Milk and Water and Typhoid and Me

 

A crate from Laurentian Spring Water in my living room. My husband got it. Someone at his work used it to make wine all these years.

Well,  I’ve been looking at Adverts for Laurentian Spring Water over the Century in Montreal. In 1909, a lot of ads saying “don’t drink tainted water” because there was a typhoid epidemic then. Interesting, one ads says Dr. So and So of Macdonald College has tested the water and found it to be pure.

In my research for Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf about a girl at Macdonald in 1911/12, I learned that in 1907, when it first opened, that school used water from the River and then in 1911 it was using well water.

That’s no doubt because of the typhoid epidemic in Montreal.  Montreal City was far from Ste. Anne in those days, but the water was the same.

So it is probable that the school used Laurentian while they built the well and that Laurentian took advantage of this fact.

Possible.

All through the first part of the century, Laurentian condemned tap water as impure and dangerous for kids and adults.

But I found one ad, in 1923, where they come right out a say it. ” The City Water Supply may become contaminated at any time. Laurentian water is always the same, pure and wholesome. I guess the ‘may’ kept the company out of hot water, legally.

This is perfect for my book, Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927. I will have my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, the Director of City Services, complain to Thomas Wells, my husband’s grandmother and the President of Laurentian Spring Water, about this ad.

Fuddy, as Thomas was nicknamed, will joke, “That ad was 4 years ago. ” Jules had a terrific memory. He will say so and then talk about his days at the Department of Health in the 1880′s as a message boy. Fuddy will try to get him by talking about the corruption at City Hall. So I can get a lot of info in.

Firing or Resignation? Camillien Houde fires Jules Crepeau

Mederic Martin and My Grandfather, Jules Crepeau, bookending a Seattle City Official on a trip. Martin’s Hair, my gosh!!

I’ve looked over the press clippings in my Aunt’s scrapbook…and here’s an excerpt from a French newspaper (unknown).. translated by me:

Here’s what came down at CITY Hall when my grandfather tendered his resignation as Director of Municipal Services, if so accepted by the Municipal Council.

…That the resignation of Jules Crepeau, Director of Services, be accepted under the conditions stated in his letter of September 22, now before the Municipal Council; that in consideration of services Mr. Crepeau has rendered to the City over many years, an indemnity, amounting to six months salary be paid him, that the Executive Committee effects this payment and that Crepeau’s letter me put in the archives.

One of the conditions of the resignation was that the city would not oppose the 7,500 pension that will be submitted to the Provincial Legislature according Mr. Crepeau the sum of 7,500 annually, in addition to the 5,000 that represents 6 months salary.

The aldermen ask for explanations, but M. Bray says to M. Derochers that ‘everyone knows what happened.’

Alderman Monette rises quickly and asks Mayor Houde is this resignation was voluntary or not and why is a pension of 7,500 being given to Crepeau on top of the 10,000 salary for his successor. That totals 17,500 and Mr. Crepeau is in good health and can continue rendering his precious services to the city. Blah blah blah.

Alderman Trepanieer asks for the names of those who signed the petition demanding the resignation of Crepeau. Houde says this was all done privately, outside of City Hall, so he won’t give the names.

Houde says: Today the council is acting rationally and the alderman are acting in a consistent manner? What position did we take before the election? We condemned the purchase of Montreal Water and Power. And to be fair to the citizens of Montreal, who elected us, we must get rid of all those who are responsible for the situation related to the purchase of the aqueduct. We condemned Tetrault and Crepeau, for the population of Montreal..

Florida St Martin Crepeau Walter, my Aunt

My Aunt Flo and Me, in 1959, from a still off a Super 8.

Aunt Flo, 1940′s.

I found my Aunt Flo. On the 1911 Census. After a second try.

The last time I looked, I somehow thought her natal name to be St-Clair and found nothing. Last night, I decided to try again and wrote in St-Martin, without thinking, and found her. Of course, St-Martin was her natal family name, she had told me, but I had forgotten, and then my subconsious memory kicked in and I found her!

