Remote Controlled Families

Yesterday, I started watching the Simpsons in French on TV. The Simpsons in French is every bit as good as the Simpsons in English. Maybe even better.

The dubbing is Quebecois.

Then I realized I must have the Simpsons on dvd as my son left his stash here before he went to Europe.

Sure enough, I found the boxed sets, under the book shelf, and I grabbed the one on top.

 I started watching the first disc of the set, which includes my favorite episode, the one where Homer grows hair. (I just love the executive bathroom.)

The second season from, yikes, 1990! and that season has many of my favorite episodes.  Hmm. Produced twenty one years ago. Now, how can that be?

So this Language  exercise has turned into an anthropological study of ‘ American cultural history.’

Funny, right now I am watching the episode where Marge takes on Itchy and Scratchy violence.

Ironically, back then in the early nineties there were many Moms in my area who banned the Simpsons for the violence in it – or for the irreverence. Or for both.

I was not such a parent.

I recall one family in the era belonged to a fundamentalist Christian sect and they banned the TV entirely. My sons told me that the kids in that family had radio so they listened to the Simpsons’ dialogue via radio.

That’s what happens when you ban stuff.

All to say, Time Flies.

I have no problem understanding anything in the Simpsons, French, which means I probably am not improving anything by listening.

But I am having fun. Because it’s a good show, even 20 years later.

Although the Simpsons are green here. Must be my ancient Blue Ray machine. And I can’t keep the subtitles from showing up. So I have the translation, even though I don’t need it.

The other day a friend was telling me how her daughter was having problems with her teenage kids. I told her I did not feel qualified to pass on words of wisdom, despite having endured such difficult times myself. Why? Because SO MUCH HAS CHANGED with respect to family life in ten years.

Well, with respect to the new technologies which control us all. The Nintendo machine drove me batty, back then, but I didn’t have kids texting all day in front of me.

And I used to write essays about the impact of new technologies on family life. No kidding.  But I’m a virtual dinosaur now. I should have suggested the frazzled Mom in question watch some past episodes of the Simpsons on DVD for advice on how to raise a family.

Some wisdom is eternal. Even some cartoon wisdom.

Funny, in this same episode Michelangelo’s David comes to Springfield and some mothers complain that it is an abomination. Marge, who  wants the Itchy and Scratch cartoon censored, feels that everybody should see the statue as it is ‘art’.

Outrageous satire? Exaggerating to prove a point? Not really.

In 1966 in Pointe Claire Quebec, the new shopping center there, Fairview, contained a replica of Michelangelo’s David. Mothers complained. The statue was moved to the new library at Loyola (now Concordia) where, in 1972, if I wanted, I could grab a front row seat and study right in groin view, except that some pranksters had painted the David’s genitalia green.

In my follow up to Threshold Girl (www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

that I am calling Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, Militant Suffragette Sympathizer and Inadvertent Opium Addict, I have Edith Nicholson visit an art exhibit in Phillip’s Square while in a drug stupour (on the day after King Edward VII’s death, and a week after her fiance’s death in Cornwall fire.

She comes face to face with the painting Maternity, by Helen Riter Hamilton. And faints.

100 years ago a girl ponders her career path

Give us a healthy home
full of intellectual activity where the homely virtues prevail. Where complete
honesty and frankness have free expression. Where the lungs expand with pure
air, and the brain quivers with wholesome aspiration and sincere inquiry. Where
souls bask in contentment and the sunshine of purity and peace. From Food and Cookery Magazine, July 1911

April 2^nd

A

‘threshold girl’ of 18, her thin, light brown
hair still tied back in a ponytail, sits curled up in a weathered reed rocker
on the veranda of her family home and reads a poem out loud. Or at least she
tries to read it.

Ou vont tous ces enfants dont pas
un seul ne rit

Ces doux êtres pensifs que la
fievre mai-GRIT?

You see, the poem is a French one
and the young woman is an Anglo-Quebecker.

