David, Prince of Wales (Future Edward VIII and Montreal Mayor Mederic Martin in robes My aunt at top. 1927. Diamond Jubilee of Canada.
Milk and Water Click here for entire play in pdf.
1927 was Canada’s Jubilee year, the 60th anniversary of Confederation. To celebrate, 2 Royal Princes, David (the future Edward VIII) and George (the future Duke of Kent) took a month long tour of Canada. Upon arrival, at the beginning of August, they were feted, along with UK Prime Minister Baldwin, at Montreal City Hall. A public ceremony was held in front on the steps of the recently refurbished Hotel de Ville, with Mayor Mederic Martin standing in state in his long purple robes. My grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of Municipal Departments and his eldest daughter, my Aunt Alice, watched from a perch higher up on the steps.
The Royal Princes would stay in Montreal only 36 hours, then travel across Canada, to return to the City on the St. Lawrence at the end of the month for four days of rest and recreation before returning to England.
This setting of this play, Milk and Water, takes advantage of this fact.
In 1927, the City of Montreal was at the peak of its influence, a bustling industrial and transportation centre, even if some Torontonians disparaged the city, claiming that, although happily situated for business, it was corrupt to the core, French and “so hopeless.”
In the 1920’s the Americans had Prohibition and reportedly many crime bosses headed up North to control their empires from Montreal.
Montreal had no Prohibition, although the sale of hard liquor was controlled by a Provincial Liquor Commission. Liquor licenses were handed out primarily to taverns, as well as to restaurants and hotels. According to the Coderre Inquiry into Police Corruption, conducted in the city in 1924 and 25, there were about 1,000 establishments in Montreal serving hard liquor without a license, not speakeasies in the traditional sense, but still operating outside the law.
Montreal, Quebec, September 2, 1927.
A warm autumn night.
The Mayor of Montreal from his office at City Hall: Allo. Mr. Crepeau. C’est Mayor Martin. Vous etes rentrer chez vous. Bien.
Jules Crepeau (from his home at 72 Sherbrooke West): Comment peux je vous aider, Monsieur le Mayor.
Mayor: Monsieur Crepeau. I will speak in English as I have a representative of the Royal Prince in my office.
Jules: D’accord. Your Worship. So will I answer in English. What is the problem?
Martin. Problem? No problem. I have a personal favour to ask of you, on behalf of our esteemed Royal guests. All in the strictest confidence, of course.
Jules: Comme Toujours. As always
Martin: Do you remember that Westmount bloke with the bottled water company, the one with the bullshit name?
Jules: Thomas Wells? What’s bullshit about the name?
Martin: Not that name, the name of his company. Laurentian..ah
Jules: Spring Water.
Martin: Yes, the company that sells water it pumps from under Craig Street. Near our giant sewage collector. Not from the Laurentian Mountains. So, bull shit.
Jules: Yes, well, I believe I have met him just recently at the Royal Reception.
Martin: He’s the short older man with the very very tall young wife.
Jules: Oh, yes, the amiable man with the very tall and very thin and very outspoken young wife.
Martin: The same man.
Jules: What about him?
Martin: Well, we need some of his bottled water delivered tonight to a certain dance club in the midtown.
Jules: Why?
Martin: Because the Royal Prince might turn up there later on.
Jules: I understand.
Martin. The thing is, I would like 3 gallons delivered, merely as a precaution of course, but no one is to know. No one except this Mr. Wells – and you.
Jules: So he is to deliver it himself. Alone? The President of this company?
Martin: Yes. Discretion is of the utmost importance.
Jules; I see. But how am to reach him on such short notice.
Martin: I’ve already taken care of. The thing is, ah, I would like you to meet him at 11.pm in front of the Mermaid Cafe.
Jules: 11. pm. The Mermaid Cafe? But, I just got in, myself. There was a meeting of the City Improvement League. And you know how those ferocious Presbyterian ladies never let you go home.
Martin : Unfortunate. Do you know the address of the Mermaid?
Jules: How could I not? It’s got a (clears throat) certain widespread reputation.
Martin: Well, well. You are speaking about the excellent dance music, I presume. But the Prince will not show up until after midnight. He is tied up at some stuffy dinner party at the top of the hill, probably at Ravenscrag.
Jules: May I ask, with all due respect, why can’t His Royal Highness get his own people to bring the water. The Ritz Carleton has hundreds of bottles stored in the basement, I’m sure, what with this latest typhoid scare. The Radnor People of Three Rivers are the Official Suppliers.
Martin: The thing is, this, ah, is not an official kind of outing. The Royal Prince is hoping to slip away from his handlers for a few hours.
In fact, this is a personal favour he is asking me, as a personal friend. Don’t worry, I will send over one of our more ambitious young police officers, un grand gaillard, to perform the heavy work.
All you and Mr…ah…Wells, is it? have to do is can stand outside with the water and wait. You don’t even have to go in. The Prince and his party will enter by the side door. Only then do you have the jugs delivered.
Jules: If it’s after 12am, everyone enters by the side door, I imagine.
Martin: Well, be that as it may. Apparently, there’s a very good Jazz band playing tonight, the Harlem Kings or Kings of Harlem. The Prince is young. He has a keen interest in modern forms of music.
And you recognize all the city reporters.
Jules: But they recognize me, too, as the person who, just a year ago, announced to the entire Montreal Press Corps the firm new closing hour of midnight for dance clubs.
Martin: Jules. It’s the Royal Prince. Que voulez-vous?
Jules: Yes, of course. I understand.
Martin: You will be pleased to know, he specifically asked for you. His people thought you did a wonderful job organizing the official reception at City Hall a month ago.
Jules: You mean where we invited about 1,000 too many guests and where the Prince kept glancing at his watch and yawning between handshakes. I’m still fielding angry letters from society matrons who never made it into the reception line.
Martin: Well, yes, yes, That’s done then, I can count on you.
Jules: Certainement, Your Worship. (He hangs up the phone.)
Toujours quelque chose.
Little Girl: Papa?
Jules: Tu es encore debout, Marthe? Ou est Maman?
Girl: Elle prie dans le salon, avec Florida and Cecile.
Jules: Tu dois prier aussi.
Girl: Je n’aime pas prier. C’est ennuyeux. Peux-tu me raconter un histoire?
Jules: No, Il faut que je sorte.
Girl: Juste une courte. Je pars pour couvent demain, tu sais.
Ah, Je ne peux pas ma chouette.
Mais je veux que tu restes. S’il tu plait.
Jules: Nous avons eu de bons temps à Atlantic City, il y’a deux semaines.
Marthe:Tu n’étais presque jamais avec nous autres. Toujours des meeting.
Jules: (He kisses his daughter). Les rendezvous. Bonne nuit, ma petite. Je promet de t’ammener au couvent moi même demain.
Slam of door.
Setting: Outside a dance hall, Montreal somewhere South of Ste. Catherine, east of University and West of St. Lawrence Boulevard.
Two men, similar in age and build, both 60 ish, both about 5 foot 8 inches. Both with trim, athletic builds. Both sporting tall bowler hats.
Under his tall bowler, one man has thin black hair and a deep receding hairline, and under his tall bowler, the other man has a healthy head of curly almost wiry hair that is receding only slightly but greying most noticeably.
Both men are well dressed, in white shirts with high-necked collars and dark blue flannel business suits. The balding man’s lapels are notched and thin, to match his tie. The curly hair man’s lapels are peaked and wide- also to match his cravat.
