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.

 

Stitching Together another Nicholson ‘Story’

An 1885 White Peerless sewing machine, very likely the kind Margaret Nicholson used. How do I know? It’s not mentioned in the letters, the brand of the machine. (Although there’s plenty of mention of sewing dresses and shirtwaists and the house accounts reveal few (maybe one)dresses were purchased from 1888 to 1920.)

I know because I put two and two together. I found a promotional brochure for White Sewing machines, that had the music for some patriotic American songs. And I know because yesterday I noticed something in the ‘store’ books that I had previously overlooked.

The Nicholsons bought a sewing machine in 1885 for 30.00. That’s a lot of money. And with this, I learned something else, that Margaret probably learned how to sew on machine as a young mother, out of necessity.

In the early years a dress is purchased for Marion. And there are payments to a seamstress. So this woman, who probably learned baking at her mother’s elbow, learned a new skill, with a new machine.

A new technology made her life easier and cheaper. Or gave her even more work to do And since she had 3 daughters, with the help of this machine, she was able to satisfy their instinct for adornment without breaking the bank. And this happened in parallel with the birth of the clothing industry which gave poorer women work and also helped spur the union movement as their working conditions were, for the most part, appalling. The items in the Eaton’s catalogues tell that story.

There are no sewing machines in the 1889 Eaton’s catalogue, but there are some in the 1906 Sears Catalogue.

From that moment on, most big purchases for clothes made by the Nicholsons were for men’s and boys suits. Yes, the Nicholsons spent a whole lot more on Herb, as a child, than on the girls. I saw a 10,00 entry for “Herb’s bank account” when that boy was but two.

Like most family, they put their dreams and aspirations on the shoulders of the only boy. They spoiled him, I imagine. He must have been quite a disappointment (to say the least) although, apparently, they never mentioned it.

Luckily, the Nicholsons were feminists, even Norman, (remember, they bought Flora a book at 2 years old) and they brought up strong women, who weren’t spoiled. And this prepared the girls for the tough life ahead, the wars and the Depression, and Marion’s early widowhood.

I’m thinking out loud here, but this theme is central to Flo in the City, my book about a girl coming of age in 1910.

In fact, on my website, http://www.tighsolas.ca/ I write “A woman’s love of clothing affects her in more ways than the obvious one.” It’s so true. Clothing is very much a political issue: indeed the Nicholsons knew it: they clipped a letter to the Editor from 1913 where someone is replying to another letter than complains about women’s expensive clothes habit. When it comes to fashion women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

And so it goes, the last ‘fabric’ stores have now closed in Montreal. Marshall’s was the most famous, on St. Catherine. Beauclair and what’s that other one, Fabricville. I used to write ads fo them. They may still have a store. When you can buy cheap cheap clothing, (on the back of Third World labour) who needs to sew? My mother was brought up rich and was well-educated in Greek and Latin, but couldn’t sew. If she had been able to, it might have made my childhood easier. I was very tall, and no store clothes fit me growing up, and, besides, we had no money for clothes for me.

And yet I didn’t help myself in Home Ec, in high school, I deliberately failed sewing. (Home Ec, I have learned, was a left over of the Home Economics movement of 1910. So all things are connected.)

Today, as it happens, I stumbled upon a paper about this very thing: it appears a Nan Enstad at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was covering this territory in 1999. Her paper is Dressed for Adventure: Working women and silent movie serials in 1910 (on Jstor) and this paper:Fashioning Political Identities: Cultural Studies and the Historical Construction of Political Subjects from a book Ladies of Labour..working women, popular culture and labour politics in turn of the century America. Change America to Canada and you have the essence of TIGHSOLAS.
…So now I have more reading….