The Meat of the Issue.

Butcher shop and abattoir workers, 1900 circa. (From Vie en St Henri Website.)

Now, this past Christmas, I found myself putting together a Big Veggie Salad (with couscous and pineapple and mint and nuts and such) and a squash, bean and cabbage casserole – and that’s on top of the goose and the roast beef.

This is because my eldest son is a vegetarian, a die-hard vegetarian, and he has been thus since junior college, when a teacher showed his class a movie about a slaughterhouse.

That’s seven years, now.

I once glimpsed a tiny clip of a pig slaughterhouse, where a piglet was being kicked into pen and that nearly broke my heart, because the piglet reminded me of my Boston Terrier, Bullwinkle.

And I’ve been a vegetarian, off and on, but that is mostly for health. These days I try to eat organic meat, because of the hormones and antibiotics used in the production of pork and beef, and as for chicken, well, it’s mushier than ever.

But I have that luxury. Right now, anyway.

My grandmother was a daughter of a Master Butcher, Maitre Boucher, and family lore says her dowry, in 1900, was 40,000. (I find that a little hard to believe, as that’s the equivalent of a million or so today. The average well-off family made 1,500 a year back then.)

Nonetheless, butchers had clout in the 1900 period. In Richmond, Pope Brothers sold meat. I have many many of the invoices and yes, it was relatively cheap to buy, beef anyway. In 1900 the Nicholson paid for 106 pounds of beef (1/3 cow) 6.35; for 79 pounds of pork 4.35.

I discovered on the St Henri website that that area had abattoirs and therefore abattoir workers. I didn’t see any such workers on the 1911 Census pages I scanned.

I am wondering whether to put such a worker in Marion’s class. A part time worker. A student. You can see from the picture that particular industry employed boys.

Reading over the School reports from 1893 and 1916, it is evident that attendance at school was a big problem. Virtually every school inspector complains that the parents in his district don’t understand the importance of daily attendance.

That being said, in the 1916 report, J.C Sutherland, the Superintendent of Protestant Schools, claims that his schools in the cities and towns hold their own among schools across the Continent.

I have it on good authority that in the 1960′s, the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal was the top board in North American, with respect to results on exams, I guess that’s how it is measured.

Many of these students (my classmates) left the province however. Toronto benefitted most from this mass exodus.

That’s the Catch-22 of having an excellent education system, you are grooming citizens for other constituencies. The more education a person has, the more mobility she has.

So, if you don’t educate your citizens, you have a captive, cheap workforce, if you can find something for them to do..

The Purpose of Education

Edith, Herb (in a skirt) and baby Marion. Around 1888

This is a book review from 1916 from Quebec Protestant Educational Report addressing an age old question: Educational Reform was already in the works before the war started. Many of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education were being implemented in 1916. I think it could be argued that one reason for WWI was an over population of under-skilled workers.

(At least I have read it argued.)

Of course, this is a war where the elite lost as many of their men as the poor.

“This is a practical and earnest study of a serious problem, namely,that of determining how far education may serve to modify or counteract the social distresses and more particularly those which are incident to city life under the present industrial system.

Principal Morgan is chiefly concerned, apparently, to state clearly the extent to which popular education can overcome the influencs of bad heredity, and bad environment and to determine the kind of education which can best serve the cause of social progress. The causes of social diseases are Heredity, Environment and Defective Education. From this thesis the author proceeds to a careful discussion of the educational remedies. the wider modern outlook in education is approved. The school is concerned with the physical health of the pupils and it must also adapt its teachings to practical life.

The war at present devastating Europe, will for generations increase the importance of education as a factor in social progress. After the war solicitious care of public health wil become a cardinal feature of social policy, and more attention than ever will be paid to everything connected with the health of the young.

Increased economy of industrial force, too, will be necessary. Thousands of workers trained in manufactures and commerce have been lost in the war and the prosperity of the country will only be restored by the increased efficiency of those who remain. We must give children, who will take the place, in a short time, of the workers who have fallen in war, a longer and better education and a more practical training, a training that will develop their mental powers and be at the same time a preparation for life.