The balding man’s outfit is a more conservative cut, but the style worn by the anglo businessmen of his circle. The curly man’s suit more a la mode, as they say, although still very appropriate for a man of his age of his stature.
These are men of the Upper Middle Class. One English Canadian originally from Ontario. One French Canadian born in Laval. Both men live with their bossy wives in three storey townhouses in tony sections of Montreal, one on Chesterfield in lower Westmount, one on Sherbrooke Street just a little West of St. Lawrence Street, or St. Laurent.
The English man is Tom Wells, a businessman and President of Laurentian Spring Water. The French man is Jules Crepeau, a high-ranking City civil servant, the Director of Municipal Departments.
Crepeau arrives in a taxi. A Black Lasalle. He exits the car quickly without paying. Wells drives up in a Bentley, its back seat holding three giant clear glass bottles, the front passenger seat a stack of yellow boxes.
The two men meet and shake hands on the curb in front of The Mermaid Café and Dance Club.
Tom: I brought the bottles myself, as the Mayor Instructed. But I can’t lift them, you know. Sciatica. Curling injury.
Jules: A constable is to arrive shortly.
The front door of the cafe opens and out pour two dozen or so patrons, mostly young men and women, the women in form-fitting flapper dresses with flying fringes and colourful cloche hats, and young men in shiny high-waisted suits with baggy pant legs.
In the background, a song is plays on a Victrola. It is Hello Montreal by Willy Eckstein. A trio sings:
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink; Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the sink, the sink;
The good old rusty sink;
But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?
Oh, “We Won’t Get Home Till Morning” Is the best song after all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
There’ll be no more Orange Phosphates,
You can bet your Ingersoll,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
The front door closes as the last couple straggles out, just as a tall young policeman in dress blues, broad-shouldered and burly, arrives on foot. He crosses the street and walks toward the older men standing in front of the big black Bentley.
Jules walks up to meet him a few paces from Tom and whispers a few words to the cop.
He returns to stand beside Tom. The cop takes up position beside the front door a few yards away, standing at ease with his arms behind his back and legs slightly apart.
Tom: How long do we wait, then?
Jules (shrugging) As long as is required.
I have some crates, then, in the trunk. For us to sit on.
Jules nods.
He waves the constable over. Instructs the young man as to the matter. Tom gives him some keys. The Cop goes to the car, opens the trunk, grabs a medium-sized brown crate in each hand and carries them past the sidewalk, and places them on either side of the café’s front door.
The cop resumes his position a few yards away. The older men sit on the crates. LAURENTIAN SPRING is written in upside down green lettering on the crates.
The more than middle-aged men squirm and fidget, turning away each other, turning towards each other. Tom examines the streetlights, Jules the road directly in front. Tom adjusts his hat, Jules his tie. Then the two almost identical looking men turn to face each other – but obliquely.
Between them, the café front door opens and two 30ish women, looking the worse for wear, exit on wobbly ankles.
A voice from inside: C’est l’heure de fermeture. Rentrez chez-vous, mes Pitounes.
Another voice, more drunk sounding: Go home flour lovers.
The two men inspect the women as they might a stray cat or dog, without any perceptible change in their expression.
Then a lock on the front door is banged shut and a sign goes up window over Jules’ head: CLOSED! Over Tom’s head: FERME!
There’s a long pause as the men adjust to this slightly uncomfortable situation. Then finally….
Tom: Yanking at his tie knot. Too hot for an autumn night.
Jules: Some like it hot..What does it mean, flower lover?
Tom: Too much make-up. Flour as in face powder. (He makes a motion with his right hand, as if powdering his cheeks and he does this he purses his lips.)
Jules: Ah.(After another long pause) So, you are the one who put that crazy advertisement in the newspaper?
Tom: What advertisement. What do you mean?
Jules: The advertisement that said “Don’t drink filthy germ laden city water. Laurentian Spring Water is always the same, pure and wholesome. Do not wait until you are sick to drink it.”
Tom: My sad Aunt Sally. That particular promotion was placed over 4 years ago. You can’t possibly remember it word for word.
Jules: I remember it perfectly, believe me. This is my special gift.
Tom: Well, then, you must certainly be aware that we haven’t run anything quite like it since.
Jules: The letter from the City’s Avocat en Chef might have had something to do with your change of heart.
Tom: No. The fact is, we’ve changed our advertising policy, right about then. We started pushing our new line of soft drinks. (He pulls out a bottle from each side-pocket and shows them to Jules.)
Jules: (inspecting bottles) Soda water and Sweet Ginger Ale.
Tom: No sir, we certainly didn’t cave to the threats from over at City Hall. (He returns the bottles to his pockets.)You know, we’ve only ever received one lawyer’s letter from you people. Ever. And we’ve run a slew of newspaper ads along the same lives over the years in promotion of our bottled water. No, the most trouble ever we got, before that letter, were a couple of huffy phone calls from Dr. Laberge’s department.
Jules: Of course, The Health Department
Tom: Your guys couldn’t catch us on anything.
Jules: Yes, all your clever wordplay. “What chances you take if you don’t drink Laurentian water.” “The Safest plan is to drink Laurentian Spring water.” Never quite lying, never quite telling the truth. Not slander, not in the legal sense. But slippery lies are lies just the same.
Even the name of you company is a sort of lie. Laurentian Spring Water. Your aquifer is under Craig Street. Right downtown in the business district. And there are underground springs all over the city.
Tom: Sure, but our well has the purest water, it’s a proven fact. The scientists at Macdonald College tested back it in 1909, the year of the last typhoid epidemic.
Jules: Pure, Purer, Purest. Mere words, once again. What does the word “pure” really mean, exactly?
Tom: Now, what’s wrong with the word Pure? It’s a great word. A beautiful word. Everyone likes it. Everyone uses it.
Jules: That’s precisely what’s wrong with it. (Pause) A word that everyone uses can’t be a good thing. A word like that means too many different things to different people. And if something is pure, then something has to be impure.
Tom. Picking words to pieces. Now, aren’t you a typical lawyer.
Jules: I am not a lawyer.
Tom: Really! With a big position like yours? Director of Municipal Departments. And not a lawyer? Not in the Club?
Jules: I worked my way up at City Hall. Started at 12, odd jobs. But I spent almost 20 years in City Clerk’s Office. I finished my studies at night.
Tom: OH. I can see it, now. The City Clerk’s Office. The place where all City paperwork passes through, where all documents are deposited, and filed. And you have this lollapalooza of a memory. Yes, I get it.
Jules: And I had my mentors. Next year will be my 40th year at City Hall. I am guessing you are not a lawyer.
Tom: No. School wasn’t my strong point. My father was a lawyer, though, Thomas Wells, QC, Ingersoll Ontario. I was OK at numbers, though, so my uncle brought me over from Ontario to work as a bookkeeper at Laurentian way back, before the turn of the century. His own son was a n’ere do well.
He had a shoe company on Craig, Thomas White Shoes, and he was digging for a well for boilers, 750 feet down, 1882 it was, when he hit the magic aquifer, 10,000 gallons a day, very minimum. Liquid sunshine. Happiness in a bottle.
Jules:You do like to play with words
(Squinting into the light.) I see you have filled the front seat of your car with your soft drinks.
Tom: Sure, mixed drinks are popular these days.
Jules shrugs as if to indicate he has no idea.
Tom: You don’t drink?
Jules: Not as a rule.
