Canadian Elections 2011 and before

The proclamation of results for Richmond Wolfe in 1904 Elections. Total eligible voters: 8447 (all men of course): Spoiled ballots 55; ballots rejected 39; ballots for E.W. Tobin 3789; ballots for McGrady 2516. Total votes cast 6305.

Now, one of the excuses I’ve read for not giving women the vote back then was that polling stations were unseemly. But here’s were they voted in the district: at school houses (most often); office of Municipal council; town Hall, stores (where women often went); at private homes. So what was the problem? One commentator I read suggested polling should take place in churches, as voting is a sacred act. (Hmm.) Well, I will likely vote in a school, I usually do.

For this next 2011 Federal election. The Bloc has won for the last little while here, so I am basically disenfranchised anyway.

I am editing the Nicholson Family Letters from May 11 1911 to May 1913, with an eye toward having them published in an academic press.

I am also annotating them, using material I have gathered in my research. Today, I’m on the late 1912 letters. Edith Nicholson is home alone. She had quit her job. Her letters are long and disjointed and gossipy. She is writing to her Mom who is with her sisters in the city. There’s not enough room for her, so she is making the best of it at home. Telling her mom she is keeping warm (always a worry) and always sleeping at someone else’s house or having someone sleep in with her. I thought about seriously cutting these letters down, but then it hit me: they are as important as the others.

The Nicholson Letters are all about POLITICS. Yes, they discuss the 1911 Federal Election and the 1912 Provincial Election, but they also talk about life, which is politics. And gossip is undoubtedly a form of politics, a female form. So the Days at Home where the women “give the town a good raking” as Edith once put it, is as much a form of politics as the town meetings. It’s a way to learn about things and ‘control’ things by putting your personal stamp, opinion, on them. Interesting thing I didn’t notice. Edith attends a sermon with a guess minister from Quebec and the subject is the 1913 budget! So there, more politics.

The Nicholson women were very political. No surprise that Marion went on to become a union leader.

On that note: I found a letter from 1920 where Edith writes that Marion and her family were going to spend a holiday, Christmas or Easter with the Sutherlands. This is likely J.C. Sutherland, the Superintendent of Protestant Schools. So even when she was retired from teaching, as a wife and mother, she kept in touch with the politics of education in Quebec.

Nicholson Family Saga: Letter 3: Visitors, Visitors

Magical Mystery Tours. Marion, seated in front in neighbour’s car. Possibly the Skinner’s, but maybe the Montgomery’s, They lived on the other side of Tighsolas.

Margaret to Norman

June 10, 1911

Dear Norman,

Your letter to Edith received Friday morning. As she was not here I opened it.

She had left an hour before with Dr. and Mrs. Skinner for an auto ride to Montreal left here 10 am arrived in Waterloo at 12.30 had dinner left at 2 o’clock arrived safely without any stop. In Montreal at six pm.

They said when leaving that they would be home Tuesday; she said they had a delightful ride. She was staying with Marion.

I had a letter from Herb Friday night. He is very well. Said the last letters went to Qu’appelle (Saskatchewan). They were diverted by some mistake and he was longer in getting them. (An excuse for not writing sooner?) He said the manager was going to have his holidays and that he was to be Manager for two weeks. Says he does not like the town one bit and if he does not get transferred will leave. I hope he will stay and get a transfer before long. I hope you will write him to stay until he is sure of something better. I am going to.

Just when Flora and I were preparing for the Ladies Aid meeting 16 women, Aunt Christie (Watters) and Malcolm arrived from Lingwick. Aunt C. was away two weeks. M. went up to meet her stayed one week. (That was his first trip to Lingwick. I don’t think he was much taken with the place there are not many young people there. Of their friends.)

They did not send any word that they were coming. Uncle Alex (Watters)came down about 5 o’clock to meet Christie and take her home.

Mrs. Nielson (Norman’s sister) went up to Bella’s And Clayton and Bella took her out in the auto. She stayed with me for 3 days.

So Flora and I are having a quiet time. It will be a rest for her as her exams begin tomorrow morning; she is very well.

I was quite tired after all this but feel quite rested now as we were alone last night. We did not get up until quarter to nine and we both went to Sunday school.

Morse cut the lawn once, took him three evenings, clipped it one eve, he does it well. But said he would not promise to do it regularly.

