Three Steps Forward, One Back

A picture of Edith with very possibly staff from Westmount Methodist Institut. Myabe Yvonne Villard is there.

Well, five steps forward, one step back.

I wasn’t finding much online about Westmount Methodist, so lucky, I thought, for the Preparing the Way document by Paul Villard. Only a few copies of this little pamphlett remain in existence, one supposedly at McGill and one copy at Westmount Library. And his other book, Up to the Light, contains only a bit on the Institut -because I found a French webpage that said as much.

I decided to check the Gazette archives and didn’t find much either, just a few graduation notices… and a strange article from 1960′s, about the actress Madeleine Sherwood, the Mother Superior, I think, in the television show The Flying Nun and also that very bitchy pitch-perfect Sister Woman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of the movies that should have won Best Picture but didn’t. (Did she play the same character on Broadway?)

It seems this Montreal-born actress’s grandfather was a certain McGill Prof, Paul Villard, who was also an MD and a preacher.

Could it be the same Paul Villard. I couldn’t be sure, until I found an article in the 1911 (YES) Westmount News about The Institut that claimed this Paul Villard was a doctor, too.

Too much of a coincidence. I couldn’t be 100 percent sure, until I found a bio for Ms. Sherwood that claimed her Mom was named Yvonne.

Well, that nailed it.

The Westmount News was so useful. I discovered a great deal of useful information for my first draft of Threshold Girl, the new title for Flo in the City.

The Horse Show was in early May at THE ARENA in Westmount. So I have to fix that. Westmount Park wasn’t referred to as Victoria Jubilee Park anymore, but The Westmount Park. So there, I have to change it back to what I had.

And there wasn’t a tram on Sherbrooke,not until 1913, like I had supposed. The St Catherine tram was cramped and crowded.

And the Merry Widow wasn’t playing (well, I knew that ) but Brewster’s Millions was. The Westmount News goes into great detail about What’ s On at the Orpheum and Princess… And in 1911, Sir Wilfrid bought some land in Westmount for his wife. And there wasn’t much crime in the city, (well, I saw that from the Yearbook) but a lot of ‘car’ accidents. The trouble is, ‘cars’ could be motorcars or tramcars.

And they were showing Kinecoloured films of the Coronation at the Princess.. with realistic colours.. so they wrote. So maybe I will have Marion go to this, instead of the same Somner Park show that Edith went to.

And one tidbit I will put in my story: a Laurentian Water horse ran amok in Westmount. Well, I write about runaway horses, in my story and Laurentian water was owned by my husband’s relations on the other side. I think I will have Flo and Edith witness this!! I want to put a bit about Laurentian in Marion’s story anyway. (Here’s a quote about the need for a children’s library in Westmount: “Pure water, effective drainage, fine sidewalks,beautiful parks, and the annexation of profitable lands are material things worth striving for, but the things of the mind, things that build charcter should not be overlooked,these build for time and eternity. It was a wise Jesuit who said, “Give me the first 7 years of a child’s life, and you can take the rest.” (This quote is similar to my “healthy home” quote at the beginning of Threshold Girl.”) Intellectual, physical and MORAL health were considered ONE AND THE SAME THING in 1910.)

But I also discovered something that messes me up a bit. In the article about Westmount Methodiste, Villard writes that Academy I graduates can enter the Model Course at Macdonald. Hmm. So that means Flora wasn’t in Academy III but Academy II, as she just took one year of the course.

I guess I have to change that. I wonder why Edith didn’t take the course, money I guess. Just like so many people, she didn’t have enough money to take off a year and to go school.

Oh, and another thing I read, wedding announcements in Westmount tended to describe the weddings as ‘quiet.’ Many of them. I figure this is to appease those who were not invited..

WATER AND MILK

Therese Forget, 1914 from McCord Museum Collection,II-203044

McCord Home Page

I put this picture up because I have mentioned the Forgets as relations and no doubt she is a relative. I can see the family resemblance. When I die I have the right to be buried in the Forget family plot, but I’ll chose Richmond, and be with the Tighsolas gals and my hubby. Oooooewww.

Well, last night I got a bit bored with The Egg and I Movie, which was facile and just a series of silly vignettes, unlike the book which was witty and informative and wise. As everyone knows, Marjorie Main, as Ma Kettle, stole the show, and she really had no material to work with.

She brought a powerful humanity to her rather slapstick role. I especially liked her hair. She has exactly the same hair-do that Margaret Nicholson of Tighsolas wore, just a bit dishevelled. And if you think about it, she is the anti-Margaret, or the antidote to all the pressure put on women of the era to be clean housewives. She has so many children she can’t remember their names, and she has given up on housework, (Why bother?)yet she has a happy home, indeed her first born is a charming and brilliant boy. She feeds her brood what looks like great quantities of healthy food, clearing the kitchen table with one powerful sweep of her arm (as she scratches the underside of her rather feral bosom with her free hand). I must go back and see the other 9, yes, nine movies about Ma and Pa Kettle. There is more to this Ma and Pa Kettle Phenomenon than mere slapstick. (Yes, I must write a story comparing Margaret and Ma Kettle.)

So, as I said, I was getting bored, I surfed the McCord Museum website for more pictures of Montreal 1910 and they had plenty. (Years ago I had taken a look but the collection has grown.) Their site has many wonderful pictures of some of the era streets where Marion, Edith would have walked. I believe I can post some on this blog with proper credit or embedding, but I have to go back and re-read the conditions.

ON TOP OF THAT! I found evidence in the archived Gazettes that there was a typhoid epidemic in Montreal in 1909. How interesting for my novel in progress, Flo in the City, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

Companies like Laurentian Spring Water, which was owned by my husband’s side of the family, were advertising their clean water. This is all so interesting. I saw an ad in the Gazette where my husband’s grandfather, Thomas G. Wells (a contemporary of my grandfather, Jules Crepeau)denies the rumours that Laurentian is running out of water to supply their clients. (Hmmm.) I had wanted to write a book set in the 20′s called Water and Milk, contrasting the lives of Thomas G Wells of Westmount and my Grandfather, Jules Crepeau, the Director of City Services, with an intrigue about Montreal water, but now I see I can stick some of it in Tighsolas. (There was another typhoid epidemic in Montreal in 1927.)

I have no record in the letters, but Margaret, who was afraid of everything, must have been concerned for her children with respect to the water. Typhoid was a issue, even in their fine neigbourhood in Richmond. Norman had got it in 1896 and Margaret nurses her neice, Florence Peppler, in 1912 through a bout. Norman gets very worried.

Apparently, in 1909 Montreal, they first thought contaminated milk was causing the epidemic (5,000 cases according to one paper)but then traced it to the water, which came right out of the St. Lawrence River, where, I suspect, Montreal’s sewing oops, I mean sewage, was being dumped.

Now, I just have to double check what Jules Crepeau is doing in 1909. Is he still with the Health Department or has he moved on to the Clerk’s Department. (I have a stack of info in my bedroom.) Either way, it works. He worked under Dr. Louis Laberge. And he had a mind like a steel trap, so I can have him know anything about the situation. He once went to Holland to investigate something, I wonder if it had to do with water. He brought back a few vases that I have in my house.