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.

People who need people 1910

Impressionist Painting, sans couleurs? No, Dominion Park 1910. If I could figure out how to use Paint Shop Pro.

The Nicholsons of Richmond Quebec may have been cash poor, but they were connection rich.

And in 1910 Canada, connections were everything, especially for a gal who wanted a life, because women, even women in their twenties could not go out alone to many places. Edith Nicholson complains in letters about lonely nights cooped up in her room in the city, when she could be at a lecture.

(Eureka moment: It seems to be the the so-called social evil, the prostitution problem, was used against ALL women, as a method of control, for any woman out doing anything alone was a suspect. And any group of women wanting to live together was doubly suspect.)

Marion, Edith and Flora Nicholson had each other when working in Montreal, but more importantly, they had friends.

The Clevelands, (Dr. was a dentist) and the McCoys. When Marion was teaching in Sherbrooke in 1906-07, she stayed at Mrs. Wyatts.

The Nicholson women’s options were extremely limited, despite their education, or perhaps because of it. Teaching was essentially the only respectable profession they could enter, although Edith went to secretarial school. But without these connections in town, it would have been next to impossible for Marion to attend McGill Normal School. As explained in Flo in the City, my book about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/,

Marion had a hard time finding a rooming house, when first in the city. And later on, when she was determined to find her own apartment (quite scandalous) because she hated the way the rooming house matrons “lorded it over her” well, the McCoys were of help. She landed an apartment near them, no doubt with their help. Landlords in those days would not rent to a group of women.

Well, I just found out that that the Clevelands, Wyatts and McCoys were three of the founding families of Richmond and area. I just found and read “A Sketch of the Early Settlement and History of Shipton” by Reverend Edward Cleveland. No date, but I suspect it was published around 1860. (I found it on archives.org, but it has no publication date.)

In this book, which has been referred to for many subsequent histories of Quebec, he talks about the first settlers, the industries, the tradesman and about the hardships.

There are no Scots here yet. The McLeods, Margaret’s people, came in 1838 and 41 and the Nicholsons in 1951.

In his introduction, Rev Cleveland writes: The study of history is always interesting and important, inasmuch as curiosity is gratified by recital of facts and the experience of the past is spread out for our instruction in reference for the future. We learn thus to appreciate the present time and the advantages of which we must avail ourselves in the improvement of it. This is true, not merely on the great scale, but even when we descend to a humbler sphere and apply ourselves to the history of our own immediate vicinity. (You take also apply this to people. The great personages of history are interesting to learn about, the Lauriers and Royalty, but also ‘the lesser’ people, like the Nicholsons.)

Not that the Nicholsons were average. Just by virtue of having lived in Richmond, they had an advantage. The first Protestant School in Quebec was established in Richmond, as Cleveland’s book points out. Education was very important to the people of the area. (So no surprise that Sutherland became Superintendant of Schools in 1911.)

Indeed, Cleveland writes this: “The Library Associations recently established in Richmond and Danville with their various means of promoting intelligence and the best interests of the community, should not be overlooked. Our newspapers, periodicals and postal arrangements also have an important bearing on the interests of education.”

As I wrote in my last blog, libraries were never a priority in Quebec. It’s odd, newspapers were considered educative in 1860 or whenever this book was published (I just looked it up, 1858. Good guess!) In the 1910 era some people lamented the fact that the ONLY thing people read these days is newspapers.

Montreal Sucks! 1913

The site of the former N D G Library for Boys and Girls where I took out King of The Wind by Marguerite Henry 1000 times in the 1960′s. And The Black Stallion, and Wind in the Willows, Born Free, Ring of Bright Water and Silent Spring (for some reason)Oh, and the Last Days of Pompeii.

This blog is about a letter to the editor from the NYT of 1913, by one H A Griswald (good name!)who says Montreal is a Backward State! I can’t copy it but this man, who often visits Montreal, (he says) can’t comprehend that city’s crowded tramways, smelly sidewalks, old fashioned buildings, and Puritanical nightlife. (My how things have changed.) There are no Sunday papers as they are against the law. (I believe that particular Lord’s Day law was enacted in 1908, and the religious types and unions both supported it.)

He claims the autos in Montreal are all on one boulevard and limited to going 7 miles an hour. (Interesting. The horse lobby in London, in the 1880’s tried to enact a similar law.) He says since liquor laws prohibit drinking after 6 pm on Saturday, the people throw their bottles on the street and puncture the auto tires. (Sounds like a typical post hockey game night!)

He says there’s nothing to do at night but walk the streets as there are no public libraries. Well, you can go to the motion picture.

Well, it is an interesting view. I believe Dominion Park was open and there was a great deal of theatre and Vaudeville and I’m guessing, as a visitor, he didn’t know of the more -ahem, clandestine places to enjoy yourself on a Saturday Night.

Although, as a library lover, he might not have approved.

But he had a point about libraries. I believe the Mechanics Library on Atwater opened in 1910. But French Canadians have never had a culture of reading… unlike those Protestant and Scottish types… Read my next blog..

In my day, the only good library was the McLennan at McGill. I moved to Vancouver in 76 and was blown away by their great library system. And when I was raising kids in a well to do Montreal suburb, there was no public library to speak off. Just a volunteer one.

And now it’s the Internet age. Do we even need libraries? Some people would say, yes, more than ever. (Too much information out there so we need ‘experts’ to demystify it.) Some might say no; the users are the new ‘experts’. I have to admit, I didn’t have to go into Montreal and visit the McLennan to find this article. (In my college days it MIGHT have been listed in the encyclopedic NYT guide to articles or whatever it was called.

And I buy my books off Amazon, usually, especially amazon.co.uk and now I can download on my Kindle. I can even download books from archive.org onto my kindle. (I have just read a book about the History of Shipton County from there. See my next blog.)

I am eagerly awaiting the publication of Nella Last in the 1950′s, which I’ve pre-ordered. I was wondering last night if I would buy a Kindle edition if it existed. And then I thought, NO. I purchased Nella Last’s War and Nella Last’s Peace and loved them both, so much that I lent them to everyone I could think of, so they too could enjoy communing with Nella. You can’t lend Kindle books. So it’s a bit of a racket, isn’t it. Maybe we still need libraries so people without MONEY can read good books.