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.

 

1912 in Boston, via the Nicholsons

Well,  a final piece to the puzzle that will be my ebook Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl - about a college girl in 1911/12, the Titanic Era.

Threshold Girl tells the story of Flora Nicholson, of Richmond Quebec and her year at Macdonald Teachers College and Diary of a Confirmed Spinster will tell the story of her older sister, Edith, already a teacher in Montreal, who loses her ‘great love’ in 1910 in an infamous hotel fire in Cornwall. The two stories overlap – and there`s the trick.

As it happens, Edith and Marion Nicholson, both older sisters of Flora, visit cousin Henry Watters in Newton Center Massachusetts in August 1912.

They visit Norumbega Park and go to a ball game on August 14. I found an ad for the same ball game in a now defunct Boston newspaper, placed under an ad for a Burlesque House.

Baseball wasn’t classy in 1910! Indeed, this newspaper,the Evening Transcript doesn’t cover the games. The sports page has news about tennis, sailing and even lawn bowling.

Now this April 14 newspaper is a real find for me. Because within its pages is a long article on a eugenics conference in London England.

Henry`s House, I think so. Today.

At the end of Threshold Girl I have Edith take Flora to a suffragette meeting in Montreal, where Carrie Derick, suffragist and biologist, is presiding. It’s a meeting of the Montreal Council of Women.

Edith points Derick out and tells Flora “She has many strange ideas.”

You see, Derick, a botanist, was a supporter of the eugenics movement.

So, here I can have Edith read the article and then ask her cousin, Dr. Henry Watters, his opinion.

It’s a great article. Ironically, it begins by saying that the most vocal opponents of this new fad, eugenics, are the Germans.  The Americans aren’t too keen either, (although their President was all for it, I believe.) Anyway there is some wonderfully weird stuff in this article, some of it pertinent to today, I mean with respect to how people view  scientific inquiry. (We have NOT come a long way, Baby!)

And better, right beside is an article about Canada: Our Up and Coming Neighbour: How Canada is Becoming a World Power. (Yea, right.)

The same edition has an advertisement for prime real estate in Montreal, on Ste. Catherine. So it is clear, the border is not as defined as it is today. The Nicholsons had many Massachusetts relations.

The reason the US is more skeptical about the eugenics movement, it is claimed, is because Americans marry for love, while Britons still marry for money and status. (The story of the Nicholson women (a true story based on real letters) reveals that money played a  BIG part in all middle class marriages. In fact, money and marriage is a key theme in my Spinster Story, for Edith`s beau is murdered trying to make enough money to marry her.

All so weird. Henry, if he likes baseball, wasn`t for eugenics. (or at least he won`t be for the purposes of my story).

Hmm. I will have to place them in a box seat though. I can`t imagine Edith sitting with the mob.

Funny, back then (and through the century) poor people went to baseball games. Now only the wealthy can afford to go and pay 10.00 for a hot dog, etc.)

It`s been years since I went to a game. To see the Expos, in the late 80`s I think. The roof was up and we were boiling. I had kids then and it cost a fortune, all the drinks. As a teen I went to Jarry Park and spent about 2.00 max!

I think I will have Edith ask Henry how much baseball players earn. He`will say Ì think they work for the  beer.

Now, I MUST get to writing the new outline of Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.  I still want the book to end when Edith faints in front of a painting of a woman breastfeeding mumbling to herself, I will never marry. I will never have children.

And that takes place on May 6, 1910, the day King Edward dies, (I think) so I am going to go back and forth in time.

Maternity, Mary Riter Hamilton. On exhibit in Montreal in 1912, but I`m making it 1910.

Boris Badenuv and the Presbyterians (not a rock group)

A man in Montmartre in 1910, The French dealt with prostitution differently than the English.

Last night I read chapter on the white slavery panic, in the Age of Light, Soap and Water by Mariana Valverde.

Apparently, there existed an overblown but institutionalized fear about white slavery in ‘the Tighsolas era’ 1909-1914, which became a symbolic fear of sorts, for the all the anxiety aroused in parents by all the social changes happening; children moving to the city, immigrants pouring into the country, women’s changing social role.

You know the kind of fear “YOUR kids are in danger..from unknowns, ‘others’ who lurk in dark places.” (These days, just exchange ‘city’ for ‘internet’.)

At the same time, some people recognized that women of all races were involved in prostitution, so they preferred to use the term traffic in women, the term used today.

(In 1967, during Expo year I was 12 and in sixth grade. A policeman came around to our classroom to warn us about dangers of Expo 67, especially bad people who might stick a hyperdermic needle in your arm in a bathroom, and sell you into white slavery. I had no idea what white slavery was (and no one explained.) I imagine I had to look our for nasty Boris Badenuv types behind the Russian Pavillion who would send me to Siberia and force me to wield a pick axe. Remember, in those days, The Russians and Communists were the bad guys. Well, I went to Expo 50 times, and sometimes all alone and only had the time of my life.)

In 1910, it was the fear of those swarthy-types, especially Chinese, that fueled this white slavery panic. At the same time, the “social evil” as it was called was also blamed on parents (for lax child-rearing) and on the girls themselves, for wanting nice clothes and a comfortable life! Also on the textile factories and shops, for paying their female workers so little. And on the entertainment industry, cabarets and motion pictures for their iffy fare and iffier patrons. And also on ‘feeble-mindedness’ for it was believed by some that most of these prostitutes were feeble-minded and that they bred feeble-minded children. Some social activitists, including Carrie Derick, suggested that these women should be sterilized.

Of course, out West and in French Montreal they tolerated prostitution up to a point. When the citizens of Rosemont created an outcry in their community, an alderman suggests that a red light district be created.

