Canada’s Would be British Suffragette Leader

Barbara Wylie, From WSPU. She was on her way in September 1912 to convert Canadians to the cause, taking the Empress of Ireland (which would soon sink, I think).

Well, earlier I referred to Barbara Wylie as a rogue suffragette for the brazen way she promoted militant values in the speeches, when all the other visiting suffragists were much more careful to tone down  their rhetoric.

But she wasn’t rogue. She was sent by the WSPU as their representative.  They mentioned it in their magazine. Of course, one wonders why they sent her away to the colonies at all.

A short biographical paragraph about her I found on the Net from a book on the Suffragettes says she stayed in Canada from 1912-14, but not true, as I saw another article where she entertained a US journalist in her London home in August 1913. And she becomes spokesperson for the WSPU for a short while in 1914, with the Pankhursts in Jail again.

She had been the head of the Glasgow  branch of WSPU (some say Edinburgh) and then she came to London. She was one of the suffragettes put in jail for civil disobedience, window smashing in 1912, but apparently she was allowed out due to her mother’s ill health (ie. her parents had pull.)

She came to Canada as a brother was a MLS in Saskatchewan. (Perhaps she had dreams of becoming THE Suffrage Leader in Canada, as there was a vacuum, but that didn`t pan out.)

Anyway, Wylie figures in my story Threshold Girl. I fidget with dates, tho, bringing her to Montreal in May of 1912.  Flora Nicholson and Edith Nicholson go to see her speak in a church but miss the actual speech. I use dialogue from the Montreal Daily Star account in the book, the account I have on a news clipping belonging to Edith.  Yes, Wylie was militant, as in unapologetic about the more violent acts of the suffragettes, including attacks on the Prime Minister.

And the WSPU magazine, Votes for Women, figures in the follow up Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. Edith reads the article about women being tortured in jail and gets inspired to act out on an injustice in her own life, a perceived injustice.

Canada’s official women suffrage history centers on the Famous Five out west, Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung and those others  And like Carrie Derick in Montreal, who founded the Montreal Suffrage Association in 1912 maybe after  meeting Wylie, their women’s rights activism is all tied in with murkier things, like eugenics and temperance and moral and social reform.

Emily Murphy also got into the ‘war on drugs’ business, in the 20′s, a decade later than the Americans, but with the same racist slant.

That’s probably why they didn’t teach about suffrage movement  in City schools in my day.

As I’ve written, the Nicholsons of Richmond were tea-totalling Presbyterians, but only father Norman ever wrote about the dangers of drink. The women seemed more intent on getting all they  could out of life for themselves, love, nice clothes, great jobs, lots of travel, the right to earn a proper living, suffragettes in the truest form, wanting the same rights as the men.

There were not interested in social welfare per se, but as teachers in the big city, they were thrown head-long into the problem and given hands on experience.

Biology and Ambition, the epistolary novel about Marion Nicholson’s early life reveals that this future union leader just wanted an even playing field. She was willing to work for the rest. (Boy, would she have made a great suffragette!)

Anyway, the press covered Miss Wylie (that was the point and she was so PRETTY! sic) in Toronto her speech is reported on and in Calgary I found an article that makes fun of her militancy, light of it.

Actually, a ‘snippet’ tour I just took of Google Books shows that Miss Wylie has left a legacy as a suffragette, in the scholarship, mentioned in Dame Pankhurst’s 1930′s autobiography.

And her Canadian tour aroused interest, at least converting women journalists to the cause. One account said she received a cold shoulder in the East but a nicer reception out West. After the Calgary talk, a suffrage association was started up, so even with the mocking, it worked. And she was active in BC. Her brother, the MLA, pushed for women suffrage in Saskatchewan.

One Man’s Terrorist is…a Suffragette

My improvised work station.

I have set up a workstation where my arms and wrists and gaze are all properly aligned. Hopefully, I can get to typing Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, my story about Edith Nicholson of Richmond, Quebec, a prim and proper Presbyterian teacher who was all for the militant suffragettes.

The other day I listed to some installments of a BBC Radio Four re-run, called History We’ve Forgotten to Remember.

The series reminds us that history gets rewritten, often by omission, and often on purpose.

I listened to the episodes called “The Suffragettes.” I wondered what part of the Suffrage Movement they’d focus on, so much of it has been rewritten and/or forgotten.

Well, they focused on that fact the suffragettes were militant, even committing ‘acts of terrorism’ over and above the window-breaking that has been remembered in popular culture such as TV shows like Upstairs Downstairs etc.

Well, nothing I don’t go around telling people. The suffragettes were the militant arm of the suffragists.

As I Canadian I learned NOTHING about the suffragettes at school. *I’m pretty sure, anyway. I took two years of British History in High School.

