Opium, Habitues, and Edith Nicholson

 

After the 1909 Monterrey Hurricane.

 

Well, I do have the first rough draft of my story Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl, about women in 1910 Canada. I printed it out on hard copy and am  now editing it and integrating the Nicholson letters into it..Not an easy job… so maybe I still have a ways to go.

 

Yesterday, I listened to a BBC radio 4 broadcast of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, an episode about the Mexican Revolution. Zapata and all that. That program is always excellent and features Bragg and usually three scholars discussing something, anything, everything in the universe and sometimes the universe.

 

I was hoping they’d mention something about Canadian Industrialists and water works. They didn’t.

 

I also researched opium and Mexico and 1910, to find that in April 1909, the Americans created the Opium Exclusion Act, outlawing the importation of Opium and essentially giving birth to the War on Drugs which would eventually drive up prices and create vast criminal syndicates.

 

In 1910, Opium was legal in Mexico (and would stay so until 1927, I think). In Canada, as I wrote earlier, in 1910 for about a year, it was only illegal for Chinese, not Whites.

 

According to one source, most morphine addicts in 1910 were wealthy women (habitues) who no one really worried about. Edith Nicholson wasn’t wealthy, but she sure liked her cold medicines. She was always getting a cold. In fact, if there’s one theme dominating the 1908-1913 Nicholson Family Letters, it’s ‘colds’ and ‘la grippe.’

 

 

So anyway, it all fits in nicely to my murder mystery around Edith’s fiance Charlie Gagne I am fashioning around the letters from 1910 I have on hand. The one issue, really, is that in early 1911, opium wasn’t that expensive, so smuggling it wouldn’t make that much money for anyone. But I’ll assume there was some money to be made by white men, all ‘legally’ or in grey areas.

 

Not Happily Ever After

Mementos of the Marriage of Hugh Christian Blair and Marion Nicholson. Handmade – as their wedding was on the cheap.

Hmm. Mrs. H Blair. When a woman got married back then she not only gave up her surname, but also her first name. Officially speaking.

I have calling cards for Marion that say Mrs. H. C. Blair. These were likely used before her husband died in 1927. In her professional capacity, as a widow, she used the name Marion A. N. Blair.

Well, once again I went through the Nicholson memorabilia, looking for a certain document and found one I didn’t know I had: Marion and Hugh’s marriage contract. I had only guessed the date of the marriage, using an invoice for a wedding cake on October 9, 1913. Then I found these butterflies. Well, the Marriage Contract has the same date.

The contract is interesting in that it shows that Marion brought nothing to the marriage but her clothes and wedding gifts. (There’s a big space in the contract to list other things.)

Then it shows that Hugh promises to give all the household furnishings purchased from now on, to Marion, “as a simple celebration of the marriage”. And also to leave any insurance to her, UNLESS, there is a separation FOR ANY REASON and all this is deemed void.

I get the impression that this contract was forced on Hugh and Marion by his family, to protect them. She certainly gets nothing out of it.

As it happens, Hugh Blair died in 1927 after a lengthy illess. A liver issue. I have letters speaking of his illness. Edith writes that his eyes are as yellow as egg yolks. (I have stories told by my mother in law who was 10.) and I have documents supporting what she talked about.

Apparently, when Hugh was dying, Marion did everything to keep his family away, as she knew they would force him to sign away his share of the business. But she went out one day and they got him to do it.

I have two copies of a letter written by Hugh to Marion saying that this is only a temporary business decision and that she is still provided for.

Then I have a letter from Clayton Hill, the brother-in-a law stone mason, just before Hugh’s death, relating to the potential purchase of a plot for him in St. Andrew’s cemetery in Richmond. (Something made Hugh so angry he decided not to be buried with his family. Alas, he died too soon and is buried on Mount Royal.)

Then I have an obituary printed in the newspaper, that leaves out the names of Marion and family as mourners. (A letter Herb writes to Margaret asks about this.)

Then I have a letter from the Blair Bros. claiming that Hugh has exhausted all his insurance and that no money is due her.