I found only one mention of ‘white-slavery’ in the Gazette of the era from 1913. (Only a portion are on-line.) Two negroes and three white girls were arrested (the negroes for vagrancy) on St. Alexandre and the police were trumpeting this arrest as putting a major dent in the white slave trade in Canada and the US – as the people involved were Americans. (It’s the kind of hyperbole that sounds all too familiar today.) The ‘slaves’ in question, both in their mid-twenties, admitted nothing.

The fact was, there were procurers of all skin colours in those days, including respectable looking middle-aged matrons.

I don’t know where I’ll put this in Flo in the City: It certainly puts Marion’s difficulties finding a flat of her own to rent in perspective. (It shows what a determined lady she was.)

And maybe this explains, quite simply, why the Presbyterian church ladies of Richmond shunned mother Margaret. She was bringing up her daughters too wild… Yet, it was her son, Herb, who turned out to be something of a criminal (although the Nicholsons would never admit it to themselves, that would have shaken their beliefs to the core.)

Hey, I like my title, Boris Badenuv and the Presbyterians. Sounds like a rock group.

The Rich in Montreal 1910

Horse and buggy in front of Tighsolas. Circa 1910

About six years ago, when I first found the stash of Nicholson letters and papers, I went through it and filed documents I felt were significant in a photo album.

Today, I went through the album. I was looking for a wedding invitation for Mae (Marion) Watters, the cousin who figures in the story. I believe I ‘found her’ at Riverview Cemetery in Compton. It says she was born 1892 (same age as Flo) and died 1977 same year as Edith. Flo died in January 1978.

Mae married a Samuel Scott.

There was lots of Mason documents in the stash. I filed a receipt for Norman’s initiation dues in 1880, $25.! I also filed a program for 1910 in Richmond. Clayton Hill, Norman’s brother-in-law and nemesis had a high rank.

I had filed a printed 1908 invitation…(in pencil) To Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson and Family

“The pleasure of your company is requested at an

AT HOME

in the Town Hall, Richmond, Friday Evening, April twenty-fourth , nineteen hundred and eight.

Patronesses: Mrs. Lance, Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Ross… Palmer’s Orchestra. RSVP ( and written in pencil) Gentlemen $1.50.

I’ll use this I guess. Funny wording.. to an AT HOME

I filed a newspaper clipping of a list of millionaires in Montreal

“Montreal is one of the richest cities in the world”

The year 1910 has increased the number of Montreal millionaires very considerably…

Sir W. Macdonald

Sir M. Allan

Hon. L.J. Forget (a relation of mine through my mother’s family)

James Ross

C.R. Hosmer

Jeffrey Burland

J.R. Wilson

H.S. Holt

R. Reford (Mrs. Reford was a famous society woman social activist.. Edith sees her at an event in 1909 and describes her..

Shirley Ogilivy

A. Haig Sims

Hugh Paton

C.B. Gordon

A. Baumgarten

A.E. Ogilvie

R. Forget M.P.

Henry Birks

James Morgan

Mark Workman

N. Curry

G.E. Drummond

Wm. Yuile

H. Timmims

Col. Carson

H. Drummond

T. Trenholm

Hon F Beique

C.F. Smith

Sir. W. Van Horne

Sir T Shaughnessy

Hon. R. Mackay

R. B. Angus

Sir E. Clouston

D. Morrice

F.W. Thompson

R. Meighen
D.L. McGibbon

G.A Grier

H.V. Meredith

A. R. McDonald

J.T. Davis

G. Caverhill

J. P. Black

E. B Greenshields

Milton Hersey

W. M Aitken. MP

G W Stephens

T. J. Drummond

Peter Lyall

J.K.L Ross

J.N Greenshields

D. McMartin

E.T. Galt

J E Aldred

H. H. Lyman

AND THEN THEY NAMED THE LADIES

Mrs. Hector Mackenzie

Mrs. Duncan McIntyre, Lady Drummond (social activist and suffragist), Mrs. F.Orr Lewis, and some ESTATES.

Hmm. The fact that 1910 increased the number of Montreal millionaires considerably just goes to prove the central point of Flo in the City, based on http://www.tighsolas.ca/ my social studies website. Ogilvie had a famous store. Edith and Marion buy hats there in 1910. Morgan too had a department store too. Henry Birks is the owner of a famous jewellry store across from Morgan’s on Saint Catherine. (Is it still there?)

I also filed a piece of onion skin paper with Morse code on it. Margaret had worked in a telegraph office. I see that Edith was accepted at Simmons College in Boston in 1917. I also have a most important document, a long letter describing an insurance debt Herb has. From the letters I can see it is a real problem, that almost sinks the Nicholsons, that Herb shrugs off, and that Marion ends up paying for. But now I can see Exactly what the debt was and can now write about it in detail.

And there was something else, a list..from 1882 belonging to Norman. I suspect this is a list of his setting up house as a bachelor. He marries the next year.

1 broom

1 lamp

1/2 yard of wick

1 tea set

2 bedroom set

1 doz dinner plates

1 wash tub

1 vegetable dish

2 pails

2 platters

1 washboard

1 coal oil lamp

1 gal coal oil

1 box matches

1 tea kettle

1 mop handle

1 dust pan

1 felts paper

1 boot black

1 stove black

1 brush

2 mirrors

1 doz knives and forks

1/2 doz spoons

3 panes of glass

1 package tacks

10 yards window curtains

1 cord wood

1 shirt

total 14.28

I have the cost of setting up house with a wife in 1883..here: it is considerably more

www.tighsolas.ca/page594.html