Tom: Well, it’s all thanks to Prohibition. People started using soft drinks to cut the bad taste of home-made spirits. And now it’s become a fad. Ironic, isn’t it. Soft Drinks used to cut Hard Liquor.
Jules: Because soft drinks were invented as a substitute for hard liquor.
Tom: Precisely.
Jules: This Prohibition makes for all kinds of strange bedfellows. (Jules looks out into space as if thinking of something.) Soft drinks and hard liquor being the least of them.
Tom: I suppose. (Tom furrows his brow as he looks at Jules quizzically.)
Jules: So you are hoping to convince The Royal Prince to endorse you company’s brand of soft drink. Bonne Chance. He admires golfers, I’m told, not curlers.
Tom: No, actually, I’m more interested in getting the bartender’s stamp of approval. You’d be surprised how much clout bartenders have in those upscale restaurants around the Ritz Carleton Hotel.
Jules: No I would not. They know what the, how do you English say, well-heeled patrons prefer to drink. How do you get this ‘stamp of approval.’
Tom: I convince them, with a little help from my friends (he rubs his thumb and forefinger together) of the amazing health benefits of selling soft drinks made with pure Laurentian spring water.
Jules: There’s no mixed drinks in this place, dance clubs can’t get liquor licences. Perhaps you don’t know that. Young women frequent these places, after all.
Tom: Right. Of course. So, all the more reason to believe they’ll be anxious to buy my soft drinks. All those thirsty young Charleston Dancers. (He fans his hands and waves they back and forth in front of him and notices movement around the corner.)There’s someone at the back door.
Jules gets up and to get a closer look. A group of five Black men are standing at the side of the building, rolling cigarettes. The policeman makes a motion to follow Jules. He signals with his open palm for the cop to return to his base. Jules returns to his crate, but he remains standing.
Jules: You can laugh. Meanwhile, all the damage has been done to Montreal’s reputation, with those crazy advertisements of yours. Scaring our mothers. Scaring away tourists.
Thomas: The small pox, the typhoid. The infamous highest infant mortality outside of Calcutta written up in all the magazines and newspapers. I think they’ve done all the damage. Didn’t some doctor proclaim that drinking Montreal water the fastest way to the cemetery.
Jules: That was in 1910, just before Montreal water was filtered and chlorinated Anyway, this latest epidemic has been traced to milk.
Tom: Really?
Jules: Yes, the Americans sent over their scientists and they are to publish a report in their Medical Journal, this month.
Tom: Milk….water…six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Jules: What do you mean?
Tom: Six of one….Half a dozen… It makes no difference really.
Jules: Ah. Ca vien au meme. You really do like to play with words.
Tom: Why are we here then, outside a dance hall at half past the legal closing hour?
Jules: A precaution. A special favour. The Mayor doesn’t want the heir to the English Throne getting sick and dying in our fair City, whether from milk or water or bathtub gin. Even if it is on his own time.
Tom: There’s someone else at the side door. (A man pops his head out and looks in both directions. A yellow taxi cab with a sign PRIVATE TOURS drives up and 5 people get out, looking wide-eyed. Both older men turn their heads. The Constable starts walking towards the group: Jules lifts his hand to tell the young constable to ignore it.)
Tom: There’s your missing American tourists, I think. And it’s not water on their mind, is it? They don’t look particularly scared to me. They look like kids about to reach into a forbidden cookie jar.
Jules: They think they are visiting the Moulin Rouge. (He listens to their voices.) They are from around Massachusetts, perhaps?
Tom: Yes, probably accountants or dentists from from the burbs of Boston showing their wives a good time I hope those are their wives.
(The group enters by the side door.)
Tom: After a short pause. Well, you are no stranger to slippery truths.
Jules: What are you accusing me of now.
Tom: Last April, when you testified at the Inquiry into that terrible motion picture house fire. You said, “The Laurier Palace theatre was operating without a license, but not because it was a fire-trap, but because the owners hadn’t paid the amusement tax, not a rare thing.. but actually the owners had recently paid the tax, they just had not got their licence from the Department of Licences, because the Police Chief had not given the OK to do so, which he must, but no matter as the Executive Committee can grant permission to any theatre to stay open without a licence.”
Jules: Look who has the good memory now.
Tom: My wife read it all out to me at breakfast one day. And when my wife speaks, I listen. We have young children.
Jules: Your wife, the tall, thin woman with the loud voice who walked right up to Mayor Martin last month at the Royal Reception and insisted she should be allowed to go to the front of the reception line as she had been personally invited by the Royal Prince because she was related to some big American general?
Tom: Yes, that would be her.
Jules: This fashion-plate of a wife likes to take your children to the motion pictures, to sit among the factory workers and the immigrants?
Tom: Yes, well, the nanny takes the children. The boy, anyway. He likes the cops and robbers movies best.
Jules: Your wife criticized the Mayor, you know, when she couldn’t get her way. She said the sable trim on his ceremonial robes looked mangy, more like dyed muskrat. A low blow as the Mayor is very proud of his appearance.
Tom: Yes, he brought it up in his phone call to me. As a kind of leverage, I think. I explained that my wife is an expert seamstress who especially likes trimming everything in fur. Even the children’s winter coats. I told him, “Don’t take it personally, women love clothes, they love to sew.” Do you think he bought it?”
Jules: My wife doesn’t sew. She would never. She has the dressmakers come to her at home. But she does love to cook. She makes the most savoury tourtieres this side of the Saguenay. Very fattening. (He pats his trim stomach.) I haven’t had a proper supper. So your pretty young outspoken wife sews and cooks and…what else…
Tom: No. My wife doesn’t cook. No, she would never. She’s from the US south. Old Civil War family. It’s not done down there. We employ a woman to do the cooking. The maid takes her place one night a week.
Jules: We employ no maid.
Tom: No maid? You wife dusts the mantle and mops the kitchen floor herself?
Jules: Well, yes, and she finds nothing wrong with it. She is proud of her housekeeping skills. She takes in girls from the nuns – who help her out. Troubled girls.
Tom: Whom she rehabilitates with hard work. So, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Jules: My wife also feeds every beggar who comes to the back door, our best food, too, and she takes care of the sick who can’t afford medicine. She is an excellent doctor. Her mustard plasters work miracles. And she visits elderly people in their homes, and prays with them and plays cards, and she even shared her mother’s milk – with sickly infants. Back in the time.
(There’s a surge of sound from the closed dance hall. Female and male laughter.)
Tom: Well, must say, I can’t see Julia Parker Drummond sharing her breast with the poor. Do you mind if I smoke? (Tom reaches into his inside pocket for a cigar but comes out empty) Dang What d’you know? That never happens.
Jules reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a cigar. Hands it to Tom.
Tom: Thanks. Hmm. Good brand. I guess you are never without, with Mayor Martin being in the biz.
Jules: I receive enough cigars at Christmas to supply both me and my son for the entire year. Mayor Martin isn’t the only tobacconist in Montreal. (Tom pinches off the end, spits it out and then lights the cigar with a match.)
Jules: You just broke a by-law you know. (Pause) It was huge tragedy, bien sur, the Laurier Palace fire, 78 children killed in an instant, mostly boys, almost all under 18. Some very young children. Crushed to death in the rush to the door. Asphyxiated by smoke and piling bodies.
But, as Juge Boyer’s Final Report confirms, it was an accident, no one is to blame. Not the owners, not the City, not the cop on the beat.