The gap between the elementary school age and the threshold of manhood and womanhood must be filled by an adequate system of continuing education, including more thorough trade and technical education.

It is the children at present being educated in the schools who will bring to fruition in the next generation the possibilities of the coming peace.

Refining the Cruder Elements of Canadian Society

Granary on the Montreal Harbour, 1912. These ugly buildings have been part and parcel of the Montreal landscape in the 20th century. Wheat was being shipped overseas. In the 1912′s, they didn’t only refine flour, they refined people too. New Immigrants. In an article in the Canadian magazine, this process is described. You didn’t use mills, you used schools, and churches.

The article, titled The Refining Process, by George Chipman, opens by describing a typical post celebration scene in the immigrant quarters: drunken men is sheds, on sidewalks and in ditches, men and women walking wounded with chunks bitten out their ears, faces gashed, with bandages of all sorts and colours… Therefore, “the patriotic people of Winnipeg are on the defensive in endeavoring to educate and ‘Canadianize’ the new immigrants.”

“More foreign homes are being reached by the schools than by any other medium. Several thousand children from foreign homes meet together with children from Canadian homes and soon the common language of all is Anglo Saxon. The foreign children are quick to pick up the English words and soon they are more proficient in English than the parents.

Winnipeg Kindergarten Kids. Hebrews, Germans, Poles. Ruthenians,Hungarians, Bohemians, Russians,Roumanians, Icelanders, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Syrians. The Jewish adults flock to the night schools. Juvenile offenders are not treated like hardened criminals, but dealt with in a special juvenile court “that can do immeasurable good for the younger generation.”

In addition to the ordinary work of the schools, the boys have the advantage of the manual training work above grade four, and this has a splendid disciplinary effect upon them and has the tendency towards usefulness. Military training has become an important feature of training at the public schools of Winnipeg, preparing them to take a full share in the work of the community and country to which they belong.

The girls receive regular lessons in sewing and cooking. If they can go home and improve the manner of living, provide better food and clothing from the same material, raise the moral tone of the home, the great task is already half accomplished.

Chicken and Egg, Suffrage and Education

J C Sutherland sells his Drug, Book and Stationery business to A J Bedard, upon his promotion to Superintendant of Protestant Schools In Quebec.

A 1913 issue of the Canadian Magazine has an article by J. C. Sutherland, Superintendant of Protestant Schools in Quebec, called A National Purpose in Education. 1913 was also the year Mr. Robertson and his Royal Commission came out with its recommendations for reforming Canadian schools. Of course, education in Canada is a Provincial concern.

J. C. Sutherland was a Richmond merchant and a former Secretary of St. Francis Academy, the high school the Nicholson children attended. His attitude toward education reflected (or influenced) the general attitude in Richmond, Quebec at the time.

In the 1910 era in Canada, with respect to education, there was the city problem and the country problem. Sutherland addresses the rural problem in his article. His style is simple and direct -one of the reasons he went on to an illustrious career. Knowing Sutherland likely helped Marion in her rise in the Teachers Union.

In his article Sutherland says that Canada, unlike Germany, Denmark and Japan, does not have a great national purpose in education. He believes this is especially important in order to train farmers in scientific principles for efficient production. Farmers in Denmark, he says, often have degrees in the chemistry or physics. (I didn’t know that:My sister in law comes from Danish farmers and she describes a very ‘rustic’ childhood in the 40′s.)

The problem: trained teachers of any calibre prefer to work in the cities. In Canada, and especially in Quebec, he says there is a serious lack of good teachers in rural schools. In Quebec, he writes, 25 percent of the rural teachers are new to their trade each year. (Marion and Edith only spent one year teaching in a rural school.) The one great remedy for the hopeless rural school situation is school consolidation which would improve the quality of schools and attract better teachers.

