St. Lawrence, ethnic distric of Montreal 1910. McCord Museum photo.
In 1910, Julia Parker Drummond, of the Montreal Council of Women wrote in a letter regarding some proposed legislation against people shacking up, by the Moral and Social Reform League of Canada: “You cannot make people good by legislation.”
In 1906, they tried just that.. with the Lord’s Day Act.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, that’s for sure, and there’s a dizzying amount of proof for this in 2010, (and you didn’t need Wikileaks to reveal it) but back then, in 1906 Canada, it was the Conservative Presbyterians and the Labour Unions who cozied up together get this particular Lord’s Day Act passed.
The Lord’s Day Act plays a part in Flo in the City. Marion, who is a teacher, prepares her lesson plan on Sunday Morning, after church. When else is she going to do it, she asks.
This description of the Lord’s Day from the Canada Year Book of 1906 explains that it takes effect at noon on Saturday, until noon on Sunday. (I assumed it was all day Sunday, as it was in Canada until a few years ago.) Marion is not breaking any civic laws here, just ‘moral ones.’ The law was considered harsh against the Jews, and in Montreal, there was a debate about whether Jews peddling bread should be given dispensation. In Toronto, I believe, there was no such sympathy offered to that community.
Still, there appears to be a lot of room to manoever within this law, for other citizens and merchants. Hmm. Makes me wonder if this Act was aimed, by the Presbyterians, specifically at suppressing the Jewish religion.
As I have mentioned before, if you give the people a day off, especially over-worked young people, they need something fun and cheap to do. Many movie houses, including the ritzy Ouimetoscope, stayed open on the Lord’s Day. Ernest Ouimet said he had no choice, that was the best day for business. I guess he paid a fine.
“Chapter 27, an Act respecting the Lord’s day, provides that it shall not be lawful for any person on the Lord’s day to sell or offer for sale or purchase any goods, chattels, or other personal property, or any real estate, or to transact any business of his ordinary calling, or to employ any person for gain to do on that day any work, business, or labour.
The Lord’s day is defined as the period of time which begins at 12 o’clock on Saturday afternoon and ends at 12 0′clock on the following afternoon. Works of necessity or mercy are excepted from the operation of the act, and whilst not restricting the ordinary meaning of the expression ‘work of necessity or mercy’ this is declared by the act to include 24 different descriptions of work, connnected with divine worship, sickness, transportation, communications, food, water, light, heat, animals, fires and emergencies. Games and performances for gain, shooting for gain or to the disturbance of other persons, and the sale and distribution within Canada of foreign newspapers or the Lord’s Day are all forbidden by the Act.
Employees who, except in cases of emergency, are employed on the Lord’s day in certain defined classes of work, must be allowed during the next six days 24 consecutive hours without labour, but this provision applies only where the regular day’s labour exceeds eight hours duration.
The act does not override any existing statute, nor does it affect the liberty of each province to make its own laws upon this subject. It comes into force on March 1, 1907.”