Here she is:

According to family legend, she always showed up in rags to beg at the home of Jules Crepeau, my grandfather, and she was given food and new clothes and sent home. But then she returned again in rags. So they finally just ‘adopted’ her. The 1911 census says her dad worked for the City, so that makes sense. As a city worker he would know the name of Jules and somehow he got his address, to send his daughter begging.

(The Census says the father Onesime, the dad, was making 600 a year, and he already had five children under the age of 7. (It is said that 1,500 a year was a minimum needed in the era to support a family in dignity, but I found few families making that.

My grandfather, in 1911, was making 3,500 a year, and would end up making 10,000 a year in the 1920′s. (A newspaper reporter in 1913 accused Jules of making a lot more than that from graft.) Thomas Wells, the President of Laurentian Spring Water claims to be making 7,000 a year in 1911…In 1911, Marion Nicholson was making 600 as a teacher, but she had no children and lived for three months at her parents’ house in Richmond. Her father was making 1,000 a month on the railroad. Apparently, a good cook cost about 600 a year. Cooks were among the better paid domestics)

The family myth goes, Flo’s natural mother was an alcoholic actress and one of the most beautiful women my grandfather had ever seen.

Well, Aunt Flo, if not beautiful, was extremely photogenic and she seemed to have an instinctive knowlege of how to carry herself, to be sexy, which is not something the women in her adopted family had.

(Flo herself looked like the actress Barbara Stanwick.)

This had to be picked up from her natal mother.

Anyway, here she is, Florida (or Florence) St Martin, Crepeau, Walter. She married a Frank Walter later in life, a French (from France) graphic designer. He was much older, a ladies man from what I could see, but he almost called off the wedding when he heard Aunt Flo was adopted and not the natural daughter of Jules Crepeau, former Director of Services of the City of Montreal.

Flo died in 1998 at the Veteran’s Hospital in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. She had been a WAC, working in recruiting, using her sex appeal to lure young men into the armed forces, no doubt. She had no children, but a fun life. She worked as a salesgirl at Morgan’s Department Store and so got a lot of nice dresses to wear at cheap prices. She worked at the University of Montreal, in the cafeteria late in life, say in her 70′s, allowing her to mix with people, as she was very social.

She liked to go on long drives with her husband, making picnics.. and she often vacationed in Old Orchard, where the Crepeaus had vacations. I went with Flo and Frank, her husband, one summer.

She had a third grade education, it is said, but she could read and write and speak both English and French and if her math skills were poor, she always managed to live within her means, while enjoying life, a skill many PhD’s in Mathematics do not have.

Investigative Reporting, or Tabloid Journalism, 1914

The Crepeaus on the beach. Couple in middle, unknown. Girl in helmet, my mother. Girl in dark suit, my Aunt Flo.. Woman on right, my Aunt Alice. My grandfather had a slim, athletic figure; my grandmother, well.

So, in 1914, my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, was accused of “being a grafter” by one Edward Beck, former managing editor of the Herald and Montreal Star, in his new weekly, Beck’s World.

I found a Toronto Sunday Sunday article on the topic where the Beck’s World article is quoted. My grandfather was assistant city clerk, a position that gave him the confidence of the Board of Control and the City Council

He was set up by the Press, and offered money by a private Burns Detective, to influence aldermen on some issue or other. No wire in those days and hiding a Talking Machine under your lapel was probably quite tricky. They had something called a ‘detectaphone.’

The article from Beck’s Weekly (a brand new but short-lived exercise) is written in the cheesiest dime store detective novel prose. Cue Humphry Bogart:

“The City Hall is a sweet-scented sink hole of pollution if men like Crepeau speak the truth. Their greedy official hands take toll of contracts, levy tribute on ordinances, and prey upon the poor city labourers. Graft, graft, graft is written over the doorways, the lintels and on the doorposts.”

My grandfather denied everything, well, sort of and sued the Beck’s Weekly and won… He sued for slander, and 25,000 and got 100 and legal fees.

Hmm.

Oddly, Beck died in 1930 and his obit says he started Beck’s Weekly in March 1914, so this was written up in the first issue. He probably wanted to start with a bang. The story wasn’t mentioned in the obit. And the Weekly ended when war broke out, but a few months later.