Here are some excerpts that are relevant to my story Flo in the City: about a young girl coming of age in the 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

“Now that the great majority by far of the elementary teachers of this continent are women, the question of keeping up a supply of the trained is more difficult than ever. It is a difficulty in the older provinces, quite as much as in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where new schools are being opened daily. A large percentage of teachers marry, and consequently give up the profession. Others, where salaries are low, either make their way into other work or move to those parts of the country where the salaries oare better…Nowhere is the supply (for teacher) equal to the demand; all over rural Canada one may find backward educational conditions, due primarily to insufficient salary or to unattractiveness in the physical conditions or to both…

Another incentive to modern countries in general during the last half century has been the extension of the suffrage. It has been recognized that every man who exercises the right of a vote should have sufficient education to follow intelligently in the newspapers the political issues of the day. Those who opposed suffrage were also for a time opposed to the extension of education to all classes of the people. The minority who are still doubtful of the benefits of general education may be regarded as a very small one in Canada. Ontario’s first large workable act dates from 1846. The records show that there were many people opposed to the principle of public schools and to the idea of being taxed for the education of other people’s children, but the broader public spirit today, of which the province in proud, was rapidly developed.”

Hmm. Sutherland is talking about MAN suffrage here, or, I suppose he is being coy, as some Scandinavian countries already had universal suffrage. Finland anyway. He states that universal suffrage naturally leads to universal education, when, with respect to woman suffrage, the opposite is claimed, that the education of women lead to women demanding and getting the vote.

Educating Flora, and Jenny and William…

An article in the 1900 Canadian Magazine, which I found posted on archive.org was of particular interest to me, since I am writing a book about the lives of teachers in Canada in 1910. My novel is Flo in the City, and is about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era and is based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

The article is called Parent and Teacher and is written by a Victoria elementary school teacher, an old maid, as she is clear to state. (Weren’t they all:married women couldn’t teach.)

In the opening paragraphs the author brings up suffrage. She says when she hears about all the women clamouring for more rights and responsibilities, she has one thing to say. As a teacher, she wants LESS responsibility.

(Of course, teachers were very often suffragists.)

She’s a purist, she says, or a conservative: she says she has a job to do, 5 hours a day to teacher her students the subjects at hand and no time for all the ‘hobby’ subjects like religion, sewing, phys ed, patriotism and oh, kindness to animals, and that other areas of society, the pulpit, the community, the parent have abdicated their responsibility with respect to the child’s education.

It’s true. Canadian schools, at that time, were being called on to do a lot of the work once left to other elements of society. Schools were to churn out useful and productive citizens – and since it a world that was changing so fast, the Powers That Be (or the ‘theorists’ as she put it) were not quite able to grasp how to do it.

Indeed, in 1910, Laurier launched a Royal Commission, the Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education, to figure out how to educate Canadian kids for the new industrial world.

In the 1960′s, the relic of this Commission was the Home Ec course, where girls learned cooking and sewing and boys woodworking. (I failed, on purpose.) And, in the 60′s we learned patriotism in oblique ways (apart from saluting the flag and singing God Save the Queen.) We learned it through our reading texts.

I recently purchased all editions of the Canadian Reading Development Series (developed by a Westerner post WWII) and was struck by how the stories within (all very dull and plodding) were about inculcating children with some very specific Canadian values, values which were largely out of step with the emerging cosmopolitain multicultural Canada of the 60′s. Lots of bears and wheat and Mounties and white bread families. *I’m sure the pedagogy was very sound. These texts were used for 30 years in classrooms across Canada.

In 1910, the Royal Commission spent 3 years travelling across Canada and Europe, asking lobby groups for input on how to educate kids for the industrial age, but ended up advocating what they already believed in: the manual training movement, where poor children were trained to be good little workers.

Education was for everyone, but everyone had a place. Especially women. They would be trained as good little homemakers, or if they had to work, as domestics, for good help was getting hard to find.

You don’t hear much about this Commission, in History books, because it is embarrassing. (Still, some good things came out of it, a minimum age for leaving school, etc.)

The teacher who wrote this Parent and Child article, also blamed the Mother for not taking her part in the education of her child. (She invoked this idealized image of the Mom at end of day having a wonderful chat with her child, as they sit at rest, which proved she didn’t live in the real world.) No mention is made of the father. (In my Flo in the City Story, I have Margaret chatting with Flora while she cleans the wood stove. Even Margaret had no time to sit and talk and she had only one child left at home.)