We put our plants out and beans in. Taylor said he would put the tomatoes in Tuesday. Says his own were not in Friday when I spoke to him. He is so slow.

I will enclose you a clipping from the paper about Dr. Moffatt’s loss. Mrs. Montgomery was telling me that they had offered him 50 cents on the dollar, that is a loss of 4,000, he was in Sherbrooke Friday. I supposed he made it on stocks so he need not feel it so much. Mrs. Moffatt was working at the sale but did not mention it to me. Only she was rather short in the temper. They have sold all their horses.

Uncle Alex had a great many questions to ask (about you.) He knows more about that part of the country than I could tell him. Had to come up to the office (home office!) to look at the map, of course. Cochrane was not on it. We found Lake Abbott, a mining town he said it was.

Is that place in the woods from Cochrane?

I was trying to tell him it was quite civilized around there.

I hope you will like the crew. Too bad you have to walk so much.

I will tell Alex all the good points, he always wants to know your business before you know it yourself. He is jealous if anyone is doing well.

Dan and Grandma are well. (Maragaret’s brother and mother.)

I did not get the Herald last night, hope you got it. Let me know if you feel any of the indigestion.

With Much Love,

Your Loving Wife
Margaret.

Visitors, visitors. They could be welcome and unwelcome in 1911, but you still harboured them, because in turn they harboured you. Alas, with no maids, visitors were a lot of work.

Dr. Moffatt was the Nicholson’s GP and he also was related to them by marriage. He was a victim of an Eastern Townships stock market swindle, the Nicholsons cut out a newspaper clipping.

He soon moved to BC and wrote many letters to Norman during the First World War (he felt young British men were signing up merely to get a free ride home) and even one during the 1918 flu epidemic where he described himself as “dead on his feet.”

Linguick was nearby farm country, (the Malcolm in the letter above walked from Linguick to Richmond) and where the Isle of Lewis Scots of Quebec landed in the mid 1800′s. Norman’s people were from there (The Gore) although these Watters’ now live in Kingsbury, where Margaret’s people, the McLeod’s landed in 1838, with nothing but the clothes on their back. These people were poor crofters (tenant farmers) cleared from the land to make way for sheep. Margaret’s people, from what I have read, had to be thrown on the boats at Uig Carnish to come to Canada, they were so reluctant to leave their barren but beautiful homeland.

These were Gaelic speakers. Margaret’s mother spoke only Gaelic and Margaret was bilingual, but clearly not ‘trilingual’.

Both Flodden and Kingsbury are marked are on Google Maps despite the fact they hardly exist as destinations being just crossroads, houses and fields.

Cat and Mouse.

The Nicholson stash of letters and documents from the 1910 era.

OK. So what’s the date? October 6, 2010. One day after the 25th anniversary of the birth of my first son. (And coming up to my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary on December 18. I’m the one in the marriage who always forgets the anniversary. I often see a giant bouquet of flowers making its way up the driveway on that date(carried by a delivery person hidden behind) and think “What the hell is that for?” Then I open the card, still wondering. And it says, Love Blair. My husband. And I am kind of disappointed. Go figure.

I published my first article in the Montreal Gazette a few days after my son’s birth. It was about an incident in the hospital, where I shared a room with a 14 year old mother who didn’t get one visitor in the entire week I was there. (Imagine, you stayed a week after giving birth in those days.)

It was good. I wrote a lot of OP Ed page stuff back then, much of it pretty sanctimonious in the style of Reverend Pedley of the Emmanuel Church back in 1910.

Anyway, so, now, 25 years (and quite a few newspaper and magazine articles later)I think I am ready to get to work on my first novel.

Back in February, I started writing Flo in the City, right here on this blog and then the blog became more about research.

I had already spent 5 years working on the Nicholson Letters (mounting a website, http://www.tighsolas.ca/) but I STILL had more to research. Luckily, in the time since I first discovered the letters, much more era material has become available online. (I don’t have the luxury of hiring researchers.) Archive.org has been a terrific source. I found the Eaton’s Catalogues there and so much other great stuff. and then the Gazette archives came online.