I guess Beck’s people, too, wanted to forget the incident.

I’m sure my grandfather was no saint, but he ended up penniless and that is usually not the fate of a master grafter.

Lordy Lordy: Passing the Buck over a Fatal Fire

Mayor Mederic Martin and aldermen and my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, looking terribly bored..

Hmm. I found one of the points where my Flo in the City research and Milk and Water research overlap.

The Lord’s Day Act and the Motion Pictures, called ‘the cinema’ in 1927.

I’ve written about the 1906 Lord’s Day act, how it was pushed through by an unholy alliance between the radical Presbyterians and Labour.

And how the French Canadians, especially the owners of movie houses, largely ignored it.

Well, apparently in 1927 Premier Tachereau wanted to get movie houses to shut down and lawyers for this body claimed they had a kind of grandfather clause, because they’d always remained open. You see, they weren’t theatres per se, but cinemas and the Act only described ‘theatres.’

The term ‘cinema’ didn’t exist in 1906.

The Province was suing a movie chain United Amusements. Well, what a coincidence, United Amusements was run by my great uncle, Isidore Crepeau. (That my mother had told me.)

Even weirder, Mon Oncle Isidore, as my mom called him, died in 1932, falling out of the window of his 7th storey ST. James Street office window.

Now, THAT my mother never told me. Did she even know? She was 10 at the time.

The newspaper article says he fell out trying to signal his chauffer to come get him. He almost landed on his ‘stenographer’ who had left but a few minutes before.

Crazy Uncle Isidore. All very weird. But too late for my Milk and Water story.

Jules, of course, had a finger in every civic pie and he obviously dealt with this issue of the Lord’s Day Act. He dealt with damage control on the infamous fatal Laurier Palace fire.

He was the first person to give testimony at the hearing in April, which was very boring, according to the Gazette. “Little Public Interest”claimed the subhead. I guess that meant he was doing his job…

Apparently that same cinema had been running without a licence for a year, but the license hadn’t been taken away for fire-safety issues, only because they hadn’t paid their taxes. They paid their taxes at the end of the 1926 year and then they had the fire in January.

In a ‘short drab’ session, with only 12 people present, where my grandfather refused to give more information than he wanted to (sounds like a Murdochy thing) he described the licencing procedure. The Chief of Police, he said, grants licences on the recommendation of the District Police Chief.

All very interesting.

Apparently, at the ‘inquest’ in January, the scene had been intense, with the public stirred into a ‘white heat’ over the 75 child deaths. The owners of the theatre were on trial, (The proprietor would get 2 years for manslaughter and 2 employees one year, which they would appeal) so the inquest was to deal with 1) the causes of the fire 2) the responsiblities of theatre owners 3) Sunday performances.. Ah, this must have happened on a Sunday so that was the reason for Premier Tachereau wanting, suddenly, to enforce the law, as if Sunday was the cause of the fire or something. (Or maybe it was a ‘labour’ thing..

Members of the public, ‘especially members of the working class’ were to be asked about their opinions. Hmm, so in 1927 the cinema was still considered low rent.

Jules also gave evidence at the trial. Basically, everyone passed the buck about whose job it was to see that the place had a license, the Administration, the Police Chief, the District Officer and the Assistant District Officer, who actually visited the place. H testified he knew the place didn’t have a license but that it wasn’t his job to do anything.

At the trial it was revealed that many police officers had passes for their families. And that a fire door was tied closed (like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.)

Anyway, because of that tragic event, I wasn’t allowed to go to movies as a child. But, then, there weren’t that many movies aimed at kids.

Jules Crepeau: Jack of all Civic Trades

The Crepeaus Coloured, around 1927

Hmm. I was wrong when I said in the last (after a cursory glance at the newsclippings in a scrapbook once belonging to my Aunt) that the English papers denounced my grandfather, Jules Crepeau for the Montreal Water and Power Deal Controversy) and the French papers supported him.

The Montreal Gazette didn’t approve of Houde getting rid of him.