And then she proceeds to complain about the mothers she meets who do take an interest in their children’s education. She says these women are too soft on discipline and always wanting to get their child off some punishment or off school entirely.

You know, I heard teachers complain about parents in exactly the same way in the 1990′s.

The Nicholsons did take a strong interest in their children’s education, both the Dad, Norman and the Mom, Margaret.

When daughter Flora fails some classes in high school (or academy) Norman writes home and tells Margaret to speak to Mr. Jackson and have him take more interest in the subjects Flora is failing.

I guess they saw the teacher as an employee of sorts. (This man quits the next year.) It cost money to send kids to school then, 25 cents a month for the elementary grades and 3.00 a month in the higher grades.

Hmm.

I wonder what Marion and Flora thought. I can guess. Marion was no-nonsence, but she worked hard to get the most out of her students. Flora was kind-hearted and felt sorry for her students. She describes a Parent’s Day in Griffintown in 1914, where she is a convenor. She says all the parents are most interested in their children’s progress…And this was the poorest community in Montreal.

I found a little note tucked away that suggests that Marion could be condescending to the parents. This note was written by an exasperated mom, with crude grammar. The mom asks why her kid is always being sent home, first to have her face washed and then to get 25 cents.

Of course, I really have no idea why Marion kept it…

PONDERING THE FUTURE 39th installment

Talking machines. Eaton’s 1909.

June 1, 1909. Victoria Day Monday. A holiday.

A sweet, breezy Monday afternoon, and Flora is once again on the porch of Tighsolas, with a notebook on her knee, studying a scene from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, for a classroom event she was putting on. Sometimes school could be fun. End of year exams were approaching, but this year she had managed to keep her head above water, with respect to results and, if she didn’t freeze at exam time, she would likely pass, most subjects anyway. The new teacher, Mr. Cross, continued to be more lenient than Mr. Jackson. He had even suggested she have her eyes tested – and yes, she needed glasses,for long distance viewing. She had worn the new pair, purchased in Sherbrooke, last week, all day at school.

Margaret had never asked about the Easter exam results. After her close call with tonsillitis, and a harsh winter spent shut in except for the occasional whist or bridge party, she was seldom at home. The carpets in Tighsolas had yet to be aired out. Father had come home for a week in late May, after the thaw, and had rolled and seeded the garden for Margaret, considering her still too weak after her illness. He had joined Margaret in a chorus of Why doesn’t Herb write?

Flora’s hat was still on her dresser in the bedroom. That appointed day, she had indeed got up the courage to visit Hudon’s, Poppy hat on head, only to be met by another woman, taking Eugenie’s place. Mademoiselle Hudon is in New York. “‘Ave you not read da social notes in da Richmond Times? I am here to serve you, instead.” Crestfallen, or was it relieved? Flora had beat a quick retreat.

Marion, is at her dressing table in her tiny room on Bleury. She slipped a ten dollar bill from her Friday pay into an envelope to send to her mother, but she didn’t feel like writing a long letter. What could she write about? Not last night. Yesterday, Victoria Day eve, a Sunday night of all things, she had finally made it to Dominion Park.

The crowd had been simply enormous, many many thousands of visitors. Her beau for the evening, a soft-spoken young man in his father’s tanning business, a friend of Dr. Cleveland’s, had persuaded her to ride on the train, first thing, right up front, up and down and around, and afterwards her head had been swirling.

No sooner had she found her equilibrium, he bought her a ticket to see Mini Ha Ha, a miniature female acrobat who twirled around and danced about and walked a tightrope in workaday dress. The billboard described her as ‘charming’ but Marion could have thought of better adjectives to describe the odd little female.Then there had been the fun house, the wild animal show,the infant incubator exhibit, the Southern Plantation Nightingales, with their sad, spiritual songs, the re-enactment of the San Francisco earthquake of 1905 and finally the evening’s novelty act, a swarthy Mediterrean beast of a man who battled with snakes.His oiled muscles and slate black eyes bulged huge as he fought off a nefarious nest of writhing serpents (as the cryer put it) up to his naked waist in water and Marion had been so taken by surprise by the sight of him, she had flushed ruby red, her timid escort actually had asked her if she were going to faint. But no, it was just the crush of the crowd, she pretended; 24 hours later, the feverish feeling inspired by the sight of the strongman still lingered. Or was it simmering indignation towards her new landlady, who had publicly scolded her for coming home after 11.00. For breaking house rules. How she despised being told what to do. At 25 years of age. Her brother could do just about anything he wanted and she had to be home before midnight, like a character in a silly fairy tale.