Indeed, I only started learning about them when I started researching the background to the Nicholson Family Letters I found in 2005.

I couldn’t help it. The Nicholsons left behind plenty of Montreal press clippings about the suffragettes. Some I transcribed and put on the Tighsolas website.

One such clipping told the story of British suffragette Barbara Wylie’s September 1912 trip to Canada.  As she detrained at Montreal’s Place Viger reporters asked her about the hurling of the axe at Asquith. (It would have knocked some sense into him had it landed, she replied.) Also about a bombing at a Dublin Theatre.

1912/13 was when the militancy was at its height, over and above the famous theatrics of Pankhurst’s WSPU.

Indeed, the suffragettes became militant because the government over-reacted and sent them to jail for acts that were not criminal, just effective in getting good press, in getting the word out. If they were going to be persecuted for non-criminal acts, such as chaining themselves to buildings, they  might as well do criminal acts. That was the thinking.

Asquith getting ‘pied’ with flour

The BBC Four Story focused on a possible assassination attempt by some suffragettes on Asquith. Not all the scholars interviewed agreed this happened for certain. Somewhere on this blog I have an press image of the suffragettes throwing flour at his car. Today that would be considered an act of terrorism – and not  mere theatrics.

One scholar who disagreed thought that the Pankhursts were far too image conscious to allow this to happen. That’s another thing, apparently, forgotten by history about the suffragettes.

Again, nothing I haven’t figured out myself. The suffragettes were masters of the media image, for their time.

Hence this Miss Wylie a fairly unknown almost rogue spokesperson, dazzled reporters with her wit and good looks. Suffragettes made sure to dress well. Even their magazine was full of dress ads. The WSPU magazine is online and I just had to read a few issues to realize how clever these suffragettes were.

I have put something about Wiley’s visit in Threshold Girl  my story about Flora Nicholson in 1911/1912. I will put something from WSPU magazine in Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. I have her reading the article on Russian Treatment of Women in Prison, the force-feeding.

On her trip, Wylie tells reporters that there are many members of the WSPU in Canada. I know Edith was a militant suffragette supporter because she writes so in a May 1913 letter. I guess I have to go through all era issues to see if her name is listed as a donor.

All to say, there is a great deal to be learned from History, REAL history. The protests happening right now in Quebec could be analyzed from that angle, but won’t be.

Edith’s clipping of the Wylie Visit from September Montreal Daily Star. “Will Canadian suffragists adopt militant tactics?” the headline asks.

ell, I also listened to another edition of the History program on BBC. This one about the Great Depression. Their conclusion, the New Deal did not end the Depression, WWII did. Hmm. I read so much about the mass youth unemployment in the Western World. It scares me because they had the same problem in the 1910′s… and that’s probably why there was a War. To kill off these excess souls rendered unemployable by the change over from an agrarian to industrial economy. (At least some historians say.)

But they can’t do that now, right? They learned their lesson. WWI killed off many unemployable men and then also the best and the brightest.

My BBC Program claims that  history has forgotten the militancy of the British Suffragettes because it was soon followed by the carnage of WWI that made the violent actions of the militants seem like harmless child’s play.

Politics, Education and Quebec

 

Education in Quebec is getting worldwide attention these days, and many would say ‘negative’ attention, although not all. Line Beauchamp, the Education Minister resigned yesterday over the issue and the Charest government is struggling with how to deal with the politically charged protests.

 

But I’m living in the past, 100 years ago, when it cost money to go to school, elementary and high school, let alone college and when the issue in education in the Protestant sector was “the Jewish Question.”

 

I am writing Biology and Ambition, about Marion Nicholson a teacher in Montreal in 1909-1913, the follow up the Threshold Girl (about her younger sister Flora in 1911/12 when she attended Macdonald Teachers College) and available on free ebook, and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about her older sister Edith, who was a teacher at French Methodist in Westmount in the same era.

 

The ebooks are based on real letters, but I am weaving into them political issues. Marion’s political issue is this Jewish Question and I have been reading up.

 

In 1909, an MLA, Mr. Finnie, introduced a bill in the Provincial Legislature, allowing for the Directors of the Protestant Board of Education to be elected rather than appointed.
In those days most of the Board Members were clergyman. (It is always said the Catholic Church had too much power in Quebec in the old days(keeping the people down) but so did the Protestant Clergy. The difference being the Protestant Clergy promoted education, as their constituency was more elite.)