Then I have a letter from a lawyer claiming that she has a good case against the firm but to pursue it would be too costly.

Then I have a letter from the Masons, the Melita Preceptory and Priory, saying that they are going to give her kids allowances from the Knight’s Templer Orphan fund.

And, yet, apparently she never complained. She just went back to work and rose to be the President of the PAPT union. And she got hell for this too, for her job, in many people’s eyes, was to get remarried and not get a job.

Had she been a man, there’s no end to what she might have accomplished.

Funny, I have a letter from her brother, Herb, 1907. Marion is teaching in Sherbrooke, he’s at the bank, working as a clerk. This is the year the Nicholsons are disinherited by a spinster Aunt who had a house and about 3,000 in the bank.

“And now that my house is to be given to someone else, ” he writes “I will have to give up all hopes of ever being rich and look at it as a lost fortune.”

He would spend the next few years getting into debt and making his family crazy with anxiety and it would be Marion on her teacher’s salary, who would bail him out, no thanks from him.

(This is the story told in the Nicholson Family Saga, on another blog.)

Sometimes I wonder if she got married because of a fear that she’d forever be bailing out her family, what with her brother being so irresponsible.

Largely because of Herb, Norman would have no money to give her ‘a proper wedding’ – so this mean little contract, I guess.

Hugh married Marion anyway, against his parent’s wishes. I also have a friendly warm letter from Hugh’s father, Hugh Purvis, to Hugh in June 1913, that never mentions Marion or the upcoming wedding.

Apparently, they didn’t attend the wedding. But, for the wedding, they did provide the couple with a Family Bible which I have on hand.

Who’ll Buy the Cow?

I’m watching a movie called Happy Go Lucky on my TV, which stars Sally Hawkins, the same woman I saw in Mrs. Warren’s Profession in November in New York City.

It’s about a single 30 year old woman, a kindergarten teacher, who is happy with her life, which irks everyone around her, a kind of anti-Bridget Jones.

(And supposedly Elliott Cowan, who played Mr. Darcy in Lost in Austen, plays a bar tender in this movie, although I haven’t reached that part.)

Hmm.

Spinsterhood, as they once called it, is a major theme in Flo in the City. In 1910 Edith is 27, so she’s thirty at the end, and with no prospects, because she has lost her ‘great love’ in a hotel fire. (I researched this and he was a bank clerk for the Bank of Montreal who was transferred to Cornwall in 1910 and then perished in an infamous fire.)

Marion only jokes about being an old maid, like many of the other teachers around her. But in those days the minute you married you left the profession, so of course, teachers were divided into two groups, the very young and long past ripe.

Teacher turn-over was a major problem in those days. All the school inspectors complained about it.

Yesterday, in Salon.com there was an article about the modern woman, how she’s more educated than her male peers and how she is sacrificing sex for her career. This supposedly has something to do with the fact that men like chasing women and only desire a woman if they have to chase her, and these days women chase men and that is a turn off, so they do not commit to these women.

I have to admit, it all sounded sooo familiar, even if this commentator claimed to be using ‘scientific principles’ to prove his point.

They said the same things back in 1910. Take that Gertrude Atherton article I have posted on http://www.tighsolas.ca/ which I call Does Love Matter to a Suffragette.

My mother told me this old adage: The man chases the woman until she catches him. My father told me another one: “Who’ll buy the cow if you give the milk for free.”

In fact, it seems to me that a theory like this comes out once every 10 years or so. It’s sells books for the author and serves to undermine women’s achievements, somehow. And it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy, although this article admitted that statistics show that the more educated the woman the more chance she has for a successful marriage.

Of course, with women better educated than men, on average, the idea that women must marry ‘up’ might have to be let go of, for once and for all.

You know, Flo Nicholson married later in life, to a railroad man, and apparently her family was somewhat scandalized, because he was a little rough around the edges.

But from all accounts he was a very nice man. (My husband says so.)

A lot of woman remained spinsters in those days because their families would not let them marry down, to marry someone with less social position or education.

