or the Wizard of Oz and other era books that have lived on through the century in many incarnations.

The theme of this play, where a young Everywoman decides to become an actress and becomes seduced by the bright lights of the city, all its pleasures, including shallow men who use her, has of course lived on in many incarnations. Everywoman is a veiled warning about falling into prostitution, actresses being about one step above that. This is the age of the social evil, after all. Many people blamed the love of luxury for luring women into prostitution.

Biology and Ambition, unlike the earlier two parts of this digital trilogy to be called School Marms and Suffragettes as a complete book, is really a composite of letters, and era information. I believe I am going to put bits of  Everywoman in the story. I assume it is public domain.

Beauty, Youth conspire to undermine a young woman’s future happiness in Everywoman. Actresses loved playing in this play. Adele Blood, ‘”the most beautiful blond on the stage’ portrayed Beauty in the Montreal Production.

Everywoman warned of the pleasures of the city to young women who were experiencing the pleasures of the city, many for the first time. The play went out of favour unlike say, Pygmalion, written in 1912 for reasons pretty evident. The play contained pleasant enough poetry(and musical numbers too)  but how can a person preach against narcissism in a day and age where female narcissism is beginning to propel the economy, thanks to all the jobs available in the city for women.

Love and Marriage, Consent and Dowry

Marriage place settings.  Marion Nicholson Hugh Blair 1913. Home-made and on the cheap.

I’ve completed my draft of Diary of a Confirmed Spinster the follow up to Threshold Girl.

It has to be typed and put into pdf.

As I turn to Marion’s Story, I have marriage on my mind, 1910 marriage.

It’s still considered cute today, on sitcoms at least, for men to ask the father of their intended for his consent to a marriage.

I’ve only heard of one or two real life people who did that.

I think Wolowitz did it on Big Bang. He got married to Bernadette yesterday. Not a bad episode, the wedding on the roof with Google Earth was cute. (It’s hard to write an original marriage scene and that was fairly original.)

But I think I’ve figured out what a father’s consent meant, at least in Canada in 1910, at least for the middle class. It meant the father would give money, a dowry, set the young couple up.

So when a father didn’t give his consent, it didn’t mean he didn’t like the guy or want the daughter to marry, it meant he couldn’t afford it.

This reality is at the heart of my story Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. Norman Nicholson, Edith’s father would not even comment on her favorite, even when introduced to him. So in the book I have her beloved, Charlie, go to extremes to make money for marriage – and get killed. In real life he died in a fire at at Hotel in Cornwall, the Rossmore. His body was never identified.

As for Marion, well, she gets engaged in May 1913, a decision made only by the couple, although she has indeed ‘asked’ her father for his opinion of her intended earlier in October 1912.

In June 1913 Edith writes to her Mother, saying she wishes father would write and give his FULL CONSENT as Marion has to tell her principal whether she wants her teaching job back the next year. And Hugh, her fiance, wants to start looking for a house.

Norman does write to Marion a long letter saying “He doesn’t know what to say as he is dead broke.”

Norman and Marion’s fiance, Hugh Blair, come to some agreement and I have a letter from Hugh saying he as received whatever  and thank you. (In letters, if someone is thanking someone for money, it is never spelled out. Thank you for ‘the favour’ of the 12th instant.)

Hugh also asks for something from his own father (not sure what) and the father writes a jolly letter back but never mentioning Marion or the marriage.

Hugh’s parents do not attend the wedding in October in Richmond.

I also have a marriage contract, drawn up in Richmond a few days before the wedding, saying that Marion brings nothing to the marriage but her clothes and wedding presents.

So if she leaves Hugh, he keeps the furniture.

In 1910 In Canada, marriage was still a financial contract, although like Marion and Hugh, couples in love could get married without consent and suffer the consequences. Hugh had to go out into business on his own as a lumber merchant. He got shut out the family business, for a while at least.

The ideal marriage is where a man with prospects and education, although perhaps no money of his own, married a woman whose dowry could set him up in life and business. My own grandfather married 1901 was an example. He was Jules Crepeau and Assistant City Clerk in Montreal in 1901. He married the daughter of a master butcher, who brought if my mother is correct, 40,000 to the marriage. (Hard to believe, although Master Butchers were prominent citizens. The woman he married also had prominent connections, a Monsigneur and such.)

So what if they spent their marriage throwing crockery at each other.