 

There is a heated debate and a Commissioner, Dr. Barclay slurs the Jews and has to backtrack a bit. Also P Mackenzie, the member for Richmond ( and a ‘friend’ of the Nicholsons) seems to argue against the bill.  Finnie and his supporters say that the Board has to have more businessmen. Most Board Members are Clergymen. He brings up to recent fires in Montreal Schools (one in Marion’s Royal Arthur in 1909 and one other one where a teacher and some students died.)

 

It is a private members bill and is quashed early on. Those for the bill, Finnie and others, claim that the clergyman are just trying to save their good jobs.

 

But during that period, apparently, a lot of fear mongering happens, saying that Jews will take over the Board and change the Christian character (at least two schools in Montreal are overwhelmingly filled with Jewish students.) And that Jewish teachers will be allowed to teach and they too will start preaching their religion in the schools. (The Canadian Jewish News reminds people that Jews don’t proselytize like the Protestants do.)

 

Anyway, by 1913, Jewish Teachers are allowed to teach. The Board has consulted its lawyers (Greenshields!) and they said it is legal as long as Jewish Teachers don’t teach Bible Class.

(From Images Montreal)

The New Royal Arthur, Canning and Workman in Ste. Cunegonde or Little Burgundy. The school was built in in the 1860′s, but partially burnt in 1909, when Marion was a teacher, but in January when empty. Her mother remarks, ” I read about the fire. Is that your school? It is so lucky school was out.”

 

A Dr. Scrimger is all for it. He is a preacher very familiar to the Nicholsons. He preaches at Macdonald when Flora is there and she remarks upon it to her father.

 

I see by reading the papers that the Jewish Question of Representation on the Board was still going strong in 1965 when I was at school.

 

Anyway, this story will be edited into Marion’s actual letters. She doesn’t mention it. Oddly, none of the 1909 letters I have mention the typhoid epidemic either. It killed people in Westmount and Ste. Cuengonde, so both Edith and Marion must have been aware. I’ll have to add something about that. My play Milk and Water (taking place in Montreal in 1927) covers that issue well.

 

Another thing Marion didn’t talk about directly in letters was about the classroom. I guess that was confidential. Too bad, I’d like to know what went on.

 

The only time in a letter she remarks on students is in 1906, her first job, as a summer teacher in a town in the ET. She says she has two new students, the dirtiest people she ever saw and both dunces. She names them and asks her Dad if he knows the family. Beginner’s mistake, I guess.

 

I will put the letter in the book, changing the names and place. It speaks to why teachers didn’t want to work in rural schools.

 

In the same letter she mentions she is bored to death because there is nothing to do and she asks Mom to send some needlework, ‘fancywork.’

 

When she starts work in a city school, there’s no  time for such things. 50 children. And plenty of outside distractions, like Dominion Park and the Nickelodeon!

Titanic Era Life of Women

Coats from Eaton’s Catalogue, winter 1913-14, range 12.00 to 25.00. Mid range. The catalogue opens with glamour coats, fur coats worth 80 dollars or more, muskrat, seal and the most expensive, persian lamb.. There are also some coats for 10.00 and 5.00. In the 16.oo range, cheviot, vicuna, or, a bit more expensive, wool.

Following is an ‘edited’ letter from late 1912. Margaret Nicholson is visiting her girls in Montreal. You see, Marion, her gung-ho daughter, has taken the brave step of finding a flat for herself and her sister and two friends, all teachers, very bold of her. But it’s near impossible in 1913 for working girls (sic) to  keep a flat and a job. So Mom has to come to help. (Besides, without Mom there, people are very suspicious.

My Threshold Girl story (on free ebook) tells the story of Flora Nicholson’s year at Macdonald Teachers College 1911/1912. I am writing the follow up, Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about sister Edith’s life in the era, where she loses her great love in a Cornwall hotel fire. I end in August 1912, in Boston, where she is on a trip with sister Marion. Edith has no prospects, work or romantic, for she has quit her teaching job in May.

Marion’s story, the third book in the digital trilogy, will tell about her life between May 1911 to May 1913, the two years she is courted by Hugh Blair, while working as a teacher in Little Burgundy.  Despite her huge ambitions, she ends up giving up teaching to marry Hugh. This letter suggests some reasons why.

2401 Hutchison

November 11, 1912

Dear Norman,

You see by the heading that I am still in the city.

Marion and Flora won’t hear to me going home and E writes for me to stay as she is getting on all right – has one of the Pepplers when she stays in the house. I will not stay more than another week. I do wish Edith was here and that we could be together for the winter as they ought to have someone here. Your letter did not reach me until Friday pm, as Edith sent it–so I felt a little worried as I always got them Thursday.

I am so sorry about your coat. I gave the right add to Lann McMorine. You better make some enquiries there about it. Might be at Cochrane.