The vines have yet to fill in on
the veranda, as it is early Spring, so the girl’s long, pale but not entirely unpleasant-looking
face is being sweetly caressed by fine fingers of April sunlight.

Indeed, the same waning afternoon
sunshine flickers playfully over the entire Western face of her comfortable
Queen Anne Revival style house, a brick-encased 2 and 1/2 storey mini-castle,
with the trademark corner tower and irregular roof and, unlike many of the
surrounding Queen Annes, only a modest amount of gingerbread. TIGHSOLAS.

Unlike the sun, the threshold girl’s expression  is intensifying.

Ces filles de huit ans qu’on voit
che-mi-ner seules?

Che – Mi- Ner?

Ils s’en vont travailler quinze
heures sous des meules.

Meules?

The heels of the young female’s
sensible shoes, laced knock-about boots in pebble calf, are dug into the edge
of the seat cushion. Her boney knees, blanketed by the blue wool serge cloth of
her school jumper, are but two inches from the tip of her nose. She can almost
smell the page as she balances the French textbook on said knobby knees, and
stares at the mystifying stanzas through gold wire-rimmed reading glasses.

MEULES??????

So, sad, she suddenly thinks,
that she didn’t bother to bring a French/English dictionary from school.

The 18 year old slams shut her
textbook, with a whack, and makes a very unladylike sound with her mouth,
something like Pooaffffssttt.

Renouf’s Progressive French
Reader 11. Poooafffssttt.

She eyes said title set in a dark
and unadorned sans serif typeface on the unsullied cover of the textbook. True
enough, muses the young woman, she has indeed progressed – to the point where
she hardly understands a word of her assigned French text.

This crazy old poem by Victor
Hugo.

Ever since September she’s been
dreading this very day.  At the start of
the school year, 6 long months ago, she opened the same clean light green textbook
(bought second hand off her cousin, May) and quickly flipped to the back of it
to see what was in store for her, like a fortune teller looking to read her own
future. And what she saw written between the lines, back then, were some serious
hard work ahead for her.

It was self-fulfilling prophesy.
This same girl, this same high school student,  failed the French and Composition exam for
both Model 111 and Academy I and  (having
to make it up in the summer school) and now she feels well on her way to
failing French in Academy II.

Only it can’t happen. This is the
girl’s crunch year at school, her final year, and she simply cannot fail, not
any subject, not French, not Latin, not Algebra, not Botany. Not English
composition or Canadian history.

Summer school is out of the
question this year, not if she wants to be admitted to Macdonald College and
keep alive any hope of getting a good paying job as a teacher on the City
Board, like her older sister Marion, who is making 600 a year. Six hundred dollars
year. Imagine!

If she fails any subject, she’ll
have to think of something else to do with her life. She’ll have to find
another career, for the moment, anyway, until she marries. If she can ever find
a husband. But what else? The idea simply sends her head reeling.

 

THE REST www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

 

Death of a King, Death of a Love, May 1910

Edith and a beau. Is this Charlie Gagne?

In early May, 1910, Edith  Nicholson writes her mom a letter from her Missionary School in Westmount. She thanks her mom for the phone call the night before, consoling her for her loss. Her ‘beau’ one Charlie Gagne has been killed in a hotel fire in Cornwall, the Rossmore Fire.

In all the Nicholson stash of letters of the 1910 era, there are only a few long distance phone calls made.  All for very special occasions. It cost too much to use the phone – and besides, the post moved quickly in those days.

The Rossmore Fire of Cornwall, Ontario is an infamous one: a dozen or so people died. Many more escaped, climbing out of windows. According to the news accounts of the day, it was mostly the boarders who died. These people felt they knew the hotel, so tried to escape by taking halls and stairwells… but they wereover come with smoke. Only a part of Charlie’s body was recovered. Hopefully, Edith didn’t read about that fact.