Hugh and Edith

From what I see the Nicholson marriage was on the cheap. 6.65 for a cake and a few dollars for material and new shoes for outfits from Hudon’s.

Love and Marriage Dear Sir, I wish to consult you on a subject that deeply interests me while it indirectly concerns you and I hope that my presentation of the matter will meet with your approval. For sometime past your daughter Marion and I have been on intimate terms of friendship which has developed into affection on my part, and I have reason to believe my intentions are not indifferent to her, so I would therefore request your consent to our marriage. Yours sincerely, Hugh Christian Blair (PIC BELOW: Marion draws her ring!)

Me in the Press

In was on the Front Page of the Sherbrooke Record this Easter Weekend. The story: Century Old Townships Letters Capture Titanic Era Life. I was promoting Threshold Girl my ebook, the first in a digital trilogy as the Record Reporter Corrinna Pole described it.

Last November I got some press in Cornwall promoting the second book in the trilogy: Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. I had expected to have that book finished by now, indeed, I gave myself until the Anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, but I got sidetracked with injuries and a trip to California. Lucky for the trip, I got my hair done so I had a decent pic for the Record Story. I was on the front page, yikes!

The Cornwall Story is still online, without the pic. Here’s the pic. Edith and her beau Charlie, who died in a 1910 hotel fire in Cornwall.

Anyway, I am getting to the story. The Cornwall Standard Freeholder reporter will likely report on it when it is posted, just like Threshold Girl, on my www.tighsolas.ca website for free.

Anyway, another reason I haven’t finished the Spinster story is because I was missing a piece. I finally found it! An article from the April19, 1912 Votes for Women Magazine about Teachers and Suffrage.

I will have Edith get this issue and read this article and be incensed at a certain part, where an older teacher mocks younger ones for being so radical. (Edith was a radical suffragette, but never did anything about it. )

Here’s the article.

From Votes for Women Magazine, April 19, 1912: The Question of Women’s Suffrage was again discussed by the national congress of teachers at Easter. As was the case last year there was a very heated debate.

 

The Yorkshire Observer refers to Women’s Suffrage as “the great bone of contention at Aherysteryth in 1910 and as the topic hotly discussed by local associations throughout the year and, again, as the dividing whirlwind at Hull. ‘No man,’ it said, “could hold the storm. It broke with the violence of a northerly gale. Again and again the meeting was stopped by rival cries and calls. The assembly heaved with crosswinds and currents of feelings churned by an angry sea.”

 

Eventually, the previous question was carried and the discussion was once more shelved as far as the Congress is concerned.

 

But we shall be greatly disappointed if the women teachers, who are in an enormous majority as members of the NUT allow the question to remain where it is.

 

When the Congress arrived at the motion of Parliamentary Franchise for Women, it was met with deafening applause.

 

Miss Isabel Cleghorn, M.A. ex President of the Congress, moved the following resolution.

That this conference expresses its sympathies with those members of the National Union of Teachers,

who desired to possess and exercise the Parliamentary Franchise, but because they are women, and for that reason alone, are by law debarred from it.

 

She remarked that there were three reasons given last year why the suspension of standing orders should not be carried so that this resolution could be discussed: 1)That the motion had been sprung upon the executive; 2) that the associations had not had the opportunity of discussing it; 3)that this was a political question and should not be discussed by the National Union of Teachers.

 

This year they could not advance these reasons.

 

The association had discussed the motion and the result was that the motion was now sent forward by 17, 062 votes for its discussion and 6,728 against it. (Applause)

 

In addition, the associations had sent it up as the number 3 resolution to be discussed among the members.

 

 

Parliament from the London Eye, 2006. Taken by Me.

 

With reference to the argument that it was a political question, she said that the conference would agree, that  the parliamentary influence of their union was one of their greatest assets (Applause) that they were continually in their meetings and in their conferences discussing politics. They had not only discussed the question of the franchise but they had expended union money to extend the franchise to people who resided in their schoolhouses. (Applause.) And in the past they had discussed education bills. It seems to her that if their political power (and they had political power)depended on the vote, then if they were going to add more of their members as voters it must increase their political power. (Applause). Women were earning their own living. They were teaching in the schools of the country. They had to teach their children citizenship, loyalty patriotism and all that was necessary to make them good citizens of the future and  yet they had not the power of the vote which made for the good of the  country in the making of its laws. (Applause)

 

Mr. Dakers VP seconded the resolution and amidst cries of dissent reserved his remarks.