“Both these officials have long terms of valuable service to their credit. Each occupies a position of responsibility and of authority and it is quite evident from the terms of the city charter that a certain independence of action on their part has been provided with deliberate intent. The labours of these officials, extending in the case of M. Tetrault over more than a decade and in the case of Mr. Crepeau over more than forty years, have contributed more to the orderly progress and development of the city than most people realize.”

No kidding! From articles in the Montreal Gazette and elsewhere it is clear my grandfather was the City’s Jack of All Trades. Technically, his job was to deliver and explain information from the heads of the various departments to the Executive Committee, which ran the city.

But from what I have read he was not only a liaising kind of guy, but also a damage control guy, a spin doctor and porte-parole, a fill-in for the Mayor for certain n0t-that-important visitors to City Hall as well as the Chief Planner of Events for real serious VIPS, like the Governor General or British PM. And he sat on all kinds of Committees, like the Town Planning Committee of 1923 (when it was discovered that maybe it paid to look ahead) and the City Improvement League, which was most interested in increasing the number of parks.

The latter job plays PERFECTLY into my story… where Mayor Mederic Martin calls him to perform a duty during the 1927 visit of the Prince of Wales. (It’s perfect, as the PofW came to Canada for a month, visiting Montreal at the beginning for formal events and then resting for four days at the end..)

If Jules wasn’t at Council Meetings, answering questions, he had sent a letter in, answering questions. And even as early as 1900, as a clerk, he had some duties: he was on the Bonsecours Market Committee for one. And as Assistant City Clerk he often went to Quebec to give depositions to the Legislature there.

Oh, and MOST interesting, after that January 1927 theatre fire that killed 77 people, mostly kids, he was the one who gave the first day’s testimony at the inquest. Apparently there was low public interest.

Funny, as child in Montreal I couldn’t go to the cinema until I was 10 because of a by-law enacted after that infamous fire. I sneaked in, though, being tall for my age, to see the Lippizanner movie.

So many momentous events in 1927 in Montreal! Fodder for my play Milk and Water.

A busy man. I wonder how he found the time to go to Atlantic City, above.

So, maybe it’s the other way around: the English Papers supported him, the French did not. (Must read all the press clippings closely.) But Le Devoir wrote such a nice obit for him. And wasn’t La Presse owned by the Forgets?

Milk and Water and Scapegoats..

Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services, Montreal

Well, with the Montreal City Hall file and my aunt’s scrapbook, I guess I have most of the articles are about my grandfather’s firing..actually he tendered his resignation on approval of the Alderman. (Some about the congratulations he received in 1926 upon his 40 years in service. Ironic..)

The French Press seemed against this, the English for it.

Houde said that Chief Engineer Tetrault and Jules had to resign, as it was the mandate of the people to send home those who favoured the purchase.

The Herald, an English paper said succinctly “It is the opinion of the Herald that Tetrault and Crepeau are resigning because Houde has made their position uncomfortable.”

Oh course why would Houde want to keep a man who had worked for Mederic Martin for so long? I must find a bio of Mederic Martin. I know there are many of Houde, because he was ‘so colourful’.

Anyway, there’s a lot more to it.. and a lot more to read… But clearly my grandfather, like some of the people going down in Hackgate right now, took the fall for others.

He very likely didn’t benefit from the money made on the sale of Montreal Water and Power….Bigger fish than took home the spoils from the 4 million dollar profit made by the Lee Chase Company, famous industrialists no doubt.

But he was smart enough to negotiate a huge pension fo 7,500 a year until death.. (Too bad he died so early, run over by city constable, who my mother says was very contrite so it couldn’t have been on purpose.)

I guess he signed something saying he’d tell no secrets… I guess.

Of course, as I wrote in the previous post, the Montreal Water and Power Purchase was to prove very beneficial to the city.

Le Devoir wrote this upon his resignation:
As an example of the kind of man my grandfather was, I will translate a piece from Le Devoir, 1938 that speaks of him upon his death.