Edith writes that Mr. Dyson said he bought thirty cords of wood and would supply our winter’s wood and would bring a cord any time and to let him know so don’t worry any more about wood. She also sent me notice that taxes were due.

Now I am very sorry that Herb seems to be so careless, debt seems to be no worry to him. I hope you have just let him know how hard it is for you to be away from your family and that he might try and do better. He has not written me for several weeks . I really cannot understand how he can do it.

Well, the weeks are going by and Xmas will soon be here I don’t know what the girls can do with the flat; or if they will be able to get someone to keep fires if they want to go home. They will have two weeks holidays. They were talking it over but said they would decide when you came. The weather has been quite nice since I came in here.

I have not bought a coat. Takes more than I had. Marion got a long navy blue one that will be very comfortable this winter. Paid 16.50 and Flora got a brown the same price. They really needed them.

I have not gone anywhere not been up to Cleveland’s yet. I have been having trouble with my teeth and as Marion was having work done at Cleveland’s Friday, I had him look at mine. He said he would do an hours work for me Monday so I am to go at three o’clock, Too bad yours are giving you trouble. I think it is caused from cold, my front teeth at least one of them felt loose, but he said he did not think it was but found cavities in others. M. had five filled.

Marion said she was going to write you and tell you about Mr. Hugh Blair. He seems very nice. Went home Saturday to Three Rivers. There are a good many things that he can do such as fixing window blinds, but Marion won’t let me ask him much. We are trying to put the double windows on here. I want to see them on before I go, although so far they are not needed.

I don’t think there is any danger of them getting behind: the four girls pay 25 dollars each. They would rather do it than board. They say it amounted to about that at Mrs. Ellis’s.

Now don’t worry about Herb. We cannot help it now. If the work stops there you must just take a trip out west. See why he does not at least keep himself. He must know that Marion paid Aunt Han’s note. He never wrote her or mentioned it to me. Write when you get this and add to Richmond.

They say I will be here two weeks more but I don’t like to leave Edith alone . She said she would go to Kingsbury for a visit but she thought it was too cold and just stayed at home.

Your loving Wife

Margaret

Flora is always saying she is going to write but there is so much going on they don’t have time and when I write often they think I tell all.

Easter 1912..Titanic Week

Norman Nicholson in his Masonic Regalia. In 1912, they were starting up a Chapter of the Eastern Star, a group for women. Norman was a Presbyterian and the Presbyterians frowned upon the Masons (for keeping secrets from their wives.) Still, he spend a lot on fees to remain a Mason. He needed it for social standing.

Well, it is Easter Sunday, 2012, the 8th of April. It seems that Easter was around the same time in 1912, because I have this letter from exactly 100 years ago.

Well, I checked. It was the 7th!

The letter is from Norman Nicholson of www.tighsolas.ca . He was writing to his wife in Richmond, Quebec, from his post on the Canadian Transcontinental Railway in Cochrane, or at least near Cochrane at “end of steel” as they called it.

Their daughters, Flora, Marion were at home for Easter.  Another daughter,Edith, had to stay in town I guess to watch over students at Westmount Methodist, a boarding school.

Flora was a student at Macdonald College, studying to be a teacher, Marion and Edith were already teachers in the Big City. Flora’s story is told here Threshold Girl in free e-book form.

Cochran Ont April 8^th, 1912

Dear Margaret,

I am writing you my usual weekly letter. Did not receive yours that I usually get Saturday? I suppose your are busy entertaining your girls. But I expect to get a long one from you when the girls leave. Trust you are well.

Well, I have nothing new to write about from here. Last Friday and Saturday we had a big thaw here. It took away half of our snow and in lots of places the ground is bare and where it is the mud is terrible would prefer snow to it.

  It turned cold last night and this morning everything is frozen solid with snow falling and a north wind blowing not a very good day for Easter Bonnets here.

Did not go to Church this morning, it was too cold. I had letter yesterday from DB McLennan of Scotstown wanting to know if I could get him a job here.

I think I forgot to tell you in my last letter that I had a post card from Sophia Nicholson in Edmonton wanting to know if I had received the epistle she wrote me at Xmas.

Said Gordon was sick with the measles. I haven’t heard from Herb since writing your last, nor any of the girls.

How is Han and the Hills getting on now? As I haven’t any news to write about I will close awaiting your letter. My eye is all right but not quite as clear of the red yet as the other. Cold is quite well now. Hoping you are enjoying the Easter Holidays with your girls. I will come later if spared.

Now, My sweet pet, I will say love to your own self. Trusting to hear from you soon, Your affectionate husband N. Nicholson

Here’s the letter wife Margaret wrote back: Her letter is peppered with references to the family problems, the largest of which was a large debt owed by her son, on an insurance policy. And the family is squabbling with Margaret’s brother over care of the aged mother. The last line of her letter reveals Margaret finds it ironic that people are asking them for help getting jobs.