On the other hand, Marion Nicholson almost didn’t get married to Hugh Blair in 1913, because his family thought HE was marrying down. The Nicholsons were penniless, remember.

Mr. and Mrs. Blair didn’t even show up for the wedding in October. (I have a nice, warm letter from Hugh’s father, a prominent Three Rivers Lumber Man, to Hugh from June 1913, that never mentions his upcoming wedding or Marion’s name.

Yes, we’d all like a handsome, rich, smart and Alpha Male mate, like Mr. Darcy, but one that is totally devoted to us, who follows us around like a sick puppy, but that’s fantasy, like a Victoria Secret Model for a man, someone with no apparent achievements except being born beautiful.

Anyway, I haven’t noticed this syndrome among my son. My sons sure go for the smart, ambitious women. Yes, the girls are pretty too, but who isn’t pretty at 24?

With respect to marrying up, I recall an article by Barbara Amiel in Chatelaine a couple of decades ago that irked me at the time. She claimed it was to a woman’s biological advantage to Marry UP. I wrote a letter to the editor which was printed, saying that you can define ‘marrying up’ in many way. Marrying a man who is a good father is marrying up as far as I was concerned.

Anyway, that’s pretty ironic, all things considered. Amiel. who never had children, I believe, found an alpha male who was devoted to her like a sick puppy, but look what happened?

Dating 1912 style. Vaudeville Outing.

Marion Nicholson, in 1912, on the lawn of Tighsolas, in Richmond.

I just read the plot of a play, being performed at Montreal’s Orpheum in 1912 as part of a larger bill. In the play, a young man is disinherited by his wealthy parents, so he and his best friend hatch a plan to have him be a millionaire in a year. (And millionaire meant something back then.) He is to “dress well but simply, go to a small town somewhere, get some form of employment, join the church, refrain from drinking and smoking, and soon, he’ll be able to have any woman in the town he wants.

The message here is, if you want to marry, impress the parents, not the girl.

I am interested, as in 1912, according to the Nicholson letters on http://www.tighsolas.ca/, Marion and her beau, Hugh Blair, had a favorite entertainment venue, the Orpheum, located not far from the Nickel on Ste. Catherine near Bleury.

Maybe they saw this very show. On the same bill, a magician/spiritualist who conjured the spirits of painters past, a male/female comedy duet with dubious singing ability, some acrobats with a performing dog, some other acrobats who were ‘muscular’. In short, typical Vaudeville.

Lately, as I have blogged, I have been watching The Road Movies and The Marx Brothers on Turner Classics. These were acts polished to perfection on the Vaudeville circuit in the next decade. The Orpheum was part of a North American Chain.

Oh, and that day in 1912, there were also two short skits on the bill, one called “Just Married” that, according to the Gazette article I read, was cliche.

It must have been awkward to go out on ‘a date’ in those days. “Marriage” was such an elephant in the room and so many skits evolved around the Love thing. (As they still do today, an as they always will although today, I imagine, it’s the sex and explicit sex talk in popular teen movies that might prove embarrassing. Although I might just be projecting, as young people might be inured to such stuff.

(I say this because last year my husband and I went to see Tropic Thunder, a movie I love and during a certain very funny but well, crude, scene with Jack Black tied to a tree, withdrawing from cocaine, my husband turned to me and through his tears said “There’s a young boy sitting beside me.” which on some level was weirder than the movie. We’re pretty loose here in Quebec, but still.)

The fact was, Hugh Blair, my husband’s grand father, was about to be disinherited by his wealthy family, because he insisted on marrying Marion Nicholson, a country bumkin with no dowry, instead of someone else. I have a 1912 letter where he blows off this other woman, saying he thought they were “just good friends.”

Marion mesmerized him because she was so independent, I think. The other woman was a Mamma’s girl, or as they say in Jane Austen “still under the protection of her mother.”