Mr. A E Cook NW London was loudly cheered on rising to move the previous question. He belonged to a large association in connection with which was an active ladies committee and they unanimously decided that it was not part or parcel of the union to interfere in this question. One of the objects of the association was to unite the member and this would bring disunion. Another object was to extend influence and dignity of the profession. The only cause of their object which touched the question was that which referred to securing of effective representation in Parliament. But this was not an education question: it was absolutely a political question.

 

Mrs. Bergwin seconded. She said all the sophistry, all the arguments of the suffrage association dissolved when she thought of the  actualities of life as she knew them. (Loud and prolonged applause and one call of Traitor). She had been asked if her position was not illogical. She reminded council that she had to support illogical things before when common sense opposed them.

It was no argument at all to say that because men had the vote women should too. What women would have the vote? ( Cries of ‘That’s the question’ and an interruption from some young women delegates who Mrs. Bergwin addressed as ‘dear girls’, adescription which created great laughter.

 

They might soon be happy wives but they would commence their married life with a grievance. “See what I have had to give up? I am not fit to have a vote now.”

I have a personal grievance, said Bergwin. We have had a government who would have carried social reform, remedied evils burning to be remedied.(Applause). But that government has been hampered and hindered…(Cries of dissent drowned out final words of sentence..

And this in atime that men’s passions may have been easily aroused. It was the job of her sex to shout PEACE. Peace with honour. Because her sex, womanhood and motherhood convinced her that this was not the time, nor was it opportune to give votes for women.

Mrs. Allan Croft said he was responsible for the appearance on the motion on the agenda. And he was proud.

Mr. Cook had missed out the very object of the NUT which was the justification for the motion on the agenda.  Object number 5 is to secure effective representation of education in Parliament. What better way could we devise to secure effective representation of education in Parliament than by greatly largely augmenting the ranks of voting members of the NUT.(Here. Here.)

 

The women members of the NUT provided the greater part of the parl. Fund. (Here here.) Over 4,000 pounds went every year into the fund directly from the pockets of the women members of the union.

 

Mr. Dakers pointed out that there was one department of social life in which women had a special interest. The department of the home. Therefore he claimed women had a special interest in the laws and regulations which determine the education of their children. Children were the shuttlecocks .of the party politicians. With their special interests in the welfare of the children who were a part of the home women would make a much better case of it.

 

 

Love and Death – Edith’s Story

The Rossmore Hotel Fire, Cornwall 1910.

Well, as I get down to writing Edith’s Story (part of the Tighsolas Trilogy)
I once again go over the story of her great loss, her great love.

Charlie Gagne.

This time I look him up in the 1901 census, and he appears to be the son of French Canadian farmers from Weedon.

The father in 65 and the mother 58. He is 17. He appears to be the only surviving son of elderly parents.

Now that is sad, if, as I suspect, he is the Charlie Gagne, Bank of Montreal teller killed in the Rossmore Fire.

Edith’s ‘unofficial’ fiance.

The fire was graphically described in 1910 accounts. According to the New York Times, those who died where employees or boarders, familiar with the hotel, so they took escape routes inside the hotel and died. The others leapt out of windows etc. A cigarette, tossed on a stairwell, is blamed for the fire.

Charlie was a boarder. Why he was there I don’t know. Likely subbing at the Bank there. He was normally posted in Levis.

He said in a letter to Edith that he spent most of his time in the Presbyterian Church…. Was he a convert from RC? The 1901 census doesn’t include religion, and I can’t find his parents on the 1911 census.

Edith first mentions Charlie G in a letter from 1908. She says she heard he is still going to dances in Richmond. She tells her mother he has told her to write to him, so she does. (I guess women had to be invited to contact a man, back then. In 1909, she shows him to her father at the train station. Her father doesn’t say what he thinks, according to Marion in a letter to her Mom. Edith also gets bitchy about a friend, Bert Cross, whom she suspects has her own plans to nab the man..(Hmm.) Then he is going to Mexico, and Margaret is worried ‘the flirtation’ (as she puts it) is over. And then in the fall of 1909 something happens to get them back together because in March 1910, she is heart sick. She says Villard gives her a tonic for her nerves and ‘heart’ and she is suffering so much from something they are giving her time off from work. That’s when she mentions Cornwall.And then he dies. “Why are some allowed to live and other ‘good people’ taken so early, ” Edith laments in a letter.