Richmond Thursday April 11, 1912 Dear Norman, Yours of the 8th received Tuesday night – I look for them on that day. Marion returned to the city Tuesday afternoon, Flora returned Wednesday afternoon. They both had a nice long holiday which I enjoyed very much. E. did not come. We wrote to her every day and she wrote that Marion’s young man had been very kind took her, taking her to the theatre so she was not too lonesome. Grandma is feeling better. I was up this afternoon stayed three hours and had a talk of the will business. Bella said Mother made her will the other day but she does not know what is in it. Tom  Bushell and M. Cleveland are the witness and her money is in the bank. While we were talking Clayton came in. He said they did keep Mother for nothing and that it was not a lie, though I told him mother paid her board. I said I always understood she did. Well, I suppose you think you will get your pay now. They have it in for me. How I wish I did not have to go near them. Han is having her sale the 16th, then she is going up to the farm. Sis is with her and looks black when I go over. Still I go and Han comes up here. Marion wondered why you did not say anything about Herb’s insurance. George Alexander called me up to ask. Said you told him there was a letter from Herb for you. I said I did not think it was an answer to the one you had written. Marion thought of going to see George but did not like to tell you. Am glad your cold is better.  The ice is moving a little today. Still there is a cold wind. I have to make a fire in the furnace every day.  Crombie is busy with his chimney for the fire place. Mrs. Gawn has bought Fran Shaw’s house in upper Melbourne. The new notary is moving into the Sutherland’s house. Mr. Rothney is staying in the Kelly house. Mrs. Skinner has gone to Melbourne. I do not miss them so much.  The Dr. wrote her that he was offered 90 dollars a month for his house. I sat up with grandma two nights last week. Now she does not need any one after Han’s sale and if she keeps better I am really going out to Kingsbury for a few days.   As I now see things, Bella and Clayton have made most of the trouble for us among the friends just because they are jealous of us.  I have not heard anything about our lodge yet. It may take some time. What do you think of my office? Do you think I can manage it?   I paid water tax telephone and PO box rent and got a gal of maple syrup from Fowler when the girls were here. It is very nice I wish you could have some now when it is new however there will be some when you come. Now with much love Your wife Margaret Write me what to say about the insurance PS Write to W Keenan about your wagon. The very idea of McLennan writing you about a position. I wish you was a good as most people think.

Here’s the letter Marion wrote upon her return: Her lodgings were on Tower, which is near McGill off Sherbrooke.

Edith and Marion seated Circa 1912.

Tower Avenue,

April 13, 1912

Dear Father,

You will see by the heading that I am again in Montreal and mother will have told you that I was at home Easter. Mother is busy but well. She had been with Grandma quite a lot and now I hear Florence Pepler is not well  and she has been there. Everything is much the same only the Skinners have left their house.  Flora came back the day after I did. She is well but not quite as fat as she was at Xmas. Edith has, I suppose, told you that she was thinking of taking a summer school out West somewhere, that is if she can get one and there is a  slight possibility  that I might do the same if I can find a place for the two months.

Was in at Dr. Cleveland’s yesterday having a tooth filled. He was enquiring for you.

There was nothing doing at home except the talk of Uncle Dan’s will but mother has told you all about that I suppose. Aunt Han gave them a great old calling down and does not want to have anything more to do with them. I saw Aunt Sarah and Florence. They left the day after I got home. There is not any more news so I will stop now and write later. Rec’d your check all right and Flora is all right for this month.  What about Herb’s insurance?  I was going to speak to Geo Alexander when at home but thought perhaps I had better not as I had not heard back from you. Let me know: I  can take it over all right without burdening myself. Now, I think this is all for now,

Lovingly

Marion

PS Am enclosing the take on the Liberals but think it should apply to the Cons don’t you.

Marion.

Here’s a letter Flora wrote to her Dad upon returning to school for the final push before graduation.

She mentions the Titanic – but also the death of  a girl at school. In those days, someone could get sick one week and be dead the next. Pneumonia. The King of Death. Charles Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway, was the most prominent Montrealer to go down with the Titanic. (He was American.) He had visited Richmond in 1911,  because the railway station there burnt down. This was a significant event, as Richmond was an important railway hub.

Flora 1908, on the beach at Nantucket. The Nicholsons had many relations in Boston. During this visit she took a car ride (in a Stanely Steamer) to Wellesley College. She thought Macdonald College resembled Wellesley.

A page from her  Spring 1912 Nature Diary.

Macdonald College.