Hugh proposes to Marion in May 1913. I know because I have Marion’s letter home where she draws the ring, a piece with three nice diamonds. (I have even seen said ring, which was passed to my mother in law.) She accepts despite the fact that she also wrote in an era letter “sometimes I like him and sometimes I hate him”…(Well, maybe that’s proof positive she’s in love.)

In courtship Hugh is dashing, funny, helpful “I don’t know what I would do without him,”writes the very capable Marion. In marriage, he turns out a bit of a baby.

I guess I can include this scene in Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in 1912 based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/. Maybe I’ll have Marion and Hugh take Flo. I know they took her to Dominion Park.

Here’s an aside. When my first son was born, I wanted to name him Hugh, after Hugh in How Green was my Valley. Anyway, my husband, who has dyslexia and can’t spell, said NO. I admitted it wasn’t an easy name to spell. Well, only much much later did I realize his grandfather was named Hugh. If I had known back then, I would have pressed the case.

Tiny Little Tintype

Unknown girl. This is a tiny tintype, the size of a dime, framed in a large embossed piece of pink paper. I don’t recognize the girl as an adult: from what I can see she would be a fabulously beautiful woman. Although there is something about that gaze that is very familiar.

I got ahead of myself posting blogs with pictures, and am catching up, filling up the blogs with chit chat or, more hopefully, scenes from my book. So, despite the date above, I am writing this on December 18th. Just remembered! This is my wedding anniversary.

How cool, writing this blog has allowed me to do something I’ve never done before, remember my anniversary. My husband always does, and some years, I’ve gotten a ring at the front door, accepted flowers and STILL not realized what they were about. I forget my anniversary because it comes so near Christmas and I have so many other things on my mind. And I do not consider marriage my defining act.

Now, how can I segue into Flo and the City, my novel in progress about a girl coming of age in the exciting 1908-1913 era, from real life letters posted on http://www.tighsolas.ca/ my social studies website? Easy.

Marriage is central to this story, or the pursuit of marriage. Because this is REAL LIFE and not fantasy or wish fulfillment, not all the heroines of this piece end up ‘happily ever after’. Well, none do, because happily ever after does not exist.

And not all the heroines of this piece fit into ‘categories’ such as the plain, good one, (well, Flo does sort of fit) and the beautiful, shallow one.. No Edith was not shallow, etc. The Nicholson women are real people, with a mix of characteristics, some sort of cliche, but most not.

If I want to convey anything with this novel, is that each of us is a product of our time and place as well as a ‘unique’ combination of genes…genes that have come before in our ancestors and will come after in our descendants, expressing in physical characteristics and in personality, but due to ‘accidents’ of birth, these genes can only realize themselves in certain ways in any given time or context… (I will work on this.)

The little girl in the tintype above, who lived her life as a wife and mother, has similar genes to her great great granddaughters, who may be dancers or scientists. The same potential…

This is an age old theme in literature, conveyed ably in those inter-generational epics like East of Eden, so I am doing nothing new thematically (hubris to think otherwise). Well, really it’s all about nature/nurture and that’s an old debate. But I am treading new territory in that these letters -and technology- are allowing me to explore the nature/nurture issue in a slightly different way. (The fact that I know the descendants of these people also helps.)

There is a school of thought, (American) that ANYTHING can be achieved with the right character. This is hoo-ha, of course. It’s all about being the right person, in the right place and the right time, and having luck on your side. Character has a place to play as the contrast between the characters of Marion and brother Herb prove.(My idea.) The Nicholson saga proves that you can do everything right and still have to struggle, even in a time of great promise and prosperity. Or does it? But as I wrote in my ‘obit’ of Norman Nicholson, this man was not a success at business, but he was a success at life. www.tighsolas.ca/page98.html

.

An Era of Optimism

A blurry picture, taken prior to 1912, as the old lady, Marion McLeod died in 1912. Might be Flo standing right, certainly is Marion, bottom.

Success! I found the Tighsolas book, with all expenses. But it did not contain any notes of stoves or furnace.

I have found everything I’m looking for. Now that I have finished the very first rough draft of the first chapter of Flo In the City, Just a Change of Colour. 2 days in early June. I introduce Flo and her anxieties, Margaret and her news clippings, and Marion and her strong, purposeful character.