So her great love was a 27 year old bank clerk, son of French Canadian farmers.

I will have to fashion my story around that.

Editing Letters: Editing Lives

From the 1897 promotional brochure of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Six types of American woman: in the home, in religion, in business, in society, in summer, in the beauty motherhood. In summer???

Magazines have always loved to reduce people to stereotypes. The six types of, or five types of, or four types of is a cliche feature of journalism even today. Along with 10 tips to fix everything. When I was writing for magazines, I was always asked to write a sidebar with ten easy tips, for those readers who couldn’t be bothered to read the article itself.

I had to write SHOW, not TELL and start with an anecdote of sorts, an illustration.

I doubt that I wrote anything of any use to anybody. But it sold the products between the pages.

The one time I wrote a really important article, about shiftwork, where I interviewed young parents and experts about the new 24/7 society, and revealed that it was the young families who suffered most from this new paradigm, the article was killed. And this was the only time an article was killed. No explanation, although I could guess. The major advertiser for the magazine had just gone over to 24/7 shifts at its factories.

(Sort of like writing about cancer and smoking for a magazine in the 60′s, which was all cigarette advertising. A real no no.)

Anyway, I’m beyond all that now. I’m doing something really important. I’m editing the Nicholson letters for 1912, to show HOW IT REALLY WAS, to dispel myths and to reveal what has changed and what has stayed the same.

I’ve spent over five years researching the background to these letters, so you’d think it would be easy. But it isn’t. Today, I have printed out the April 1912 letters, when the poop has hit the air circulation device, with deaths and fights over wills and Herbert’s debts, and I understand exactly what’s going on, but I have to put them in a readable form. An enticing form.

Most of the letters have a standard form.. a conventional form of writing these people all understand instinctively. They start out with a remark about receiving other letters and a thank you for these same letters.. then some news about who was home with respect to family members, then some local gossip and then, only then, the MEAT, of the issue. The big problems at hand.

Sometimes, the letters end the PS has all the meat, as if it couldn’t come out before, but suddenly pours out.

And occasionally there’s a jaw dropping line, or an insightful line, or a historically relevant line.

All very interesting.

In short, the letters are LONG, because it was understood that in the days before radio, and when only a few homes had a victrola or talking machine, letters were a form of entertainment.

It seems people liked to read them much more than they liked to write them.

It was a social time, too. Despite social media, we live very privatized lives today. At least I do, and I do not believe I am alone in this. Almost all socializing happens at work, and occasionally at a party on the weekend.

Yes, there is a lot going on, but it mostly costs money. FREE socializing hardly exists, except for young people.

Anyway, as I edit these letters, my main goal is for people to see What has changed and what has stayed the same.

While maintaining dramatic tension (already in the letters).

The Census is Amazing!

This 1911 Census, online, is proving so helpful!

I was wondering if Marion Nicholson ever got enumerated, she wasn’t put down as living at Tighsolas June 1911. (The emumerator made that decision.)

I know she lived on Tupper, in 1911, but it’s hard to find streets on the online Census.

But as I edit the Nicholson Family Saga (volume 1) letters, I am checking up on people mentioned in the letters. I looked up Grace Cross and EUREKA. She lives with her mom and sister at 3 Tupper in 1911. (She lived in Richmond in 1901) She is in sales “dry goods” and makes a paltry 200 a year. And right next door is a Mrs. Louise Ellis, 43, Irish Presbyterian.

The famous Mrs. Ellis!

Mrs. Ellis is the HEAD of the family (why she has to take in boarders) She has a son, 21, who is a clerk in sales and makes 300. a year. He is listed as a Roman Catholic. (Husband must have been Irish Catholic.)

She has two boarders listed, an Eileen Chisholm, 26, Mamie Higgins, 23. Chisholm is a nurse in training pulling in $500 a year and Higgins is a stenographer, making $480.

No Marion Nicholson, 27, teacher making 650. But,then, as a teacher, she went home for the summer.

So the Census missed a lot of citizens, and not only the itinerants, like Herbert Nicholson.

But this little bit of info also underscores how DIFFICULT it was for young women to find lodgings in the big bad city without having any friends or connections.