(Translated off the top of my head.) “Yesterday, upon his death, the newspapers published some rather dull obituaries of Jules Crepeau, none of which give a just account of the exceptional role the man played in Montreal politics…. Jules Crepeau was intelligent, ambitious, and proactive.His education was rudimentary and didn’t give him a background in culture, unlike his successor Honore Parent. (Crepeau finished his studies at night) But this affable man turned all his considerable intellect and curiosity and energy towards the work at hand. From the start he comprehended the importance of the municipal administration, its vast complexity and its workings and he had a sense of being part of something grand and of great import. He started out as an intern in the Health Department and rose steadily, especially after going to work under L O David in the Head Clerk’s (Greffier)Office…

He rose in the ranks, slowly at first, then more quickly until all the Municipal Councillors and the aldermen had only his name on their tongues. He became the first Director of Services in 1921. Jules Crepeau was too passionate, too uncompromising not to have taken sides in disputes, so he made enemies and he took some hits, some of them nasty.

But it must be stated that no accusations against him stuck. On the outside, his reputation got larger and larger. In Quebec, before the Committee of Private Bills, it was his opinion that held the most weight. He was the one people went to for information because they knew that information would be succinct and exact. I once knew a banker who had thousands of safety deposit boxes in his bank, but if a client showed up he knew exactly which box to open. Jules Crepeau was like this man. The Administration is made up of many many boxes, or more precisely, articles and charters, rules and regulations, and if you wanted to know about any one of them, you called Jules. He had a prodigious memory and you could trust it. It remains only to say that this venerable and brilliant civil servant is an example to all, for his sense of service, his zeal for his work and the pride he took in serving the public.

Milk and Water: Montreal Water and Power Purchase

Last night I downloaded and read (quickly) a number of useful documents on Montreal’s Water Supply for my play (or novel) Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927.

As it happens, the Montreal Water and Power Company Purchase happened that year: and the next year a controversy (or controversies) around it brought down the Mederic Martin Administration, which led to my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, the most senior civil servant being ousted in 1930. That was also the year of yet anther typhoid epidemic, but one caused by Milk.

My Milk and Water story will feature Jules having a discussion about water with Thomas Wells, the President of Laurentian Spring Water, who is my husband’s grandfather. It will be a bit of a Two Solitudes type story.

Hmm.

Again, the story of the events around the purchase are ‘murky’ as the Gazette articles don’t describe the controversies, just the meetings about the controveries. Funny, eh.

But, in the Fong book about J.W. McConnell, the author claims it is the Montreal Star that stayed on the story and brought down Mederic Martin.

Well, I found a report on the debate around Montreal Water and Power on the National Assembly website. How cool!!

M, Houde, member for Montreal St. Marie brought up the issue.

He says the Montreal public is demanding a full inquiry in the purchase. He said a group approached the PM for a Royal Commission, but the PM didn’t want to compromise Montreal’s autonomy.

He said it is ‘rumoured in the public’ that the purchase was made on behalf of people high up in the government and as public funds were involved those guilty should be pursued like criminals.

It seems someone (a New York based group: Lee Chase) bought Montreal Water and Power for about 9,500,000 a few months before Montreal’s administration, in a 32 to 12 or so vote, decided to purchase it for 14,000,000.

(Later an neutral arbitrator deemed it worth 15,ooo,ooo, but the opponent’s claimed they were bought off.)

All very interesting. How my grandfather was involved in this, except for being in the wrong job and the wrong time, I haven’t figured out. I must go back and read the family clippings.

The fact is: my grandfather had worked for Martin for years, so Houde wanted him out. He also knew too much, so he negotiated a huge pension.

But my story is about 1927, the height of The Jazz Age, and I am going to manufacture a good reason, involving the Prince of Wales, for my grandfather and my husband’s grandfather to be stuck in a room together for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. It will have to do with the fact that the Prince like to party with Mederic Martin. It will involve an “underground” jazz club.

Anyway, I found one document that says the 1927 purchase was a benchmark in the development of Montreal’s water system. Ultimately, a good idea.

Montreal Water and Power was a private company (who owned it? Lorne Webster.. Honourable Perron? McConnell?) that serviced the surburbs, which would all soon become Montreal.