I may add a blog or two of background (one on tenements in 1910 Montreal, windowless rooms and on the homeless situation and one on The West using a Magazine that was published by the Western Provinces Immigration People) but that’s all. (I’m too tired to do it today. I was wakened at 5 am by sounds in the kitchen a la Sixth Sense. It had nothing to do with a Sixth Sense, more a third or fourth sense. My cat had dragged the toaster across the counter in pursuit of a mouse that had been in pursuit of a few toasted bread crumbs. So then I had to clean the kitchen with chlorine. If life were like a cartoon poor old Fou Fou, the fat and the fluffy, would have got electrocuted and I would have found his giant orange body, fur all puffed up and singed black at the ends, his emerald eyeballs Xed out and dangling of the sockets like two slinkies, stuck to the kitchen ceiling. And the mouse giggling in the corner. But instead I found him quite intact, greedily devouring said mouse in the middle of the living room. EEK! The underdog doesn’t usually win in real life.)

And so it goes with the Nicholsons: despite deserving it, despite doing everything right, their ship never did come in. (I actually have a 1914 letter with Flora asking, “When will our ship come in?” (Never, Flora. Never.) I can end my Flo in the City novel with Marion’s marriage in 1913, but that is not necessarily a ‘happy ending’, although it allows for my husband to be born in 1956. Besides, Marion’s marriage happened in the shadow of the Great War.

But how shall I proceed? I think I have to re-read all the essays on this blog… and then re-read the letters and then write a few key scenes, like the Dominion Park one with Marion in 1909. And one where Flora takes on J.W. Robertson at Macdonald Teachers’ College in 1911. And one where Edith listens to Mrs. Snowdon at the Montreal Council of Women meeting in May 1913, just after Marion has announced her engagement. Or maybe I’ll start the book with a scene in Tighsolas in 1908, with a cat catching a mouse under the woodstove, and Flora wondering why the cat, who she has been feeding on the sly, against her mother’s wishes, still felt compelled to kill the mouse…

Yes, I think I will proceed by writing key scenes (scenes that bring together the Nicholson Story and the Story of 1910 Canada) and then fill in the gaps.

I will make one more visit to the Richmond County Historical Society (and Esther Healey) to peruse Richmond Time Guardians of 1908-1913 for detail for the book.

You know, a few blogs ago I wrote about Victoria Lywood, forensic artist, who creates faces from skulls or verbal descriptions and who just re-created Group of Seven artist Tom Thomson’s face from a remnant to help solve the mystery of his death for a book called Northern Light by Roy Macgegor. Well, I am doing much the same here, I am fleshing out family letters from 1910… and it has taken almost 7 years to put a proper face on them, with character lines and eyelashes and even (dare I admit it) imperfections in the irises. (Is that how one spells the word iris.. looks like a flower.)

Are Suffragettes Diseased?

A suffragette being whisked to safety, London 1913. A still off a Youtube video, the Trafalgar Square Riot, one of a number of videos owned by the British Film Institute. They possess the best films of the era, now digitally restored and viewable on YouTube and also available for sale on their site. I bought the DVD. In the 60′s, any footage of the era was jerky, (due to technical difficulties), so that era looked silly to us. Suffragettes, angry women in funny chicken-style clothes, looked sillier. That is all changed now with these videos and the era takes on a Seurat feel, elegant and slow in the country, and very busy and bustling in the cities.

Now, I have a number of Pro-Suffrage articles from the 1910 era, yellowed clippings left behind by Margaret Nicholson or possibly Edith.

They are likely from the Montreal Witness, a long defunct ‘evangelical’ publication. And they are posted at www.tighsolas.ca/page27.html.

The Montreal Gazette, which is still around, was not for woman’s suffrage. That publication has recently been archived online, so I searched for a few suffrage articles from the era.

I found some. I can’t reprint them, as they are likely proprietary, but I’ll discuss a couple of them. Aspects of these anti-suffrage letters to the editor and articles are very funny (did you know there was a law against women’s hat pins of a certain length, in Australia anyway?) and others are disturbing.

I’m not surprised that the anti-suffragists characterized suffragists and suffragettes as man-haters, in this case idle and lazy manhaters. And I’m not surprised that anti-suffrage articles liked to look at communities where women had the vote, Finland and Colorado, for instance to show women were just as corrupt as men when it came to the vote. And I am not surprised that militant suffragists were seen as the worse kind of citizen and a real menace, deserving of imprisonment and degradation. (Remember, pious, demure, in and out love Edith Nicholson was all for the militant suffragettes.)