And then I had another epiphany, rather late in coming, that Dr. Henry Watters is May’s brother. (That’s why he is so nice to her.) Why I didn’t figure this out earlier, I don’t know. It’s because he is so much older. (Ten years older, born in 1880.)I figured he was a cousin..There was a William Watters, a bit younger than Henry who died, (so many many deaths). I have the obituary in the Nicholson collection. I’m not sure when, though. Wait! yes, I am sure. Thanks to the Census. He was born in 1888.. he died at 22…1910 or 1911!

So that’s the William who dies in the letters!!

This Census Information is AMAZING.

In 1911 the Watters family (listed as Waters) live in Kingsbury.

In 1901 they live in the Gore and Henry is with them. And AGAIN their name is misspelled WATERS.

If they misspelled names like Waters on the census, imagine how they misspelled more foreign sounding names!

Letter 10 : All the Town News

Flora Nicholson.

Richmond,

Tighsolas

July 12, 1911

Dear Norman,

Your letter of July 10th received tonight and as you are not getting your mail regular I thought I’d better write at once. Hope

I had a long letter from Herb last night. He said he was writing you. He had a very pleasant visit with Mr. Neilson he had been acting manager for 15 days while the manager was having holidays so said that was the reason he was so long in writing.

I mailed you papers that Gilbert sent from Edmonton. Too bad they cannot put the mail in at Cochran. They always save money at the expense of the working class.

I see where the Government has or is talking of voting seven thousand for a reception to be given this Duke of Connaught the 12th of October. (Governor General)

Sir Wilfrid was given quite a reception at Montreal. (Upon return from Coronation.)

We had very hot weather just as hot as in Montreal. I see by your letter that you did not escape. Was in hopes that you’d have it cooler being so far north.

We are badly in need of rain have but for a few days it has been much cooler and we are able to get our rest at night. The garden is looking fairly well, the lawn is quite brown in some places, and this week thought I would not have it cut. I’m letting it go until the middle of the week I think. I told you that Stanley Hill was doing it.

Billie Hill cut the hedge when I went to pay him he said Mr. Montgomery settled for the whole thing.

The Montgomery’s seem to be getting on well with the house. Have it all boarded in.

We have been reading the accounts of the dreadful fires at Porcupine and Cochran. There was a sketch of a map in the Witness. Thankful that you were farther East.

Monday July 17th

The sick people are some better. Mrs. Beiber has gone down to the sea side with one of her sisters from Quebec. Marjory is keeping a little better.

Old Mr. Smilie was buried Wednesday from our church.

Grandma was no feeling well for a few days. She is up at Bella’s.

They had the auto painted just got it Saturday night. So yesterday they went out to Kingsbury.

Sutherland has not had an offer for his house yet.

It was sad Earnest Hall losing their only child little girl aged six years. She was buried same day. Mrs. Craik went to her funeral and Mr. Hepburn met them at church.

Marion went to Miss McCoy’s wedding she returned this morning she had a very nice time. I think now she will settle down.

The Skinners went to Weedon Saturday by Auto. Last Wednesday they took Flora to Sherbrooke, left at one o’clock returned at 7 pm. Friday they took Edith to Nicollette Lake. They are very kind to this family.

Dr. and Mrs. Moffatt came up one evening and took us for a ride in his auto, he runs very nicely, not too fast. Beiber is the talk of the town.

Dr. was asking for you. He thought when you were on the rail the sit was not so bad as the walk. Mc Morine was asking for you also.

In regard to Flora’s exams, you will see that she failed in French. Her name did not come out in the paper and she is feeling pretty badly about it. However, she can enter Macdonald. Had a talk with Mr. Carmichael. So you better make light of it for she did study hard. She just gets nervous at examinations times. When I hear about the marks, which will be a few days, will write you.

Just at time of writing it is raining hard. I hope you will take good care of yourself. This heat is very trying. We have all kept well.

Hoping to hear from you soon,
Your loving wife

As Flora failed her final French exam her name was not printed in the Richmond Times Guardian with the names of all the other graduates. There were few secrets in this town of 2,500, as Margaret’s letter makes clear.

It is no surprise that Flora’s failure did not keep her from entering Macdonald. They were in dire need of teachers in 1911. Flora would go to Macdonald on a scholarship for rural students, who it was hoped would graduate and then go work in rural schools. But the need for teachers in the big city were even greater.