And is the fact that my grandfather was related to the Forget’s got anything to do with anything? I wonder.

Milk and Water

Crepeaus around 1927

Wellses around 1927

Well, as I let my first draft of Threshold Girl sit for a while, I got to researching Edith’s story, the Westmount Story.

But a bit in the Westmount News about a run away Laurentian Horse cart got to me thinking… I plan to write a story, Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, when there’s a typhoid epidemic.

I intend to cross the stories of my grandmother, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services and my husband’s grandfather, Thomas Wells, President of Laurentian Spring.

I figured I’d write if AFTER I’ve finished the Tigsholas Trilogy…

Then, thanks to Andrew Collard’s book about Old Montreal, I found the link…David, the Prince of Wales.

I’ve figured out the plot and now all I have to do is a little more research… but not even that much.

I want to write it in the style of some of the Radio Four Afternoon Plays I’ve heard over the past 5 years.

I’ll write in in dramedy style… My grandfather and my husband’s grandfather are going to be thrown together and they’ll have a two solitudes style conversation, that will work on a couple of levels.

Milk and Water

The Crepeaus.Old Orchard Beach. mid 1920′s.

Terry Copp’s The Anatomy of Poverty is one of the few books out there about Montreal’s Working Class in the 1910 era.

I purchased it on Abebooks and read it as background to the Nicholson letters. I learned from Copp and other sources that in the 1910 era Montreal slums were second to none in the Western World with respect to poverty and that key indicator ‘infant mortality.’

But I later learned that infant mortality was highest among French Canadians. Jewish Montrealers for instance had a low infant mortality, despite their poverty.

They had smaller families and got their children vaccinated.

The report above, from the July 1, 1911 Montreal Gazette, shows that there exists an “anti vaccination league.” It reveals that Dr. Louis Laberge of Montreal’s Health Department would have liked to have a mandatory vaccination program (volunteer ones were in place at the public baths that had recently been opened up) but many didn’t want any such program in place.

It was a freedom to choose matter.

Well, too bad I can’t invoke the spirit my grandfather, who worked in the Health Department under Dr. Louis Laberge in the early part of the century before moving to the Greffier’s Office.

I could get the inside scoop.

A while back I clipped another bit from a 1911 newspaper claiming that Montreal’s water was so undrinkable ‘people had to buy bottled water’ (Laurentian Spring Water that belonged to my husband’s family, sold bottled water for 4 cents a gallon). The article claimed that Montreal had more cases of typhoid than any city in N. America. (Again, I wonder if this is true or a perception.) But, of course, the poor could not afford to buy water and no one thought it was important to give it out for free…

This article quotes a person: “It is better to have small healthy families than big sickly ones.” Now, it was not French Canadians who grappled with this: The Edwardians reveals that at the turn of the last century, the parents of poor industrial age families often understood that having too many children was detrimental to to them, but they weren’t equipped for family planning. These families were best off early on, when the parents were strong and fit and able to work and their families small, but as the families grew and as the parents aged, their earning power declined. When kids could go to work and contribute to the household coffers, there was a reprieve (Edwardian era youths were discouraged from marrying early for this reason) and then once the kids left to start their own families, well, it was a spiral into abject poverty for many parents and often meant an old age in the Work House, a kind of prison. According to this book, Edwardian Age children did not take their elderly parents in. They had their own problems by that time. (Was this the same in French Canadian families. Well, I don’t think we had Work Houses.)

So, you can see how raising the mandatory school age (a good thing by all accounts, especially for girls since they were the ones who left school by 12) also hurt some families, who counted on these kids (and the poor wages they earned in textile factories, for instance, for support.

Anyway, I have to get to the bottom of all this as I intend to write another book (once I’ve done with Flo in the City, my story of a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/. That book, tentatively called Milk and Water will be about my grandfather Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services and my husband’s grandfather, Thomas Gavine Wells, President of Laurential Spring Water and citizen of Westmount and will take place in 1927, the year of another typhoid outbreak. It will be a Two Solitudes style thriller with a social welfare theme.