Coincidentally, another, more important person died right around then: Edward VII.  Likely all the public mourning over the King’s death must have somehow played into Edith’s own, more personal mourning. I will have to figure this out as I write her story for my next e-book. The follow up to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

Edith and Charlie were not engaged, but they did have ‘an understanding.’ This is how Edith later explained it to a niece.

If the Census of 1911 is correct, Charlie was a French Canadian, the only son of elderly farmers and he worked as a bank clerk. Not a very likely prospect for Edith…Perhaps this is why her father, Norman, doesn’t comment on the man after being introduced to him at the train station.

Charlie is a Presbyterian, for in a letter to Edith before his death, he tells her he is spending all this time at the Presbyterian Church. Perhaps he converted for her..Who knows?

I think, for the purposes of my book about Edith, I will make him a convert of Westmount Methodist… that can be why she finds work there, he tells her about the school.

 
1095 Greene Avenue

May 3, 1910

Mother Dear,

Your letter received this am. It was so good to hear your voice over the phone. It was quite natural. Oh, how I wish I could talk over everything with you. It seems terribly hard to think it all for the best, when there are so many that are of no use living on and others that are held in esteem cut off in a moment. One thing, I am very thankful for that he wrote me. No doubt one of the last things that he did. I can’t express my feelings. I never felt so badly in my life. But I suppose there are few who have had so pleasant a one as I have, and trouble comes to all.

I had a letter from Bert this noon. Said she knew I must feel very badly as they all did. She said all she could think was the way he used to jig around the camp and tell us about all of his many trips. Herb Tucker called her up on Friday night and told her. I am wondering if he will call me up when he returns from Toronto

I wrote father a long letter last night and Marion wrote one today. It is a blessing that I have my work and that we are nearly finished. Three weeks will soon pass. I interviewed Dr. Villard yesterday afternooon. He said I was wanted back. I asked if it would be possible to get any raise in salary. Said he was sure he could get me $25. That would make $200.I’m glad that that’s settled: same staff back next year.

Tell Bert I received her letter, but I won’t write for a while. She was very kind to think of it.

Your loving
Edith

Sad Mother, Sad Son, Sad Story: the Coys of Newton, Mass. 1910

Nantucket. 1908. Flo and May.

Flora Nicholson and May Watters visited Newton Massachusetts in 1908, before my story Threshold Girl begins.  I do mention the visit, though. I mention that they travelled to Wellesley College in Henry’s Stanley Steamer! All true as I have a letter from Mrs. Coy in Framingham, where she describes how they dropped in on her unexpectedly and how she was doing housekeeping so a bit embarrassed.

 Marion and Edith visit Mrs. Coy in 1912, and she tries to pawn her son Chester off on Marion. Alas, Marion is not impressed.  Chester visits the girls in their new flat  in 1913, in Montreal, but they still aren’t impressed. (Mrs. Coy sort of implies he is not that keen on marrying, anyway. Hmmm.) Then, in later letters, I see that he has gone mad.  Insane.  (Mr. Coy writes this upon Mrs. Coy’s death in 1922. He says he visited Chester who was not able to grasp the extent of the tragedy.)  I wonder if he went mad after fighting in the war.  I’m thinking that’s the  most likely thing. 

Mrs. Coy mentions “the Prince.” Well, Margaret and Norman visit Quebec for the tercentenary celebrations. They were huge! And the Prince of Wales, soon to be king, arrived on a glistening battleship. I mention this in Threshold Girl. www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf   Marion goes to see the films of the Coronation and Margaret says she doesn’t need to, as she has seen the KING  already, IN PERSON.

Flo also writes in her letter home that she went to Nantucket with some nurses from the Newton Hospital. And to Norumbega Park.

August 4, 1908
148 Hollis Street,Boston.