April 19, 1912

Dear Father,No doubt you will be thinking it is about time you were hearing from me. I intended answering your letter long before this but it seemed as if I never could get around to it.

I suppose mother has told you I was home for Easter holidays. We had a week, from Wednesday to Wednesday.  It seemed good to get home, although I was in the house all the time with a cold. Still, Marion and I helped out with Mother’s day at home. She had 10 visitors, so we all got the local news.

 Apparently, they are thinking of setting up a chapter of the Eastern Star in Richmond.  Something else for mother to do.

One day Mother Marion went out the cemetery to see Uncle Dan’s grave.

Ever since I have got back I have been quite busy. Our exams commence about the middle of May and it won’t be long before they are here.

I applied for a school in the city but have not heard yet anything about it. I won’t know until June whether I will be accepted. I supposed they have to wait until they see what we will do in our exams, that is, if we manage to carry off a model diploma.  Mabel is going to Valleyfield  next year. She is to have first and second model.

I don’t think there is any danger about not getting a school. The commissioners of schools are really at our mercy. There are so few qualified teachers and so many new students. I hope I will be accepted in the city as I think I will like it fine with Edith and Marion there too.

Next week I have to assist in the Kindergarten from 9 to 10.20. am  in the day school and next week in the upper grades. So you see, I will be pretty busy but it will be good practice for me…. I suppose you have not heard about the death of Edith Storke, one of the girls attending the college. She was in the Elementary class. She took cold and it developed into pneumonia and died in a few days. She did not live in residence as Dr. Lynde, one of the professors, is her brother-in- law.

This is the second death of a student this year.

The Titanic is all everyone can talk about. Mother saw Mr. Hays, the President of the GTR , at the Train Station last summer. Edith says she is going to the American Presbyterian church to hear the eulogy for him.

They are having a service here, too. But for all the dead.

Your Loving Daughter, Flora

Edith sends Norman a letter later in the month:

1095 Greene Ave Westmount Quebec April 19, 1912 Dear Father, I suppose you heard that I was unable to go home for the holidays. I got through the time very well, considering  Marion and Flora both had a very nice little holiday  and it did them good. I just got a letter from Mother this morning. What a time she is having between Florance and Grandma. If there is any work to be done they, of course ,will  have to have Mother. I think they are perfectly dreadful, the things they have said and done. And all for the sake of a little money. I hope we shall never have to be so mean. Only 5 weeks until we close. This year has gone by very quickly after all. What a dreadful accident to the Titanic and such a great loss of life. It seems to have cast a gloom over every one. People can talk of nothing else.  Mr. Hays will be a great loss to the Grand Trunk. There are to be memorial services in all the churches on Sunday morning. A special one for Mr. Hays in the American Presbyterian. I think I shall go out to Macdonald tomorrow and see Flora. Later Sunday Afternoon. I went out to Macdonald on the 1.30 train and spent a pleasant afternoon. She is looking splendid and is to beautifully dug out there. It is an ideal spot. The ice has moved out of the Ottawa a little but not yet from the St. Lawrence. I went to the memorial service in the American Presbyterian this morning. The front was draped with black. The pulpit with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. The service was very impressive . He is certainly well spoken of. Today is anniversary service in St. Andrew’s. Dr. Barcley is preaching.  It has been a beautiful Sunday, the warmest yet and getting so nice and dry.  How are things up North? What do you think of the coming elections in the province? Do you think Peter will have a hard run. Saw by the Record that Charlie Campbell started on a business trip to Winnipeg. M. Got your letter the other day. Your loving Edith In my story, Threshold Girl  I have Edith come home for the 1912 Easter Holidays.  Creative License.

Employee Background Check 1910

Looking through the Nicholson Papers I found this heretofore overlooked document from February 1911. Interesting.

It was mailed to Norman from the Guarantee Company of North America, Bonds of Suretyship for Positions of Trust. Head Office, Montreal.

They were asking my husband’s great grandfather about a certain Lewis W. St-Louis (25) who had made an application for Manager of the Bell Telephone office in Victoriaville.

The 1911 census website (June 1911) shows a 29 year of LW St-Louis living on College Street in Richmond (with wife, age 24) and working as a Manager in an office for 1,000 a year. Hmm. Maybe Mr. St.Louis did get the job at BEll but they hadn’t moved yet, so they are on this Census in Richmond. If he did, he may have lied about his age

A good job, right on the cutting edge…In Downton Abbey, an ambitious housemaid gets a job with the local telephone office, too, with the help of the young lady of the house.)

1,000 a year was the same salary Norman got working on the railway. Now, I think I read in Terry Copp’s Anatomy of Poverty, that 1,500 a year was considered the household income needed to keep a family properly. From what I can see on the 1911 Census, almost NO ONE made that. I think I saw a bricklayer with 1,300 and a jeweler too.