Before I get to the next chapter, or while I write it, I want to re-read my letters, to pick out good lines that illustrate the times. In my last blog I wrote about a letter from 1904, Montreal, where a man runs into a new mother on Drummond and says her plans for the future are rather optimistic, considering that her husband is a mere book-keeper.

I think this is the type of thing that resonates: All young people, all new mothers are optimistic, but the 1900 era was an optimistic time, when young people thought the world was their oyster.

This story, Flo in the City (about a young woman coming of age in the pivotal 1908-1913 era of history and based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ will reveal how the middle class felt in 1900, and also hopefull explain the truth of it.

I also spent some time this afternoon going through the pile of invoices I have from the Nicholsons, most from either 1900 or the war era. I don’t know why this is. I assume the stores and the prices from 1900 were pretty much the same in 1910. There must have been some inflation during the war… I think I read as much in a letter.

Anyway, these invoices in themselves are a peek into the life of these people.

One thing I do want to resolve… why was flour so expensive, 4.75 to five dollars a barrel. This was the wheat boom era, after all.

The big Red Roses flour mill, an enormous eyeshore and iconic building on Montreal’s landscape, was built in 1912.

The Nicholsons bought Red Roses flour, at least sometimes.

Anyway, I have my work cut out for me. The title of the next chapter of Flo in the City. Maybe A Modern Conundrum. Why? Because today I dug out a book called Modern Conundrums from 1906 from the Nicholson collection. A conundrum is a puzzle (usually wordplay involved). The modern conundrum will be around womanhood. How to be a family woman and feminist.

Marion Nicholson figured it out, but at a price.

In the next chapter, Margaret comes home and announces that Edith is quitting her school and returning to Richmond. Is there a marriage in the offing? Apparently not. Edith goes to Montreal to work, very suddenly. Leaving Flo alone. But not before Flo and Mae go to Boston for a vacation, in August. And Margaret goes to Quebec for the Tercentenary celebrations, in July, and sees the Prince of Wales, who will soon become king.

Both Marion and Edith are tossed in love. Flora (sober-faced Flora as she is described in that 1904 letter) visits Henry Watters, bachelor cousin, who is a successful doctor in Boston. Henry is everything brother Herb is not, very successful and very attentive to kin. I have an earlier letter where a sister discusses how Margaret had wanted Herb to be a doctor. Instead he works at the bank, in Montreal. “He will be President one day,” the sister says. She also says she assumes he is ‘a ladies man.’

Well, Herb never became bank President. Far from it. And if he was a ladies man, he NEVER wrote about his loves to his mother. His life was a big secret. He was always in debt. I think I will have him visit prostitutes on de Bullion Street of Montreal. In the first chapter Mae brings up deBullion street. So I will have it that Flo told Mae how she overhead Marion tell Margaret that Herb has been hanging around de Bullion, where the prostitutes are.. Something like that. In an earlier blog I wrote about an article in a 1906 Ladies Home Journal that dealt with the double standard around sex, that a young man was expected to get some experience somewhere, but a woman had to remain pure. The very word pure says it all, right?

Marion will have heard rumours, from a friend of a friend. Maybe that dentistry student Flo has talked about..Somewhere in the letters are descriptions of a woman relation who appears to be a fallen woman.. someone visits her and says “she is worse than ever” . I should read that letter more carefully.

DO I DARE EAT A PEACH? 1st installment

Above. Richmond Folk. Circa 1908. That is probably Flora seated at left. Perhaps Edith is the woman standing behind the boy. Interesting picture. The people seem to be waiting for a parade. Maybe it’s an Easter Parade. Look at all those funny hats~ Now, Miss Eugenie Hudon, the town milliner, surely had a hand in the two creations at left. They appear to be Paris style fashions, a little out of place on aged Richmond matrons. But what about the other headpieces? Flora. What were you thinking? Edith? Is that a pom pom on top of your head?