My Dear Marion,

Yesterday AM, when I arose I put on an old kimono as it was cool to do a wash in – did a large wash as Chester was gone. I got every extra thing I could into the wash, about 11:am I was just putting things to rights after I had finished washing, and I was about to put a clean table cloth on the dining table as I had taken the other off to wash – when the bell rang. I answered and what was my surprise to find Flora, her cousin Miss Watters and Dr. Watters. I was glad to see them but felt ashamed of my appearance (just my luck). Flora has changed I scarcely think I would have known her had I met her elsewhere. They must be having a good time. They came up in a “Stanley.” I did not get time to ask half I wanted to: I should like to have had the girls come up for a day, but I did not insist as I know there is a lot to see and even half a day with me would not be interesting for young folks.

Dr. Watters appears like a fine young man. Flora said Marion is to teach in Montreal this next year. Herbert might like that. I do not know, but you might go there to live? I supposed Mr. Nicholson can’t go home often, he is so far away. Does Edith return to Three Rivers? I want you to sit down and write me: you owe me a letter. Last summer, you know, Old Orchard had a big fire and one of the cottages burned, I think, belonged to Mr. Norman Nicholson, formerly of Lawrence. I thought you might be a relative of Mr. Norman’s.

Mr. Coy is well this summer. Chester has gone to Maine and New Hampshire. I wish I could have known we were to be alone. I would have asked Ross down. You see, our quarters are limited and I have no help, not so fortunate as you with your three girls. How is your mother. Please remember me to her and your sister, Mrs. Hill. I suppose you had a great time at Quebec and saw ‘The Prince” which to your loyal heart would be reward enough for going.

Love,
Marion (Coy) (cousin)

In-Between Stairs

Tea Party 1910 style

This is “The Tea Party” 1910 style. The Nicholsons in Richmond, with Mrs. Montgomery, the ‘comic’ figure of my book Threshold Girl presiding,and looking very ‘waiterly’ in her tie, which were fashionable for women in the 1910 era.

 

A 100 years ago. The so-called Century Mark. It’s just a number, significant only because we have 10 fingers.

 

My book, Threshold Girl, www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf  is about EXACTLY 100 years ago today, in Quebec, Canada in a town called Richmond and a city called Montreal. The book is based on letters I posted years ago, in their raw form, on www.tighsolas.ca.

 

In August 1911, an election has just been called (the famous Free Trade Election) and Flora Nicholson has just been accepted to Macdonald Teaching School, despite failing French.

 

Her mom, Margaret, and her sister, Marion, get busy sewing her up for school.

 

If the ratings for the British television show Downton Abbey are any indication, people are still interested in the Edwardian Era, as it were, The Laurier Era in Canada.

 

Downtown Abbey is just a twist on the Upstairs Downstairs Theme, an ‘iconic’ television show which is also being brought back.

 

I saw Upstairs Downstairs for the first time just a couple of months ago. (I missed it when it originally aired in the 70′s, cause I was a way at college.) It’s terrific, of course.

 

Threshold Girl covers much the same area as Upstairs, Downstairs, except it is more of an In-Between Stairs.  The Nicholsons were middle class and had no servants.  So they played both parts, sitting in their ‘white dresses’ at tea, and then doing the dishes afterwards. 

 

That’s what the middle class is, I think: a class that aspires to better things, and fears falling back into the lower class.  We all know the feeling, right? What with the stock market crash of August 2011 (as it will be come to be known).

 

Considering that my retirement savings are now back where they were in early 2006, when the bank manager told me “You are right on track” it feels comforting to run away to 100 years ago. When times were simpler. Or were they?

 

Threshold Girl was originally called Flo in the City. I have been writing a blog for two years under that name, as I worked out the plot and researched ‘deep background.’  Flo in the City -a Work in Progress.blogspot. http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.com

 

 

Funny Hats and All

I'm so pretty

Four Women, 100 years ago. They left behind letters. I wrote a book. Threshold Girl, the first of three books about Women in the 1910 era. The Laurier Era in Canada.  www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf.

Upstairs Downstairs 1903-2011

I’ve just watched the second episode of the new Masterpiece Theatre Upstairs Downstairs, as well as the first four episodes of the original.