People who were wealthier didn’t put down a salary it seems. Except for my husband’s grandfather, who claimed to be making 7,000 (as President of Laurentian Spring Water.) He was on his second wife and would marry again and have three more kids, including my father in law, born 1920.

It’s there in black and white: there was a huge gap between Haves and Have Nots and today, 100 years later it seems to be going back that way, with in the US the top 1 percent owning as much wealth as the bottom 80 percent.

Norman himself was out of work at this time. My Flora in the City story starts two months later, in April and in May Norman gets another job on the Canadian Transcontinental Railway.

Here are the questions Norman had to fill out: Are you connected in relationship with him?..How long have you known him? Was he ever in your employ? (NO)Was he ever suspected of dishonest conduct? Have you ever heard of him being dismissed or suspected.

Have you ever heard of his having been addicted to: Intemperance, immorality, speculation, extravagance, gambling, unfavourable associations..

Is he under any debts?

Is he a trustworthy person?

Well, I guess that ‘addicted’ part means that it’s ok if the man had an occasional drink, was ‘immoral’ on occasion and extravagant, once in a while, too.

Hmm. I thought it was only lately that they used the term addiction for all these ‘vices.’

Oddly, Norman wrote down his own profession as Trader, whatever that meant… He never sent this back (even though it came with a self-addressed stamped envelope). As he filled it out, though, I imagine he could not help but think of his own son, who was caught stealing at the bank and was forced to move out West, where, despite his iffy past, he quickly got another post – at a bank, of all things. Hmm.

General Elections in Canada 1904 1908

Election 1904 Proclamation of Results for Richmond Wolfe. The places the men voted are listed on left, such as GG Gymer’s Store. Margaret’s sister Christie married a railwayman named Gymer and moved to Evansville Illinois. Likely a relation.

In this 1904 election: Tobin the Liberal got 3787 votes against 2576 for O’Brady the Conservative. Men voted in Halls, schools, stores and even private homes, it seems. Poll number 13 at Windsor Mills was at the “store house of Mr. Dearden opposite River View Hotel.” In Richmond that year 507 men were eligible to vote. 371 men voted, 230 to 141 for Tobin the Liberal. Tobin was MP for the area for a long time and he helped Norman get his job on the railroad.Margaret voted for the first time in 1921 and wrote about it in a letter. She wrote “I did not feel ashamed” and “How I Love this Country” in the letter and then gave all the reasons her female neighbours DIDN’T VOTE. One woman arrived too late to vote; another said that TOBIN and the Liberals didn’t need her vote. One woman did vote and was so ashamed she wouldn’t leave the house. So Margaret wrote. In the afternoon of the election a neighbour came by auto (1921) and asked to bring Margaret to the polls. She replied, “Do you think I would wait this late to vote?” She had already walked there in the morning. She told the man to go ask her neighbour, Ethel Crombie, who, she wrote “would not go vote.” So it seems, despite all the hoo-ha, many women in Richmond just didn’t care or were afraid to vote in the first general election where they had the right to. Apathetic already.

In my next installment of Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, Margaret says that there’s an election coming up, end of October. So Norman will come home for it. He is some kind of official, I’ll make him an invigilator. Herb, too. In September Marion is in Montreal and looking for a place to stay. Herb is dividing his time between banks in the E.T and Montreal and he refuses to visit Marion, when in Montreal, as he is angry at her for reasons I will divulge in the installment. So when Edith announces that she, too, is going to work in Montreal, as a tutor in a French family, Margaret will be of mixed mind: unhappy about the job and happy that Marion will have someone there – and she will have someone there to report on Marion. Edith is the gossipy one and Marion plays her cards close to her chest. She has a strong independent streak but also is a dutiful daughter.

Tiny Little Tintype

Unknown girl. This is a tiny tintype, the size of a dime, framed in a large embossed piece of pink paper. I don’t recognize the girl as an adult: from what I can see she would be a fabulously beautiful woman. Although there is something about that gaze that is very familiar.

I got ahead of myself posting blogs with pictures, and am catching up, filling up the blogs with chit chat or, more hopefully, scenes from my book. So, despite the date above, I am writing this on December 18th. Just remembered! This is my wedding anniversary.

How cool, writing this blog has allowed me to do something I’ve never done before, remember my anniversary. My husband always does, and some years, I’ve gotten a ring at the front door, accepted flowers and STILL not realized what they were about. I forget my anniversary because it comes so near Christmas and I have so many other things on my mind. And I do not consider marriage my defining act.

Now, how can I segue into Flo and the City, my novel in progress about a girl coming of age in the exciting 1908-1913 era, from real life letters posted on http://www.tighsolas.ca/ my social studies website? Easy.