OK. Get on task. Do I dare write that first sentence. Do I dare eat a peach? I can hear the mermen singing each to each, but will they sing for me? I dunno why that came into my mind, ’cause I was about to commit-to-digital that first sentence of that first draft of my first novel Flo in the City.

Here goes… (Sx. Drumroll) Just a change of colour. Just a change of colour. ( I know. I know. A bit anticlimactic since I’ve already chosen that line for the Chapter Title. But I continue…)

Why couldn’t she get that silly line out of her head? Flora wondered. She had much more important tasks to attend to. Much much more important. Like the take home exam on her knee. The one fluttering in the spring breeze. That imposing mimeographed foolscap sheet with its list of impossible questions. A composition test of all things. Her worse subject! And questions relating to an essay on Life back in the 30′s. History. So it was boring too.

Describing farm women, so it was extra boring.

Flora was tired of hearing how hard women worked in the good old days, compared to today. The first question glared out at her: Read the above essay carefully and 1) compare your life to that of the women mentioned and decide whether you have it easier or harder. Give concrete examples. 2) in your opinion, what is meant by ‘the Canadian character’ and give examples of people in your life who exemplify it.

What does the teacher mean by asking me to answer such a stupid question! For a moment Flora thought she might write down that cheeky answer. For just a moment. But instead she adjusted the hem on her blue wool jumper, and pulled on a little blue thread until it grew longer and longer.

“Mother,” she called in to her mom. “I need you to mend my school uniform. The seam is splitting.”

Any other day, she would have had her mother to keep her on task – and to help her with any difficult homework. Margaret had a sharp memory and even sharper opinions on just about every topic imaginable.

She was famous in her birth family for being the one ‘who knows things.’

She loved history. Family history especially.

She could remember the exact dates Grandfather Malcolm McLeod and his family left the Isle of Lewis, Hebrides Scotland to come to Quebec. She knew what port they landed in, how they got to Lingwick, and what they did to keep the wolf from the door during that first bone-chilling winter.

Margaret, born in Canada, way back in 1854, before Canada was a country, even, was so very proud to be Canadian. She had cut out this poem My Old Canadian Home and pinned it to the recipe board in the kitchen.

The shades of night are falling
I am sitting all alone
Thinking of my happy childhood
In my old Canadian home

But today no homework help was forthcoming. No sewing help either. “It will have to wait,” Margaret shot back from the room off the kitchen, without missing a beat as she tap tap tapped the big bronze pedal on the old Singer. “I hardly have time enough to sew this pocket into my corset, for tomorrow’s train trip to Three Rivers. To protect my cash. Father’s orders. And come in from the veranda, Flora dear, the wind is picking up and you’ll catch a chill.”

Does Love Matter to a Suffragette?

Above: Young Flo and Floss (detail of a small photograph 1905 era)

I got up at a reasonable hour, 6, and bee-lined it for the Internet to read the 1908 Tighsolas letters again, to weave them, somehow, into the first Chapter with the wonderful title (if I say so myself) Just a Change of Colour.

Mr. Darcy, my gallumphing yellow lab/bloodhound mix, usually bounds onto the bed immediately to take my place beside my husband, but this time he followed me out of the bedroom. I let Darcy outside, it was a frosty fall morning, then boiled some water for some tea and grabbed some of my home-made banana bread and set myself down on my oversized armchair in front of the big screen in my living room to work. (Very bad arrangement for my back.)

Boston Backstory

Flora Nicholson, 16, heroine of my novel in progress Flo in the City had a nom de plume (pen name). I know because she used it in two letters to her sisters in 1912. She is at home, they are in Boston, visiting friends and relatives.

Now, there are not many 1908 letters from TIGHSOLAS but what letters there are really set the stage for the Nicholson family saga.

There is only one letter by Flora. It is in August and she is visiting cousin Henry Watters in Newton Centre near Boston. He is a doctor at the hospital there. In her letter Flora mentions in passing visiting a family friend, Mrs. Coy.