Tom: Has his report finally come out
Jules: His summary was published in the papers two days ago. Didn’t your wife read you that one, too?
Tom: The end of August. Busy time for her, sewing our children up for school. She wants to make sure their clothes are warm enough.
Jules: Then you don’t know, Juge Boyer has recommended that children under 16 be banned from going to the motion pictures altogether. Even with a parent or guardian. Will you wife be happy now?
Tom: Banned. Even in the company of an adult? That doesn’t sound right. Parents have a right to decide what’s best for their children. Who petitioned for that?
Jules:. Both the Protestants and the Catholics. Just another instance of strange bedfellows. And Labour too. Well, Labour joined with the churches specifically on the issue of Sunday closings.
Tom: That’s still in court, right?
Jules: Labour leaders don’t care what people do with their Sundays as long as no one has to work. Even ushers and projectionists
Tom: But if you give people the day off, they need something to do. Does this recommendation make your wife happy?
Jules: Our children are grown. Except for one young girl. My wife is devout, so I suppose she doesn’t approve of Sunday showings.
Tom: Your older daughters don’t go to the movies. With their beaus – on Tuesday or Saturday night.
Jules: I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think my wife would chase them out of the house down the front steps and along Sherbrooke Street, her broom in one hand and a basin of Holy water in the other, if she ever discovered such a thing. I can hear her now, “Go live on de Bullion, if you want to act like that.”
Tom: I see. She runs a pious home. No dance halls or gambling or drinking.
Jules: Oh, my wife, Maria, drinks. Wine with Sunday dinner, sherry and all the fashionable drinks when we entertain. We have to use the fine crystal, after all. And she enjoys a game a cards. Poker especially.
Tom: Don’t tell me she plays poker with the Chief of Police. The rumour is, he’s a card shark.
Jules: No. She plays with the pale young priests who fill our house at all hours. Ah. And she wagers on the horses at Blue Bonnets.
Tom: My wife, Mary, plays a lot of a game called Majong. Have you heard of it?
Jules shakes his head.
Tom: It’s very popular among the fashionable sets. It’s a Chinese game, you know, and it involves little white tiles. That’s all I understand about it. We entertain our friends at least once a week and after dinner, it’s cards for the men, and majong for the ladies.
Jules: And you drink Scotch and the women sip their sherry.
Tom: Corn Liquor. My wife can’t do without her bourbon. She’s has frail health and considers it medicinal. You know, last time she went home to Norfolk by train she hid her flasks of Jim Beam under the kids’ pillows and in her petticoats
Jules: You are lucky she didn’t get caught. They are very strict about that.
Tom: It wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten into trouble with the authorities. She likes to tell everyone how she got kicked out the Waldorf Astoria for smoking a cigar. As a young woman before the war.
No children in the cinema, even if with a parent? That makes no sense. What if parents enjoy going to the cinema with their children?
Jules: That’s what theatre owner after theatre owner argued at the inquest. They told Juge Boyer that Sunday was their busiest day by far, that entire families came to the motion pictures. They said some old folk needed their grandchildren right there beside them to read out words on the screen.
Tom: The Presbyterians have wanted this since the first Nickel opened in 1906 or so. But there has to be more to it.
Jules: There always is.
Tom: What are you suggesting?
Jules: (Jules finally sits down again.) The sound films with talking. There are coming – and soon.
Tom: The Yanks are going to invade. I see. With their propaganda and open mouth kisses. Are you sure these talking movies aren’t just a fad?
Jules: No, my brother says they will be big and he’s in the business.
Tom: The motion picture business?
Jules: (nods) He’s Vice President of United Amusements. They are building these fancy new motion picture palaces for a reason. The new one in Notre Dame de Grace, it is expected to cost over 150,000 to build.
Tom: So, the Nationalists up in Quebec like the proposed law too. It’s a sure thing then: Only adults over 16 will be admitted to movie houses. I wonder how they’ll recoup their investment. They’ll have to raise their ticket prices or make their money with something else.
(A blast of loud laughter is heard from inside the café, jerking Tom out of his thoughts.)
Tom: It’ll never work: We’ll just go to Ontario or the United States to watch movies. It’ll be like Prohibition, but backwards. I bet my wife will even take the kids, now. She hates being told she can’t do something. Nothing makes anything more appealing than making it against the rules
Jules: Against the law. As this prohibition proves. But poor families won’t have that option. So now parents will have to leave their children at home in the care of their older sisters and brothers if they want to see a motion picture during their few hours of leisure. And these same children will sneak in to the theatres on their own, the boys through the back door without paying, the young girls smearing their faces with rouge de theatre to look older. How will that promote morality and protect children, I ask you.
Tom: You seem to be pulling for the theatre owners. Yet neither you nor your wife go to the movies.
Jules: My wife believes the doctors who say the flickering light will make you go blind. And she can’t read English, anyway. And I have no time for such things.
Tom: Well, there are still public baths. For working class togetherness. 5 cents for soap, a towel and a swim. You stole that idea from us, you know.
Jules: What idea?
Tom: Public baths and pools. We had a bathhouse: The Laurentian Baths. 1882 to 1919. The City stole our idea and then put us out of business.
Jules: I thought we stole the idea from England, the even the Ancient Greeks.
Tom: Still we had the first indoor public bath in all of North American in the basement of our building on Craig. We introduced the sport of water polo to the city.
Jules: In a fashionable business district. For the use of businessmen, I imagine. How much did you charge?
Tom: 25 cents for a suit, a towel and soap. 50 cents for a Turkish bath. You should know, plenty of alderman were clients. We’re just across the street, after all. We had a women’s day on Wednesday.
We had to close down when The City started building public baths In 1902 and undercutting our prices. 5 cents, and even free to some families. How many public baths are there now, with this latest one on Amherst, the architectural marvel. Fourteen?
Jules: Sixteen. We weren’t trying to steal your fancy businessman clients who were looking for a private place to relax or seal business deals. We were trying to improve hygiene in the home of the working class. Give men a place to wash after a day at the factory. Many many working class homes didn’t have water for bathing in 1900, as you know. The majority.
Tom: And you didn’t want poor children bathing naked for recreation in the river, if I recall. Here’s a very sleek limousine. Finally.
(Jules gets up and walks over to the corner.)
Jules: No it’s one of our elected officials.
Tom: with some lady friends. Talk about young-looking dolls! Which level of government?
Jules: Do you really need to know?
Tom: So just another hypocrite politician, no doubt. Someone who promised publically in all the papers, after Judge Coderre’s report two years ago, to clean up the corruption and cronyism at City Hall. Someone who promised to close down cafes just like this one. (Tom stares at Jules.)
You politicians are so Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.
Jules: I am not a politician. I am a functionnaire. A civil servant.
Tom: The highest ranking one in the city at the Royal Prince’s command – day and night.
That one hour roll back on opening hours for nightclubs, a token act if I ever saw one. Have any of the dozens of recommended changes to how the Police Department functions been implemented? Has a Director of Public Security been appointed as stipulated in the new City Charter of 1921?
Jules: Changes like that take time.
(There’s another pause as a well-dressed old man with a terrier walks by, his dog pissing on a lamppost.)
Jules: And you don’t have your cliques, your fancy clubs where people give jobs to their friends, their brothers and their sons and their son in laws.
Tom: it’s not that same. These are private clubs. Operating with private money. The City operates on tax payer’s money.
Jules: Six of one, half a dozen of the other…
Tom (Speechless)
Jules. I ‘m guessing you are a member of the Royal Montreal, maybe Mount Stephen. A Mason, too probably.