Marriage is central to this story, or the pursuit of marriage. Because this is REAL LIFE and not fantasy or wish fulfillment, not all the heroines of this piece end up ‘happily ever after’. Well, none do, because happily ever after does not exist.

And not all the heroines of this piece fit into ‘categories’ such as the plain, good one, (well, Flo does sort of fit) and the beautiful, shallow one.. No Edith was not shallow, etc. The Nicholson women are real people, with a mix of characteristics, some sort of cliche, but most not.

If I want to convey anything with this novel, is that each of us is a product of our time and place as well as a ‘unique’ combination of genes…genes that have come before in our ancestors and will come after in our descendants, expressing in physical characteristics and in personality, but due to ‘accidents’ of birth, these genes can only realize themselves in certain ways in any given time or context… (I will work on this.)

The little girl in the tintype above, who lived her life as a wife and mother, has similar genes to her great great granddaughters, who may be dancers or scientists. The same potential…

This is an age old theme in literature, conveyed ably in those inter-generational epics like East of Eden, so I am doing nothing new thematically (hubris to think otherwise). Well, really it’s all about nature/nurture and that’s an old debate. But I am treading new territory in that these letters -and technology- are allowing me to explore the nature/nurture issue in a slightly different way. (The fact that I know the descendants of these people also helps.)

There is a school of thought, (American) that ANYTHING can be achieved with the right character. This is hoo-ha, of course. It’s all about being the right person, in the right place and the right time, and having luck on your side. Character has a place to play as the contrast between the characters of Marion and brother Herb prove.(My idea.) The Nicholson saga proves that you can do everything right and still have to struggle, even in a time of great promise and prosperity. Or does it? But as I wrote in my ‘obit’ of Norman Nicholson, this man was not a success at business, but he was a success at life. www.tighsolas.ca/page98.html

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Wanna buy a hat? A BIG one?

Above: Flo in 1908, likely at a Boston Beach.

(I am a bit FRUSTRATED this morning as it took me 30 minutes to scan the above picture from the Tighsolas 1900 photo album. It should have taken me 2 minutes. In the “good old days” it would have. But, have you noticed, the more advanced computers and their operating systems get,the harder it is to do the simplest things? My husband, Blair’s answer. “I guess you need to get a new computer.” My answer: “Leave well enough alone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Upgrading just screws things up….. (Got THAT out of my system.)

“The girls in those days were more at home in a kitchen than in a drawing room. They did better execution at a tub than at a spinet; could handle a rolling pin better than a sketchbook. At a pinch they could even use a rake or fork to good purpose in a field or barn. Their finishing education was received at the country school along with their brothers. Of fashion books and milliners, few of them had experience.” from Country Life in the 30′s. Caniff Haight from Elementary English Composition.

I am working on Chapter 1. 1908. Just a Change of Colour for my book Flo in the City adapted from my Tighsolas website. I am focusing on this bit of text because I feel it would be good to start my novel by having Flora contemplate the historical past herself. HUGE changes happened between 1830 and 1910 just as HUGE changes have happened between 1910 and 2010. For one, the home went from being a center of ‘production’ to a center of ‘consumption’ – so girls were left without as much to do. (Still running a home in 1910 was a lot more complicated than running a house today.)

Well, what a great paragraph for Flo to ponder. Flo was never intended for finishing school; she was destined to be a teacher, the destiny of many a middle class woman with ‘iffy’ marriage prospects.

She did work around the house, for the Nicholsons had no maids. But it was her mother, Margaret, who had all the homely skills, baking and sewing and craftswork. Flo stoked the fire (an important thing to do -usually done by men, it seems) and ironed her dresses. That white dress Marion is wearing in the last blog, well, Flora had one as well and it took her two days to wash and iron it. I have one of the Tighsolas flat irons. I use it as a doorstop. I could use it as an exercise weight. It weighs about seven pounds. Think of it. This ‘frail’ little woman spent a day wielding that cumbersome hot iron over the wood stove!

Millinery? It was the ‘glam’ job for women in 1910. (The motion picture industry was only getting under way and it wasn’t considered a good thing for a woman to work within that industry.) Millinery was the custom design of hats for individual wear. Milliner’s working in the city at high end department stores could earn as much as 1000 a year! The starting salary for a female teacher with diploma was $500 in city schools.

But, wait, to be a milliner a girl had to endure a long upaid apprenticeship. So I will have Flo (who is failing school, remember) contemplating going down to Miss Eugenie Hudon’s shop on Main Road to ask to work as an apprentice. Just in case she fails at school. Either that or she’ll join the suffragettes!!