A street scene 1905 San Francisco, stilled of an Edison film on YouTube.
If you think city streets are chaotic today, they appear to have been much worse in 1910 era.
Coco Chanel claimed her fashions allowed working women to run for the street car. Just add snow in Montreal!
So, if Marion had to take three streetcars to get to work when she first moved to the city in 1909, well, imagine how tiring it was.
In my book Flo in the City: A work in Progress being written on this blog and based on the letters of www.tighsolas.ca I have Marion fall into a snowbank as February 1909 saw a lot of snow.
The only Edison film that exists of Montreal is a short of a fire. That means the Edison crew came to Montreal, so there was have been other scenes that were shot. They are not extant if they still exist somewhere.
Lots of New York scenes exist. The McCord Museum has a lot of photos of early Montreal, some published online. The Bibliotheque Nationale has pictures in their archives.
In 1910, Thomas Edison’s crew was hired by the government to go out West with American Director Earle Dawley to film scenes to attract Americans to the Canadian West. You see, the government was keen on getting American immigrants, over Europeans, a part of history that everyone would rather forget.
On the McCord Museum website they provide audio for some pictures, depicting the sounds of the street back then. trams, car horns. It was noisy. Apparently, the pervading odor was still horse manure.
Now in winter, the sleighs had bells to warn people away. Yes, those lovely sleighbells were very necessary and sleighs moved fast and silently over the snow. So the city in winter was even more dangerous to negotiate. And then just add those boots, long skirts and corsets women had to wear, and those ridiculous hats. Something had to give.