I bought the first series of the classic series off Amazon.ca, and it takes place in 1903-08, the beginning of the Tighsolas era.

Right away, I was pleased to see a dressing scene in the maid’s quarters. In Flo in the City, I describe Flo getting dressed. Now I can see it for myself.

I don’t recall seeing Upstairs Downstairs, but it’s hard to tell. It is so iconic that you don’t have to see it to ‘have seen it.’

I recall the Forsythe Saga, (I recall this scene if the baby Fleur) and Duchess of Duke Street…and I Claudius.

Upstairs Downstairs started in 1971. I was in 10th grade. The other years I was in college and university.

Still, it’s very likely I watched the show. And I am pretty certain Flo and Edie did, from Tighsolas. (If they could get PBS…hmm.) And then they probably thought back to their lives in 1905 and 1908 (perhaps remembering that upstairs in the attic was a trunk full of era letters). And they probably joked about having no servants..how they were their own servants. Well, we all know where they were and what they were doing in the Edwardian Era before the war.

As they watched the maid, played by Pauine Collins secure her stockings with garters, perhaps they discussed when they changed over to garter belts (which were just going out of style thanks to pantyhose). I doubt that at 88 Edith had changed to pantyhose. Pantyhose is still problematic for very old women.

When they heard about the coal stoves, they probably thought back to the wood stove, that was in Tighsolas for a long long time. They might have discussed how in 1910, the more modern stoves where both coal and wood.

The cool thing about the old Upstairs Downstairs is that it makes reference to technological changes happening. The cinema, the auto. Incidently.

Anyway, I will purchase the next series, 1908 and beyond to further study the era. I realize the show’s real strength is its acting. Still stand out after all these years.

I also watched an HBO programme about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on the anniversary of the history-changing evcnt. I was taken by how beautiful all the victims were, even their descendants.

Jewish and Italian.

In Montreal, French Canadians also worked in the factories.

The Nicholson Family Saga: Letter 5: Fire!

June 21, 1911

Tighsolas
Richmond Quebec

Dear Father,

Just a few lines to give you a little of the news. The station was burned to the ground this afternoon ! It started about half past four. Flora went down to see it with Paul. And at six Dr. Skinner took Mrs. S, Mother,Flora and myself down in the car. All that is left are the tall chimneys so I guess we shall have a new station at last.

I have been up for breakfast and every morning since I came home. That is quite a record, don’t you think. Monday we had a large washing, got up early and had it all finished and out at a quarter to eleven. And finished the ironing today. We are still busy with the sewing.

Marion’s school (Royal Arthur in Little Burgundy) finishes today so she will be home soon. I saw by the paper last night that Isabel McCoy (teacher and family friend) was to be married July 12th.

I had a splendid trip home to Montreal with the Skinners. It was a beautiful day going out. I will name the places we passed through so you will know the country we passed through. Melbourne, Flodden, Racine, Sawyerville, Warden, Waterloo, Granby, Abbotsford, St Caesar, Rougemont, Marieville, Chambly, Longueil, St. Lambert, Pointe St Charles. In Montreal, we went shopping in the morning,to the theatre in the afternoon and to tea at Dr.Cleveland’s. Then Dr. Skinner took us for a ride, from 8 to 10 at night.It is beautiful riding on paved streets.

Don’t you think I was a very fortunate girl to have such a trip? Tomorrow the 22nd I am going to North Hatley with the Skinners. Will be back that evening. They are very kind to us.

Flora is feeling better since the exams are passed. (Results would be posted in the local paper later on.)

Yvonne Villard (daughter of Principal Paul Villard of Ecole Methodiste) is coming out next week for a few days. Miss Wilson’s barn is not yet finished, Walker is still working. They have the foundation very well along at the Montgomery’s.

Another Bryant preached last Sunday evening. He was through the General Assembly. I cannot think of any more news so will close. Hope you are well and that the fly season will soon pass.