The relentless heat in 1911 caused forest fires in Northern Ontario, not far from where Norman was working. The Montreal Gazette blared a front page headline: Fires Sweep Northern Ontario. South Porcupine, Cochrane Wiped Out. Fires were always a concern for these workers building the railroad. But railroad work, in general, was very dangerous.

The reception Laurier and the Coronation Contingent got was in Quebec City. A large crowd on the dock let out three cheers as a band played O Canada. Laurier returned from this trip abroad a SIR.

Sunday, Sunday

The Mount Royal Look Out 1910 (Valentine and son’s postcard)

In a previous installment of Flo in the City, my story based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, my social studies website about the 1910 era in Canada, I had one of the ‘characters’, Marion, a new teacher, write her lesson plan for the Monday on a Sunday in 1908.

In a 1913 letter, she remarks that she roasted a chicken ‘and on a Sunday.’

The Nicholsons were Presbyterians and very religious. Marion’s daughter, also Marion and my late mother in law, recalls that as a child in the 20′s, Sunday was a very quiet day at Tighsolas, as the kids couldn’t do anything.

Hmm. Margaret Nicholson went to church every day, and often twice a day. After all, there wasn’t much else to do in the house but work. And sermons were entertaining, and if the Minister was a dud, you still met neighbours and heard all the news at church.

In 1907, the Canadian Parliament passed the Lord’s Day Act. This is one case, where the leftist unions representing working people and religious institutions came together to try to give people a day of rest.

The United States hadn’t yet passed a such a law. In the 1909 Delineator, there’s an article. “Saving Sunday for America.” This Lord’s Day issue concerns both the man who carries ‘a dinner pail’ and the man who carries a Bible, says the article. The ordinary man, it seems, is merely inconvenienced. “I was up in Montreal the other day, where they’ve passed that blessed Lord’s Day Act, and do you know, I couldn’t buy a smoke in town. I was making something of a blow about it in the hotel lobby and when a young fellow stepped up to me and said, “Say, look here. Do you want to work seven days a week? ‘No,” I turned on him. “What has that got to do with it?” “Well,” he said.”I’m a cigar clerk and neither do I.”

It has been only since the 1990′s that large stores in Montreal have kept longer hours and stayed open Sunday. We still have few 24 establishments like in the US. Still, the parking lots of the mega shopping malls are now filled to the brim on Sundays. Shopping has become a leisure activity, one that is both ‘free’ and ‘expensive’, if you know what I mean. And with debit cards, and credit cards, money is almost always available. My father’s excuse for not spending on the weekends, “I didn’t get to the bank in time on Friday,” no longer stands up.

And in Quebec, we’ve just got rid of a rule that insists grocery stores keep no more than 6 people on staff on Sunday. They had to, because customers complained about the slow service. Many many people shop for food on Sundays, these days. We are a true 24/7 society, with more and more people working shifts.

Ironically, every since I can remember, Montreal has been ‘sin city’ where the entertainment establishments have stayed open late into the early morning hours. Toronto was always labelled Toronto the GOOD for its stubborn adherence to the Lord’s Day Act throughout the century.

Of course, the Lord’s Day Act contains an inherent Catch 22. If people are freed up on Sunday, not having to work, they need someplace to go for fun and leisure, like Dominion Park or the Nickel, and people are needed to run these entertainment establishments.

In Nickelodeons or Motion Picture Houses, apart from the people taking tickets, there was always a piano player and usually a speaker or explainer before and after the film – and sometimes even during the film. In French establishments the person was called a Bonmenteur and he was something of a cultural translator.

Today, in good economies at least, it’s students who take up the slack, taking tickets and doling out overpriced junk food at the local Odeon. It’s a perfect marriage of convenience, but only works if a student can keep up his or her grades.

A HAT SHOP IN PARIS 28th installment

Flora Nicholson. 1910

In honour of Canadian snowboarder Maelle Ricker, gold medal winner at the Vancouver Olympics and Lindsey Vonn, the American winner of the downhill and Britt Janyk the brave Canadian who finished fifth, (Vonn and Janyk being two of a few women who successfully negotiated the very dangerous and daunting women’s downhill at Whistler today) I will quote this excerpt from an editorial in the 1906 Ladies’ Home Journal.