This lady, Mrs. Coy then writes a detailed letter back to mother Margaret. She describes how the young people drop in unannounced. “Henry must be doing well as he has Stanley Steamer! ” she says. Unfortunately her house is a mess and she can’t receive them properly.

You see, Mrs. Coy has no daughters and just one son, Chester, who is, ahem, not inclined to marry. Four years later, in 1912 Marion and Edith visit Henry in Boston and Marion understands that they are trying to set one of them up with Mrs.Coy’s son. “Chester is the man these days.” (It is at this time that Flora writes her sisters whimsical letters from the porch at Tighsolas in her nom de plume Florrie Anderseed.)

These two American characters are going to play a big part in my story because they provide an interesting contrast. Henry is everything Herb Nicholson is not, a respectable man who is caring of his relations. Mrs. Coy is the opposite or Margaret (or seems to be in her letters). She is miserable because she has no daughters to help her.

But I get ahead of myself: So, in July of 1908 Margaret visits LaTuque where her husband is working on the railway. In her letter home she worries that her daughters Flo and Edith aren’t getting enough to eat. “You must eat to be well,” she says. Her real worry is that they catch a cold and die. In those days, this kind of thing was not uncommon.

In fact, these Nicholson letters really put the media frenzy over H1N1 or the swine flu into perspective.

CITY FUN 1908

Marion is in Montreal teaching, by September. She must write home about going to Dominion Park because Margaret writes back warning her not to see “that awful Pauline”. “It should be illegal,” she writes. Well, Pauline, I discovered, is a famous hypnotist.

Dominion Park was big thrill park in the East End of Montreal that opened in 1906 and closed,well, before I was born anyway. It is famous for having ‘an infant incubator’ exhibit, where real live babies (orphans) were on display and being taken care of by nurses for visitors’ amusement and education. (Montreal had the highest infant rate mortality in the Western World.) A foreshadowing of the Dionne Quintuplets circus, one could say.

I have posted a 1906 letter on Tighsolas where Herb describes the other more typical attractions, well, the roller coaster (which he doesn’t call a roller coaster but ‘a train’and fun house.

So back to 1908: Margaret is at home, with only Flora for company, a neighbour’s cows get into her garden (a scandal!) and she is being shunned by the Minister and his wife. Church is a big part of the family’s life (and a big source of ‘entertainment’ too) so this must be hard. I assume this is because Margaret is such a vocal suffragist.

Lots to Gossip About!

Norman writes home about some local Richmond gossip. So and So is applying to Parliament for a divorce. In an earlier letter, Margaret gossips that this man is seeing another woman, ‘”so he might as well throw himself into the Salmon river.”

Edith is in a tiny town, Radnor Forges, near Three Rivers teaching in spring, but she quits at end of term. (The next year the rural school closes anyway for lack of pupils). She advises her mother to not mention certain items in letters. “Everything here is spread broadcast in a few hours,” she writes. I am intrigued by the word “broadcast”. Wireless, as they called radio during the first part of the century, was just being invented by Marconi. So, the figure of speech came before the arrival of the medium of radio.

Edith likes to gossip, a lot. Some girls are incorrigible flirts, she says, some boys big babies. Still she mentions in a letter to sister Marion earlier in April that “It was a bitter blow when the dear boy left.” I don’t know whether she is being sarcastic or not about a boyfriend. Of course, she loses her great love in a fire two years later. His name is Charlie Gagne and I believe she is talking about him here.

OK. Time to WRITE!

OK. Down to work. I have the opening. Sunny spring afternoon in Richmond, Quebec 1908. 15 year old Flora Nicholson is curled up on a garden chair (wicker, Eaton’s catalogue purchase)on the porch, at Tighsolas, pencilling away at a ‘composition exercise’ about Canadian values. Her mother Margaret is inside in the kitchen preparing to go to La Tuque where her husband Norman works at ‘end of steel’ on the Transcontinental Railway. Norman has advised Margaret in a letter to tuck her money into her corset as there are pickpockets on the trains. I’ll have her sewing in a special pocket as she is a crack seamstress……