Tom. Royal Montreal, lawn bowling in summer. Not the Mount Stephen, Not yet. St. Georges, the curling club. I’m not a Mason, but I am a Rotarian. I am one of the founding members of the Montreal Chapter.
Jules: You are a Rotarian, are you? So that’s why you are so knowledgeable about the Coderre Report. The Rotarians are one of the Committee of 16 who pushed for the Inquiry. What was their particular stake again?
Tom: Prostitution.
Jules: Yes, the doctor from the General Hospital who gave this speech to the Canadian Club in 1923, before all the leading citizens, about the cocaine-pedlars and the sickly drug addled prostitutes, saying Montreal was the worst city in North America for tolerating such things, and of course it got in the newspapers and stirred up a hornet’s nest and the big wigs’ wives got upset and insisted their husbands march straight to City Hall to demand an inquiry, and then all the different advocacy groups climbed onto the bandwagon, sensing an opportunity to promote their own causes and agendas.
Tom: Yes, if you say so, that’s how it went. I heard they spent 75,000 dollars over two years on that inquiry, with 200 witnesses supplying 10,000 pages of evidence.
Jules: And to prove what? That unsavory activities occur in a City of 600,000 people. And that here are a few bad apples in our Police force. There are a lot fewer here than in the big American Cities, what with this Prohibition, that I can tell you. That I KNOW for a fact.
(Tom looks at him oddly.)
Tom: And now, two years later, most of the public has already forgotten. The louder the initial outcry the quicker everyone forgets. Just human nature, I guess.
Jules: The public has a short attention span.
Tom: Yes, and you politicians count on it.
Jules: So, you are one of these people intent on protecting the virtue of young women by closing every dance club and night club and motion picture house. And should the procurers snatch their prey from outside the Churches? Do we close them, too?
Tom: I’m not engaged in the Girl Problem. Now, the Boy Problem, that’s something I care about. I spend two nights a week working with the Committee for the Shawbridge Boys Farm.
(Someone opens a window. The sweet sound of jazz music flows from inside. The men listen for a moment. There’s clapping and someone puts on a record. “I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales.”)
Jules: Juge Coderre’s Report was read out in United States Senate last year, do you know? At their hearings on Prohibition.
Tom: I know. It was discussed at a Rotary board meeting. Some members thought it was a real coup for the pro-prohibition forces. Raney, former attorney general of Ontario, describing Montreal vice to the Americans. Explaining to them in detail how our City Hall works, or doesn’t work.
Jules: I guess Mr. Ames couldn’t go himself, being a Member of Parliament.
Tom: And Raney’s testimony got full-page treatment in the New York Times, although they didn’t print what Raney read from the Report itself. No space, I guess.
Jules: No, they didn’t print that because the New York Times is not a Daily Mail or Beck’s Weekly. It is a high quality newspaper. Good journalists don’t repeat second hand, in this case third hand, material. And the Coderre Inquiry was into police malfeasance and misconduct. It wasn’t an inquiry into the pros and cons of Prohibition, although Mr. Raney pretended it was.
Tom: I guess he felt he was speaking to the general immoral nature of Quebec society. The commercialized crime, as it was described, that slips its tentacles in every facet of the City’s night life, something along those lines, right? He wanted to show to the Americans that our 1921 liquor law isn’t working.
Jules: Our very sensible liquor law led the rest of Canada to follow suit.
Tom: Raney sees our 1921 law as the loose link in the chain, I think. How did he describe us Quebeckers? Tolerant of the social evils of alcohol, gambling and prostitution… Beck’s Weekly?
Jules: Pas important. Raney told the Americans that Quebec enforces only that portion of the criminal code that suits it and does not support the parts of it that do not appeal to the sentiment of the people. He told them the aim of the Tachereau Government was to regulate gambling and prostitution as they do the liquor trade Not necessarily a bad idea. If it was true
Tom: Don’t tell me you are in favour of the existence of disorderly houses, what with the pious wife with the broom and the holy water.
A voice from the window: On n’ouvre pas les fenetres. (The window slams shut, the jazz music ends. Clapping. A muffled voice from inside: Hey Mack, put away that flick knife.)
Jules: Raney is a fanatic. Il a un bouchon dans le cul. If he had his way both our wives would be in jail for 20 years. Well, Yours maybe for 30 years.
Tom: With half of the City aldermen and all the Executive Committee. Beck’s Weekly. Rings a bell.
Jules: And now you have just figured out why so few of Juge Coderre’s recommendations have been implemented. Never mind Beck.
Tom: I agree, Raney is one of those unbending Presbyterians who actually practices what he preaches. The problem is, he thinks everyone else should too. And he’s from Ontario. They’re the worst and I should know. Unlike Raney, most Ontarians are hypocrites. Do you know, you can make hard liquor in the province, but not sell it to Ontarians. A while back an Ontarian could buy hard liquor for personal use, but not from an Ontario distiller. My cousins, the Townsend Brothers, started up a Montreal mail order booze business, employing dozens of girls who worked day and night filling orders for all kinds of giggle-water, until they closed the loophole a year later, but by that time they’d made enough to retire on. In one short year. Can you imagine?
Jules: I can’t.
Tom: C’mon. You have no booze-oriented business going on the side, for your retirement.
Jules: I was once a shareholder in an importing business, with prominent members of our Greek community: olive oil and figs and cheese from goats. But the business went bankrupt when war broke out.
Tom: Olive oil is good for the heart, but olives in gin and vermouth are better for business, I guess.
You were singled out in the Coderre Report. But it wasn’t about alcohol or prostitution.
Jules: I was wondering when you’d get to that. Coderre mocked my job function, that’s all.
Tom: What exactly is your job function?
Jules: I am liaison person between the City Departments and the Executive Committee and the City Departments and the Public. And my job description is in the Charter, despite what Juge Coderre stated.
Tom: You are the spokesperson?
Jules: Yes. Among many other functions. For instance, I am the one from the City to testify at the National Assembly before the Committee of Private Bills. And I sit on a number of Committees, the Parks Committee, the City Clean Up Committee, the Civic Improvement League. Wherever I am needed. And my office organizes receptions at City Hall, like the one last month for the Royal Prince.
(Tom stares at him, somewhat dumbfounded.)
What Juge Coderre didn’t tell the public was that my job, Director of Municipal Departments, was created specifically to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of budgetary funds across all City wards. This wasn’t happening, what with the City Departments expanding out of Control and the Alderman spending only on projects in their ward to assure their re-election.
Tom: OK, but why do you get to tell the Chief of Police what to do? And cancel citations against movie theatres?
Jules: (Jules gives him a dirty look.).
Tom: You are acting on behalf of others, on the Executive Committee.The Coderre Report found some police officers to be in collusion with criminals, fencing stolen goods, confiscating illegal whiskey in the morning and selling it back at night at triple the price.
Jules: And we fired those bad eggs immediately, while the inquiry was still on-going, but that wasn’t looked upon well either. In politics you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Tom: But he described the Police Force as incompetent, essentially, akin to the Keystone Cops. Ouch. Now that’s embarrassing!
Jules: What are you talking about..Key..? Coderre never said that.
Tom: No, I said that..Keystone Cops. A few years ago. The comedy troupe. In the motion pictures.
Jules: So you DO go to the movies.
Tom: No, I had them described to me, my oldest son most likely.
Jules: You have two families, then?