Are girls overdoing athletics? asks the headline. …”although exercise is good for both sexes,muscular efforts emulating a male athlete’s can injure a woman beyond repair. Both physically and mentally, as women have a different mental make-up from men.”

Imagine what the editorial writer would have thought watching these Olympics. Of course, women had to be freed from their corsets and long dresses before they could flex their muscles. But I wonder if we’ve reached the limit of this daring-do. The downhill had nine crashes, one of them serious.

So I will write my next chapter of Flo in the City, about a young woman coming of age in the pivotal 1908-1913 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

A cold sunny day in early January 1909. The Montreal Witness newspaper on the secretary in the sitting room caught Edith Nicholson’s eye. She picked up the paper, which had a large rectangular hole cut out of one of the pages, read the caption under a cartoon and frowned.

In the sketch, a man was carrying his bride over the threshold, but with great difficulty as the bride’s giant hat was getting caught in the door frame. Women and their clothes obsession, read the caption, making modern marriage a rather difficult proposition. An article followed, and Edith’s scowl grew deeper and denser with each word she read.

How maddening! This cartoon and accompanying article was just of many slurs against fashion-loving ladies lately in the paper. A woman couldn’t win. She tossed the newspaper aside.

I know. I am going to write a letter to the Editor, she said to sister Flora, who, ironically, was busy at the dining room table, creating a hat from scratch with the help of the book A Course in Millinery.

May had given the book to her for Christmas, and Marion and Edith had purchased materials for her, the wire, the crinoline,and braid.

Flora smiled, fooling with a piece of crinoline, which she was about to use to cover a wire frame she had shaped the day before. She read the next instruction:

We will now take our two-piece wire frame and cover it with mull or crinoline for a foundation upon which to sew the braid. If the braid to be used covers well, crinoline is the better of the two, as it is a little stififer than* mull, but if the interlining will show through, mull will look better than the crinoline. Some of the fancy straws and hair braids have such wide interstices that it is often best to cover the frame with a cheap mercerized lining fabric that looks like silk, and has as much body to it. This generally matches the straw in color, and is usually used on the upper side of the brim and the outside of the crown. Transparent hats of chiffon, lace and maline are made differently and will be considered later. Whatever interlining is chosen, place the front of the brim in a bias corner of the goods and let it lie smoothly over the upper side of the brim. Secure by turning the goods over the brim edge and pinning it there.

Done. This wasn’t so hard. She could easily work in a millinery shop!

May had given Flo this gift because she knew she was thinking about going into the millinery business. Mother Margaret thought the book was just a random choice of Mae’s – and for that Flora was relieved. She didn’t want her Mother asking any questions. Not about school.

“What should I write for a first line? Edith asked. Poor Edie, she was in need of something to do to keep her mind occupied. Marion had returned to Montreal to go skating at the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association in Westmount, but Edith had no beau, so she did not accompany her. Unlike the rinks in the E.T. the MAAA frowned upon women skating unescorted.

“I know,” said Edith, and she dipped her pen in ink and wrote ‘Having noticed several skits in your paper recently with reference to women’s love of dress, I would like to ask the man who feels aggrieved that he must go through life alone because he cannot afford to dress a woman as she would like to be dressed, that while he can dress himself for $200 a year, she would require $2,000; if such were facts (?)whom should he blame? Do women dress to please men? I think he will admit that they dress primarily to attract the attention of men in general before they are married and to please their husbands afterwards.’

“Now, how do you like that Flora? she asked. Flora had fitted the frame to her head and was looking quite ridiculous as she answered, “When I have my own hat shop in Paris, I will not need to marry.” She tilted her head.

“You will have to improve your French, though” Edith joked, although Flora did not think it funny.

No matter how hard she tried to escape her reality, with fancy ideas, and big dreams, someone was sure to say somthing that brought her back to earth.

French, yet another of her weak subjects. Composition, Latin. Algebra. How would she ever get through this year, let alone next?

Edith picked up the newspaper again to find a particular line in the irksome article.

“Why does the newspaper have a hole in it?” Flora asked.

“Because Mother cut out an article on England’s new Old Age Pension Scheme,” Edith answered. “I think she wishes our Parliament would follow suit and pass such a law.”

Oh, and now Edith was reminding Flora of the family’s money problems. Flora removed the hat shape and put it aside, and decided to go for a walk before the sun went down.

She’d take Floss. Dogs don’t talk, so she’d be safe.