I was a little surprised – and quite disturbed at the lengths some commentators went to disparage the suffrage movement.

One article I read, from 1913, asks doctors if militancy is a disease. Not surprisingly, the doctors they dug up all agreed that militancy is a nerve disorder, a kind of female hysteria.

One doctor says that once a suffragette is full fledged, she is incurable. One has to get them young, at 16 or 17, to save them. He claims that at this age, women are very susceptible to the suffrage message, especially if their nerves are on edge, from, say, over-studying. Another doctor, however, says he can cure any suffragette, with a kind of ‘intervention’ (my word) by putting her in a nursing home and not letting her discuss any aspect of suffragism and feeding her properly. In this case, suffragism is seen as a cult.

Another doctor says that militancy is caused by the stress of modern life. Men are not susceptible, because they have important work to do to keep them occupied. (Hmm, sounds like he contradicts himself, a bit.)

All this goes to prove that suffragists scared some people silly. One has to ask why? I guess the average man feared that women would abandon the home or abandon them, by meeting other men, if they got interested in the outside world.

All this will be useful when I get down to writing the next part of Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ because the suffragists in this story, the Nicholson women, were ordinary middle class women, hardly different from the young women of today.

Teacher Sings the Blues

A drawing in the 1909 Delineator, illustrating a romance printed within. The image is of men saving women… I uploaded this one for this blog, because, well.. read on..

I just ‘found’ this letter. It has no date, so I kind of overlooked it. I have not posted it on Tighsolas, only just now figuring out that it is from 1908.

It is significant for many reasons. 1) It is from a fellow teacher at Sherbrooke High, who sounds very much like a bright young thing. I will use many of her figures of speech in future installments of Flo in the City, a work in progress, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

This woman is also very depressed! The Nicholsons were in terrible trouble in the 1910 era, but no letter survives that reveals any of them to be depressed, not like this girl. (Mrs. Coy, in Boston, is the person who sounds depressed like this woman.) I wonder who she is, I have posted a picture of the Sherbrooke High Teachers on this blog.

She’s a woman who has suffered a loss of some sort and dreads being an old maid teacher. In my next installment I will allude to this letter. I’ve already reached early spring 1909, but I think I can tie this letter in with another event that happened. A young man’s body was found in the river. Little is said, but there is a suggestion he committed suicide. Depression or the blues, as they called it: it existed back then, and here’s the proof.

Marion had many, many friends all her life. Her life wasn’t an easy one, no not at all. But Marion wasn’t a dreamer, and she didn’t look back. She soldiered on at all times.

Megantic, Sunday Night.

I got your letter the morning I was leaving. You must think me horribly rude, but I have been in such a rush since I got home. I wanted to let you know that I was going to Richmond, but I didn’t know until the very last moment which was I was going. Got a telegram. I would have loved to have stayed with you, and I was so sorry not to have seen you. The Martyr came as far as Richmond. He was on his way to Montreal, but of course his train left ages before mine. What have you been hearing, Marion? Now fess up and play straight. I am consumed with curiosity.You have got the idea all crooked, for no pleasant prospect. I am going back to Sherbrooke next Saturday, I expect by the TCR, I don’t in the least look forward to it. I assure you the Mabel Trosu who is going there is a girl from Quebec and I never had the dimmest use for her in the days that we were youngsters. Believe me, the winter that stretches in front of me will be no pleasant one. Perhaps it may be more than commonly unpleasant. Anyway, I dread the very thought of school, and unless things change in a way not common to everyday life, I’ll not stay in Sherbrooke another year.

Now Marion. Things are not serious with me in the way that you imagine. I really think he is awfully nice but we are just friends. And I will miss you so much next year. I hate the thought of it without you. The Summer has been very quiet. Lal and the Martyr came down. He was on business, of course. A very flying visit. Then Lal stayed a few days later. I wish you were here tonight.

I really miss you very much as you are the only person I ever talk to. And I am quite sure you don’t miss me as I do you. I never really like a person, but 7 degrees of separation. And I have got down to where I kick. I am kicking hard these days. Bess and I reviewed the barren future and the dreamy post in a very searching way the other day. We are both getting old and I fancy we will both continue to get old. And I see myself a ___ Old Maid. For my __, I cannot understand or get on with Mankind and I feel the desire to do so is lessening.