Tom: Three, really, I’m on my fourth marriage. Between us, my wife and I have been in seven marriages.
Jules (Now Jules appears dumbfounded.)C’est vraiment vrai?
Tom: I’ve been widowed 3 times and my wife, well, let’s say, she’s had her adventures. She married her first husband on a dare. No children though, so no harm done. She told the Minister she was a widow so we could get married. (He snickers and makes a jabbing motion toward Jules with his elbow.) I had to grease his palm so there’d be no publication of banns.
Jules: Maybe 30 years is too kind. I have one wife, of 27 years, and one son, 26 years, and three girls, well four girls, if count Florida, the adopted girl. And I had a young son who died as an infant. At 3 days old.
Tom: I have 3 daughters and 2 sons. Three, if you count my second son, Morris. He died, in the prime of life really. On his first job as an Engineer. Way down in South America. He drowned, they said. Accident But he had been a top competitive swimmer at Lower Canada College. And at McGill. So I’ll always have my doubts. My eldest son survived the Belgian Front without a scratch and my second son dies building a dam in Brazil. The Big Mackenzie McConnell Concern. I got him the job through my connections at Rotary. I was the Director for Eastern Canada.
Jules: My son, too, is a McGill Engineer.
Tom: Now here’s a limo worthy of a Prince. Time to get down to business. (Tom rubs his hands together.)
Jules: Time to go home. (A well-dressed man, fedora, with two over-dressed young women slip from the back on the limo. The short, swarthy man acknowledges Jules with a subtle nod.)
Tom: (Ironically) I don’t think that’s the Prince. Who is he?
Jules: I have no idea.
Tom: Didn’t he nod at you?
Jules: I thought he was nodding at you.
The side door opens, blast of jazz. “TONY” a few inside shout, unison.
Tom: Well, someone knows him at least. What’s the time? He pulls out his watch from a breast pocket. 2 am.After my own son died, I thought I’d help out the boys, those without fathers, especially. Fathers who died in the war, and such. But it’s much more complicated than I thought.
Jules: I hardly saw my son, when he was growing up. I was too busy.
Tom: Me neither, actually.
Jules: This new program from the Rotary, The Boys’ Week, well, it’s all meant in good faith. A few of your street urchins came to City Hall, in the Spring. I heard their guide tell them that I worked myself up from sweeping the floor. One little boy said, “I can do that. I can sweep floors.”
But showing children what occupations exist out in the world is just a matter of relations publique if you don’t give them an avenue to get there. Clear short term goals, too.
Tom: Are you talking about jobs? At Laurentian we employ 30 people. Many of our workers, the drivers, are unskilled, all we want them to do is show up and be nice to the customers.
Jules: Yes, it’s important to teach boys the value of industry.
Tom: Not everyone has the gumption to work themselves up from the bottom at 12 years old
Jules: I had my mentors. I told you. Connections.
Tom: Friends in high places, you mean?
Jules: Yes. Very high. Not that they helped me, directly, but the fact you are a member of an influential tribe causes people to treat you better, whether you expect special treatment or not. Not that I didn’t work very very hard these forty years.
Tom: Harder than everyone else? Harder than the Chief City Clerk.
Jules: L.O. David? You know, he was pleased to have me in his office. I did all the work while he wrote his beloved histories. He was a learned man and the day to day work bored him stiff.
Tom: Friends in high places and enemies in the press: Like Edward Beck, of Beck’s Weekly, formerly of the Montreal Herald and the Star, I think. A friend of Athlostan’s and Sir Ames; a reporter determined to clean up City Hall, years ago. Set up politicians. Used Burns Detectives. But out of the picture for a long while. He also published those funny stories by that Stephen Leacock fellow.
(Jules doesn’t answer.)
Tom: Still, it can’t be easy, this year, 1927, with the Coderre Inquiry and Report and this W.E. Raney Dog and Pony Show in Washington and the Laurier Theatre Fire Inquiry, and Now the Montreal Water and Power Scandal.
Jules: What Montreal Water and Power scandal? This Montreal Water and Power purchase will go down in history one of the great successes of this administration. Mark my words.
Tom: Not if Lord Atholstan and that comical little MNA from Ste-Marie What’s his name, Hood? in the National Assembly have their way.
Jules: Strange bedfellows, for sure. That little MNA, Houde, has lost his seat in the National Assembly, so he’s out of the picture and Lord Atholstan, well, he lost his case in court. Or more to the point, Alderman Mercure won his 5,000 dollar slander case in court against Lord Atholstan, on behalf of all the aldermen accused by the Montreal Star of accepting bribes from Mr. Webster.
Tom: There’s a lot more than 5,000 dollars in Atholstan’s coffers. And everyone knows His Lordship Hugh Graham and the Montreal Star have it out for everyone at Montreal City Hall.
Jules: No one more than me, I can assure you.
Tom: Is that true?
Jules: Montreal Water and Power. What a bullshit name, from the start. Private enterprise, but did our citizens know that? Of course not! So when Montreal Water and Power cut their water off, who did they call? Montreal City Hall. When they got double-billed, who did they call? Their representative on City Council. Sometimes even the Mayor’s office.
And then we had to explain that their water supplier, Montreal Water and Power, was not owned by the city, but that it was a for-profit company that was established in 1892 to serve the nearby villages and parishes, and make money for the shareholders by doing this, and that this company tied these suburbs into very long-term contracts that were still binding even after these same villages and parishes were annexed by the City.
That string of typhoid outbreaks 10 years ago, as you likely well know, had nothing to do with the City Water. It was Montreal Water and Power’s aqueducts that were contaminated. But who got all the blame, the blemish on its reputation, Montreal City Hall.
Tom: Those nasty epidemics got everyone to clean up the water supply. Remember, it was the Westmount Council that pressured the Montreal Water and Power to invest in filters and new infrastructure. The working class citizens in St Henri and St. Cunegonde had no pull in that regard. Their representatives didn’t bother to show up at the 1910 meeting we called over the problem.
Jules: Perhaps they were mad at you for sending all your shit downstream to them all those years. If you had 60 typhoid deaths in 1904, they St Henri had 100 or and Ste Cunegond 300.
Tom: There’s that humdinger of a memory again.
Jules: So, Montreal Water and Power being such a thorn in the side of the City, in 1909, a bill was passed in the National Assembly permitting the City of Montreal to expropriate the company: Statutes of Quebec, 9, Edward VII, Chapter 81, Section 29. That expired. Then in 1914, a new bill, Statutes of Quebec 4, George V, Chapter 109, gave the City six months to purchase the majority share in Montreal Water and Power, worth then about one million dollars. Mayor Martin and the majority of Council voted in favour, but a commission appointed to study the purchase later advised against it.
Tom: Then Council sat on its hands, for how long? Another 13 years? Until this February, was it, when they got around to pushing through the purchase, but, as it happens, just A DAY after a majority share in the company was transferred from the Hanson brothers, the owners to a New York Consortium led by Senator Lorne Webster. So instead of paying 10 million dollars for the company as the Consortium did, the City paid 14 million. I mean, you must agree, it smells to high heaven. A fancy four million dollar flipperoo. A sum like that made in just a few weeks.
Jules: Lost in a few weeks, if you look at it from the taxpayer’s point of view. But Council had been put in a no-win situation. We had to make the purchase or risk paying an even more exorbitant price at a later date. Montreal Water and Power was, and still IS, a very health company. It made a 700,000 dollar profit in 1925/26. Anyway, it’s all likely to go to a board of arbitration.