We are all well. Write soon.

Flora got your letter With much love, Your affectionate Edith

….Richmond exists because of the Grant Trunk Railway, which in 1910 was still one of the two major employers in the town. Richmond was a railway hub, poised between Quebec City and Portland, Maine.

Norman Nicholson used the GTR to get his loads of hemlock bark to the tanning businesses in New England (mostly New Hampshire) and in Montreal, all by the Lachine Canal, near Marion’s Royal Arthur School. He left his reciept books behind showing that a great deal of money was flowing, at least in the 1880′s, through his bark business.

This is the year they get a big new station, which stills stands (vacant) today. Richmond was already in decline in 1910 (as the letters clearly reveal) but by the 1930′s the railroad had little business.

According to the 1911 census, Mademoiselle Villard lives with her parents at 1095 Greene, in Westmount, the same address Edith stays at during the school year.

It is likely the site of Ecole Methodiste. Today, 1095 Greene is a site of a more modern post war school.

Edith says she enjoys every minute of a 6 and 3/4 hour drive over 94 miles. But if you crunch the numbers, it is clear that the Skinner’s automobile went an average of 14 miles an hour to make that trip.(15 miles an hour was the speed limit in the country, 8 miles an hour in the city). If you consider that the E.T. is very hilly, the drive was probably more fun than the roller-coaster at Dominion Park, the amusement park opened in 1906, on Notre Dame on the eastern side of the island. Imagine how fast the car went down the hills!

Women Weaving (Montreal)

I forgot I had this posted on my website. I purchased this picture, a Keystone stereoscope card of Montreal Women Weaving, a few years ago. That’s why it is double.

It does not look Sweat Shopish, does it?

No doubt, the photo was factory sanctioned.

They also provided a description of the work.

Linen is a cloth made from the fiber of flax. When flax is used for its fiber, it is cut before it is ripe. The flax is pulled and the seeds are pulled off. The bundles are laid on piles and rotted until the woody portion has decayed. The freed fibers are then shipped to spinning or weaving mills like in the picture.

The first step is to heckle the fiber, combing the long fibers from the short. Then the fibres are sorted and coiled into bundles known as slivers. After the fibers are drawn to proper length they are placed in the roving machine here. You see the hanks of roves hanging on the right. The woman on the left is placing one of the hanks in the mill on a spindle. From the spindle the thread is wound on the bobbins. You see thousands of bobbins on top of the machine. The white ones are full of thread, the black are empty.

Still Procrastinating…

My grandmother, Maria Roy Crepeau. I managed to ‘develop’ this photo from a negative using Corel. It wasn’t easy, I had to scan it at 24,000 dpi with the lid open and then transform it ‘from negative’ and then downsize it to a reasonable size. Very cumbersome. But it worked. There must be an easier way!

I have not started to edit my first rough draft of Flo in the City, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ it being Easter Weekend. I did scope some beautiful photos on Flickr, a French collector with photos form the 1910 era in France. Awesome. I will see if I can post some. I think I can.

I listened to The Now Show, a comedy show on BBC Radio Four where they made fun of Canadian History. It seems the history magazine the Beaver has to change its name, as it is filtered out of schools. The Now Show Gang made the usual jokes. I don’t think Britons think Canada has a history. Neither do most Canadians, either.

The show also featured a comedic rant against a UK politician (Peter Mandelson)who wants to make it illegal to download any song, etc. He wants severe penalties for transgressors. He decided this after a talk with David Geffen, supposedly. The comedian/commentator said that would be like the horse lobby back in 1900 insisting that automobiles wear horseshoes…

His point: When you have made and still make money from the way things were done in the past, you try to make sure no one makes money from the way things will be done in the future, except you. An excellent point. The fact is, the horse lobby, or livery lobby in the UK did try to stop the auto revolution by having the powers that be pass a law to make it illegal for cars to go over 5 miles an hour.