I am beginning to take a most active and intelligent interest in the Pension fund. It really is up to me. I made certain from the Inspector that it didn’t matter whether you got your receipts or not. Fancy me growing into Miss Mitcheldown. I could be nice and tall and angular. I wonder if I could look as cross. I am making a new kimono and it’s hideous. Then reading a book of Scott’s, the Abbot. It is stupid and I am going back to Sherbrooke High and that’s the limit. Now pray tell me what is to become of one totally bereft of humour and sympathy. You really must write to me, Marion. You must. This letter is so horribly blue. And I know that you will think I am silly and put a wrong construction on it. But you know me too well. You will just shake your small, wise head and say “Florrie’s got the blues.” Remember my numerous attacks. But really, I do feel very very blue and I think, as I have outlined to you, I have good reason.

Now I must to bed. I hope you have a nice summer.

Your most sincere and forlorn friend, Florance J.P.
PS.I do hope you are preserving that obituary carefully

SNOW, MILK AND BLESSINGS 32nd installment

Underwear in the 1909 Delineator. Bloomers, slips, corsets and corset covers… and that’s just the beginning. In the 50′s, when I was a little girl, my mother would adorn me in dresses with crinoline slips which were scratchy, but I felt pretty. The rest of the time I dressed in dirty pants and tops, a scruffy thing. Today, with the soft fabrics, little girls get to look pretty and feel comfortable. Young women, too, if they choose. I actually like the fashions today, for young women. They are similar to what I wore in University in the 70′s, theatre- student wear. I was before the curve, in my leotard tops and loose skirts or tights..who was to know?

Wednesday morning the second week in February. Flo watched from the window as Mr. Montgomery, in his yellow tuque, shoveled out the walk. The weather had been something terrible. It had snowed the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and was continuing into Wednesday. This was the second time the kindly man next door had trudged over with his shovel in hand to help. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Margaret had done her neighbourly duty when Mrs. Montgomery had been very ill almost two months ago, and now her kindness was being returned.

Flora was at home with a little cold, she was taking the syrup and not the pills, and May had returned home to avoid catching same. Funny, since May (actually Marion) seldom caught any colds, which Margaret attributed to her cheery disposition.

Father had written home that it had fallen to 51 below Fahrenheit on the line, more fridged than in Richmond, where it had reached 25 below the week before. “Don’t worry about me,” Norman said, “I have good camps where I am… How’s the flour barrel? he had added, feeling
magnanimous about money for a change. He was bringing in monthly 100 paycheques. So if he couldn’t be at home, with is family, he was still worthy of being called a good father. “And if you want a box of haddie, get on the phone,” he added to underscore his sentiments.

The cold weather hadn’t kept Flora and May from attending a party in Melbourne on the Saturday. You couldn’t stop living just because of winter storms. And you could always look on the bright side: lots of snow meant good sledding and good sledding meant good getting around!

While Mr. Montgomery helped with the shoveling, it was left to Margaret and Flora to stoke the furnace. Norman worried that the pieces of wood were too heavy for the women to shove into the furnace. This was usually a man’s job, or a maid’s job. But the women were managing: housework -in general- built strong arms, although it was no fun getting up in a freezing house at 5:30 to get a good blaze going. How Norman enjoyed starting the first fire when he was at home, so that his womenfolk wouldn’t have to shiver in their slippers and wrappers every morning .

Yes, heating Tighsolas in the winter kept everyone busy, all right, but, on the other hand, Margaret had relatively little to do, with only May and Flora at home, and very few visitors, so, as usual in life, she had gained some and lost some with the situation.

And today, for a change, she wasn’t fretting over son Herb. The focus of Margaret’s worrying all week had been her younger brother, Dan, who was confined to bed. She had visited Dan and his wife to bring some scones the other day. On top of that Mrs. Montgomery had tonsillitis and the milk man, McMorine, diptheria. There had been a mild epidemic in the region of that dread disease. She would have to get her milk from Dr. Boast in the interim. Dr. Boast who used his professional credentials to say his milk was purer and healthier than regular farmers milk. What nonsense!