Tom: So the purchase now becomes an expropriation. That makes no sense, either. I agree with some of the newspaper editorials. The Executive Committee said they didn’t know the company changed hands when they passed the motion to purchase that night. How can that be? The purchase offer was published in the Star. Don’t our elected City Officials read the papers?
Jules: That’s what they say, and I believe it.
Tom: Did you know?
Jules: I didn’t attend the session.
Tom: You didn’t answer my question. And pushing the purchase through at an unofficial session of Council. Suspending that rule, what was it?
Jules: That the agenda of any Council Meeting must be filed with the City Clerk’s office by 10 am the day of that Council Meeting.
Tom: Yea, that one. Tell me, on the QT, does that happen all the time, as they printed in the newspaper, or not?
Jules: I didn’t attend that particular council session.
Tom: I think you just answered my question.
Jules: As I said, Mayor Martin and Council voted for the purchase in 1914, but there was an unforeseen hiccup, as you English say. The company back then was valued at a mere 1 million. Since then the Hanson Brothers have refused to negotiate with the City. And they’ve grown their company 10 fold, exploiting the situation.
Tom: 14 fold! That’s not what they claim. They say the City never approached them, not once in all these years.
Jules: Our word against theirs.
The sound of drunken singing … Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink; Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the sink, the sink;
The good old rusty sink;
But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?
Oh, “We Won’t Get Home Till Morning” Is the best song after all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
There’ll be no more Orange Phosphates,
You can bet your Ingersoll,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
Jules: McGill Students
(A group of 5 young men approaches the side door.)
Tom: I know one of the boys. He’s the son of, ah.. prominent in our church, sells bathroom fixtures.
One youth swings elegantly around a lamp post while another pounds loudly, obnoxiously, at the side door.
First youth: What a wonderful feeling.
Second youth:“Let us in, you highhats.”
Tom: Boys will be boys. Well, whatever, the City of Montreal is right now, at this moment, am I right? (Jules nods) officially in control of the Montreal Water and Power Works, finally in control of its entire water supply. Let’s drink to that. (Tom pulls out the bottles of soda from his pockets and a bottle opener. He pulls one open and offers it to Jules. He opens another.)
Tom: To water socialism.
Jules: To water equality. No more unfair billing, no more turning off the taps of the poor. No more monopolies
Tom: No more entrepreneurship. Yes, can’t say we didn’t see it coming (Tom stares at his bottle of soda water.) The era of selling bottled water directly to the homeowner has passed for good, no doubt. A proud tradition started over a century ago by those enterprising men with the bulging biceps, the independent water merchants selling their river water by cart door to door.
Does City Hall bring in water dispensers?
Jules: What kind of a message would that send to our citizens?
Tom: Not even the aldermen for their private use? The Mayor for his more, ah, distinguished guests.
Jules: If they do, it’s at their own expense.
Tom: The market for our Laurentian Spring Water will be professionals from now on, offices, mostly, I imagine. That sector is projected to grow a great deal in the next decade.
Jules: Clean drinking water pumped directly into private homes and into drinking fountains in our parks and playgrounds has become a right of all citizens, not just the influential industrialist or wealthy burger.
The consensus among the decision-makers is that monopolies have no part in delivering this essential city service to citizens.
Tom: How did it ever come to this? Cities come together due to greed, money lust. The first pipes are put in to protect industrial buildings from fire. The people who come for work are left to their own devices. And then it all changes, what with universal suffrage. I remember that St Henri joined the City of Montreal in 1905 specifically because the city had to pay the water tax for so many of their poor families. Other suburbs too, joined due to water delivery and waste removal issues. But if all citizens have the right to clean tap water, why not food, or medical care or housing?
Jules: Because water is a public health issue. One person’s bad water can have an ill effect on everyone else.
Tom: Lucky starvation isn’t contagious. And now the shit has really hit the fan, hasn’t it? With the controversy over this Montreal Water and Power purchase. If they can’t get Senator Webster and his cronies, and I doubt they can, they’re going to a want someone to hang for it.
Jules: They’re Untouchables, that’s for sure. I’m afraid the Captains of Industry are the Chess Masters and we are but the pawns, being pushed willy nilly around the black and white board.
Tom: Some of us may be pawns. But some us are also bishops and queens and even kings
Jules: The National Assembly made it clear, they will not interfere anymore in Montreal’s administration. It all will likely go to a board of arbitration.
Tom: They’ll find a scapegoat. Next election maybe.
Jules: Who? The Mayor.
Tom: Why not King Mederic of Montreal with his Sampson-like head of silver-grey hair and his sable-trimmed robes?
Jules: Because, despite his love of trappings, he is a man of the people, a self-made man who just ensured with this Montreal Water and Power purchase that many many poor families will not get their water turned off in the winter. The voting man isn’t stupid, he won’t vote against his self-interest.
Tom: And clean water is a human right, right?
Jules: A human right, if you want to put it that way, as well as a necessity as it promotes hygiene and more wholesome family life. Or at least it helps give everyone an even chance at health. The rest is up to the individual, the mothers who make sure their children wash their hands. We Montrealers are truly blessed, you know. We have an unlimited supply of fresh water from the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers pouring into our main aqueduct from a safe source above the Lachine Rapids. And due to our state of the art filtration and treatment facilities, our water supply is now one of the best in the world. We pump 130,000,000 gallons of a day of this life-giving substance into our homes and factories.
Tom: Aren’t you sounding more and more like a Presbyterian. Healthy body, healthy mind, healthy spirit. For a moment there, I thought you were going to use the P word. PURE.
Jules: Yes. Yes. Amusant, Monsieur Wells. As it happens, my first real job at City Hall was in the Dr. Laberge’s Health Department. I was but 15. Back then, say in 1890, we were pre-occupied with removing waste from homes. Safe tap water was the citizen’s responsibility, we felt. They could buy it, or boil it, or, if they could afford it, buy the home filters for themselves.
In 1887, in order to encourage more sanitary conditions in the houses of the poor, and to lower the infant death rate from dysentery and gastroenteritis, the Council passed by-law number 155 exempting from tax the water closets in all houses with rental under 150 dollars a year.
The City introduced many more measures to improve the health of the citizens. Controls on abattoirs and tanning factories and such and they hired many sanitary inspectors to enforce the new by-laws.
But in a relatively short period the city annexed 24 villages and parishes and doubled in population, from 200,000 to 400,000 and it was impossible to get ahead, let alone to keep up.
So when Mr. Hebert Ames wrote his book, 1897, the City Below the Hill, describing, in such vivid terms, the horrible poverty in some parts of the city and pointing to all the outdoor privies to prove his point, it looked as if nothing had been done. And then came the typhoid epidemics of 1904 and 1909 – not caused by us- and then a huge wave of immigrants from Europe in around 1910 which put pressure on all city services.
Tom: Thanks for that condensed history of Montreal. I don’t care if you have a corker of a memory, you can’t possibly remember the number of all those by-laws from 40 years ago. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe you do.
Jules: Some things you never forget: Let me explain, that job in the Health Department was my chance and I knew it. I was merely the message boy, but I studied every document I got my hands on. And I got my hands on all of them. One day, when I delivered the 1890 Annual Report of the Health Department to the City Clerk’s Office, the Assistant City Clerk asked me if anything had changed since the 1889 report. He was joking of course, a bit cynical of him, but I told him, just the same. I recited each and every change in the most serious tone, my heart pounding in my chest as I did this.