And, speak of the devil, in a flat just a few streets away,on de Bullion, Herbert Nicholson was drinking a scotch amid a rowdy group of young men, of the clerkish kind, and some ageless women of the uninhibited kind and waving a card in the air.

“This is the temperance pledge,” he said slurring. A redhead grabbed it from his hand. “I therefore promise, with the help of god to abstain from the use of all intoxicating liquids.”

Another young man walks up and asks, “Nicholson, how bout some gaming down in Chinatown.”

“No, Smithie. I’d better not. I’m supposed to be in Cowansville. My sister lives around there now. And she has all kinds of spies, chums who want to get into her good graces.”

“That didn’t stop us from going out last night to see that W.C Fields guy at the Bennett Theatre.”

“Well, I’m not going to press my luck.” The truth was, Herb had run out of money. His entire paycheque gone in two days! Lucky he had pre-purchased a ticket back to Cowansville. He’d have to put off his landlady, this month.

“Is your sister a working girl? Like us?” asks his female friend

“No, certainly not. She’s a teacher. She has a diploma. She lives in a respectable boarding house.”

The woman raises her eyebrows, menacingly, and she turned away.

She says to another woman, “Our friend ‘erb is a Christian socialist at heart. Lucky it is not his heart we want.”

“You should be nice to eem, Marie-Claude. Or e won’t get you dat job in motion pictures, with is friend Sinnott.”

“Well, don’t hold your breath, Ginette,” says Smithie, blinking hard a few times as if there is something bothering his eyes.

And in yet another downtown Montreal area home, an solid respectable four storey greystone at 72 Sherbrooke Street West, in a well-furnished but noisy third story bedroom situated above the street, Edith Nicholson sits reading Vanity Fair,by the late afternoon sun, half listening to the sharp clip clop of horse hooves on the street and the duller sound of muffled arguing below.

Mr. Crepeau, a small, dapper dignified looking man, has come home, a day late, as it were, and had a row with his fat, overbearing wife.

Somehow, crockery was broken. Her student Alice, was in her bedroom, trying on a new dress from Henry Morgan, purchased today, by the father. Baby Cecile was in the nursery, being tended by Claudille, a new girl, sent by the nuns. This was the third charity case in five months delivered to Mme. Crepeau, for rehabilition, and a little honest housework.

It wasn’t that Mrs. Crepeau was lazy. No, as a housekeeper, this stout woman with the enormous chest was as capable as Margaret Nicholson in every respect. She did all her own cooking and cleaning, despite the fact the family earned 5,000 a year.

Edith had been instructed not to talk to the new girl. Education, apparently, was the scourge of the fallen woman. Anyway, this was a girl destined to work as a domestic, once her ‘apprenticeship’ at the Crepeaus had run its course, if she could be kept away from the other. “Claudille is only 17, the same age as Flora,” she mused. But any resemblance ended there. The girl was hard and coarse, and, paradoxically, much more fragile than Flora, somehow, despite being a tall, heavy girl, and a stranger to the corset, it seemed.

Edith pulled away from Becky Sharp for a moment to ponder her immediate future. She could not wait for June 15, when she would return to Richmond, with sister Marion and spend the summer relaxing at ice cream socials and card parties and maybe attending a dance or two, if a consort could be found. If not, Aunt Bella’s Victrola and the Merry Widow Waltz would have to suffice. Edith had purchased some music cylinders to give to her niece and nephew. (She hoped they were not already bored by the device.) But after that, what would she do with herself? What could she do? If Charlie G. didn’t come to his senses.