Yes, it is better to have health and no money than money with no health, she thought to herself, remembering something Norman had written when Mrs. Montgomery had been at her worst. Well, right now the Nicholsons had reasonable health and a little bit of money, enough money, anyway.

She would express gratitude for these blessings at church later in the day.

Margaret was thinking ALL this as she watched Flora watch Mr. Montgomery through the frost-flecked window pane. Margaret was sweeping the hallway, Flora’s job, but she didn’t want the girl to overtire.

She would phone the Doctor for some more syrup, just in case she thought as she gazed upon her youngest, most delicate child, the child who gave her the the least worry, by virtue of her being right here at home by her side.. Sweet, even-tempered, Flora. Such a good girl despite being at that trying age.

THE RICH AND THE POOR 29th installment

Old Brewery Mission of Montreal 1910. Fundraising poster.

Yesterday, the press carried a story about how the U.K. government is set to apologize to the Home Children, those children of the slums, orphans and such, sent out of England in the 19th and 20th centuries to, mostly, work on farms. Of course, child labour, was common in those days.

This fits nicely into my next installment of Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ because I will have Marion talk about the children she is teaching in her inner city school.

It is unlikely that any of these children were Home Children (although some may have been). Her students were empoverished students of immigrants, whose parents worked in the factories along the canal, in the “City Below the Hill.”

As I have written before, Montreal, in 1910, had the highest infant mortality rate of any place in the world outside of Calcutta. This was also an era of incredible immigration.

The reason Flo got a job in the city, (when she was given a free education specifically so that she would return to her rural roots and teach) was because teachers were needed in the city to accomodate this huge tide of immigration.

Flo, wrapped into her warm lambskin coat, which had seen two previous incarnations in the Watters household, tossed snowballs to Floss as the two proceeded along College Street. Mother was at church, or more precisely, at a Missionary Society meeting where they were tabulating the receipts from their Christmas Bazaar.

Mother’s feud with the ladies of the Missionary Society had been all the talk at Christmas. “Mrs. Leaman told me about St. Paul’s admonition and I said, “We don’t live in St. Paul’s time, or we’d all be out in the fields shepherding cows and sheep. Well, that sent her sulking.”

And then Edith had livened things up with stories about the French Canadian family she was living with. How they ate a large meal after Mass on Christmas eve called a Reveillon and how they gave gifts at New Years, which was a bigger celebration than Christmas. “The Crepeaus are like the Hills,” Edith had said.”The house is always filled with visitors.” She purposely did not mention the priests who were a fixture in the four storey greystone on Sherbrooke, near St. Laurent, where East met West in Montreal.

Alice, Edith’s student, was 8, a high strung but beautiful girl, with emerald green eyes and Titian hair and a soft, creamy complexion.

The family’s attention had been riveted by Marion’s description of her city school. When in the mood to talk about her life, which was not that often, had a knack for finding the funny side of any story, however sad.

“My first day at school, I had 50 students and each parent came up to me with some advice about her child and after they were gone, I didn’t remember one piece of advice from the other,” she said, with a loud chuckle.

I guess parents are the same everywhere, Flora thought. But then Marion told her a story about a sad little girl to came to class each day with her face and hands absolutely filthy.

“I am supposed to send such children home, to be washed,” Marion said, but that makes no sense to me. Chances are the only one at home is an older sister, charged with taking care of her younger siblings, for the mother is at work. I see no point in humilating the child by sending her out of the room to wash, either. So I just march all the children to the bathroom and make them all clean up. I build an arthmetic lesson around hand-washing and hygiene.”

It was just like sister Marion to make the best of any situation. She was turning out to be a fine teacher. Flo wondered what she would have done, likely she would have just followed the rules and sent the girl home and felt terrible about it. What hard lives these children lived, she thought.

Why was the missionary society raising money to help children in other lands, she had wondered, when there was so much suffering right here in Canada, in Montreal.

And truth be told, her family’s money problems (always looming large in the background) seemed somewhat trivial at the moment.

Flo found herself standing still on the corner of Main street, looking out at the Salmon River which was frozen over, with a half formed snowball in her mittened hands. Floss barked to get her to throw the ball.

Well, Richmond, at least, had few very poor people. Or was that true?

She patted the snow into a nice round shape and flung it towards Floss, who leapt into the air and caught it in her mouth, obliterating it with her sharp white teeth.