He told LO. David, the Chief City Clerk, who took an instant interest in me. Within 2 years I was working in his office.
Tom: Ah, the Mentor. Still, someone’s going to go down for this. Even if this purchase puts all the City’s water problems to bed for all time. There’s got to be a scapegoat.
I know, The Chairman of Executive Committee. Brodeur? The power behind the throne.
They couldn’t get him with the Coderre Report, they’ll get him with this. (He stares at Jules as if wanting confirmation.) He’s supposed to be in You Know Who’s back pocket. Am I right?
Jules: Shrugs
Tom: 4 million dollars. You didn’t get a bit of that for yourself? Tell me, not one cent trickled down to you or any of the aldermen?
Jules: And, now, even the mighty City of Westmount gets its water from us, the City of Montreal. How do you feel about that?
Tom: Personally, I don’t care. Nah, I get my water from a silvery family-owned fount deep beneath Craig Street.
(There’s a sound at the side door and a man, the loud McGill Student is thrown out on the sidewalk. He gets up from his hands and knees with difficulty)
McGill Student: I never touched her. She made a pass at me! Slut! (And then he stumbles to the curb and pukes. A cop siren approaches, the patrol car arrives and the tall cop leaves his post to talk to the driver. They both look at Jules. Jules waves the patrol car away. It drives off.)
Jules: Well, no Royal Prince now. (He turns to tall cop.) Faites l’appelle. (He turns to Tom) I have to bring my 6 year old daughter to her first day at boarding school, tomorrow morning.
Tom: You know, my son got arrested last week.
Jules: What?
Tom: He took his wagon, loaded it with soft drinks, we keep hundreds of bottles in our pantry, and sold it on Sherbrooke Street for 5 cents, undercutting the local grocers. One of the new grocers didn’t recognize him, so he called the police and the beat constable brought him home.
Jules: Entrepreneur/marchand.
Tom: Entrepreneur, law-breaker.
Jules: In Montreal, also. We outlawed street vendors in 1910. For the same reason your son was arrested. If I recall, only one alderman stood up for their right to conduct business as such, the Syrians and Greeks, the entrepreneur- immigrants. That’s why I was asked to help with the importing company. How old is your son?
Tom: Seven.
The men laugh.
Tom: Well, do you mind? (He points to the front seat of his car. Jules nods. He walks over to door, opens it, and takes out a box of pop bottles. Heads to side door of cafe. The tall cop holds the door for him.)
Tom: (Yelling) Do you think that you could get the hotel at Place Viger, where all the aldermen lunch, to use our soft drinks? If they do it, the other restaurants around will follow. And maybe some water dispensers, at City Hall. Now that most everyone trusts city water. You know, merely for the convenience.
Jules lifts his hand in a signal. His taxi drives up from around the corner. The chauffer comes around to open the door for him.
And from the gutter a voice.
McGill student: Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink; Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the sink, the sink; (And he falls on his face.)
Jules: (as he climbs into the cab.) Mr. Wells, I will consider it. But you understand, this night never happened.
Jules (from the taxi window) The Mayor never phoned you I never met you.
Tom: I understand.
Jules: And perhaps you should be a good Samaritan and deliver the heir to the throne over there back home to his god-fearing parents. (He points to the drunk student.) Now that you’ve got room on your front seat.
Tom: Will do, Sir. Good night. Oh, just one more thing.
Jules: Yes,
Tom: What would have happened if the Royal Prince took his drinks on the rocks. With ice?
Jules shrugs. The taxi drives off.
Drunk student: The good old rusty sink; But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?
In 1928, Mayor Mederic Martin of Montreal lost the municipal election, by a wide margin, to a relative unknown banker (and MNA) named Camillien Houde. In November 27, J A A Brodeur, the Chairman of the Executive Committee and “the most powerful man in Montreal” died of a heart attack while in NY, sitting in a limo beside Mayor Martin, opening the way for Houde’s surprise win. The main election point: the iffy circumstances of the Montreal Water and Power Purchase. The People wanted vengeance over this event, Houde said. Vengeance for that purchase, vengeance for the typhoid and vengeance for the Laurier Palace Fire.
In 1928, Jules Crepeau received public kudos printed in all the City’s newspapers, in honor of his 40th year at City Hall. The Council formally adopted a motion: “That the members of this council wish to offer their congratulations to Mr. Jules Crepeau, director of Municipal Services, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his entrance into the city’s service.
That they wish to officially recognize the valuable service rendered to the municipality for nearly half a century by this intelligent and devoted official, who has managed to rise step by step from the humblest position to the highest post which exists in the municipal service.
That they beg to express the hope that M. Crepeau will continue to exercise for a long time to come the high function he was called upon to assume in 1921 and for which his untiring zeal, integrity and his wide knowledge of municipal affairs qualified him.”
In 1930, Jules Crepeau was forced to resign by the Municipal Council, the “Houdist” section of which organized a shady session at the Place Viger Hotel where this action was agreed upon. His resignation was accepted in a vote of 22 to 7 in a rowdy session of Council on September 30.
Camillien Houde, whose false teeth flew out during one of his speeches, claimed Jules Crepeau was being asked to resign because he did not STOP the purchase. Houde, as he was apt to do, managed to bring up both the Laurier Palace Fire and the 1927 typhoid epidemic at random moments during his speeches.
The City Engineer who recommended the Montreal Water and Power purchase, was also forced to resign, although he retained another post with the City.
Jules Crepeau demanded a severance settlement of $5,000 dollars and a life pension of $7,500 a year in his resignation letter. This pension would make him the second highest paid employee at City Hall, without working.
The City balked and the issue went to court. Jules won and was awarded the full pension with back pay, in 1931. In 1937, Jules Crepeau was run over by a City Constable, driving a private vehicle. He died the next year of complications. Former Mayor Martin did not attend his funeral.
A work-a-holic since age 12, he applied his considerable energies to bad business ventures all during the 30’s, the Great Depression years, and went bankrupt.
Thomas Wells retired from Laurentian and died in 1953. Upon his death, his wife received a card of condolence from now legendary Mayor Camillien Houde, who was in his last years of office. Houde had made the cover of Time Magazine, due to his opposition to conscription during the war. He was interned for this.
Laurentian Spring Water Company produced a number of flavours of soft drink in the 20’s and 30’s. After the war, a small company called Schwepp’s asked Laurentian sell their product in Canada. They declined.
The company dropped the soft drink end but continued selling their pure water in large bottles to companies and some homes across Montreal. In the 1980’s, when bottled water sales started once again to skyrocket, the family-owned company was sold. Some of the cash from that sale helped my husband and me buy our first house.
Senator Lorne Webster was exonerated by an arbitration board over the purchase and quick re-sale of Montreal Water and Power. Indeed, the board awarded him another million dollars! His family’s legacy is a Philanthropic Foundation. The beautiful Webster Library of Concordia University, where I conducted some research for Milk and Water, is named after the family.
The Montreal Water and Power Purchase is considered to be a key achievement in Montreal Water Management History.
My grandfather’s brother, Isadore Crepeau, VP of United Amusements died in 1931, falling out of his 7th storey office window on St. James.
The Look Out on the East Side of Mount Royal has been named for Camillien Houde, as has the road winding up over the mountain by it. My grandfather has a short street in Ahunsic named after him, and the tiny postage stamp of a park beside it. There is no water fountain in that park.
