Fire and Water and Milk.

My grandfather’s letter of resignation to the City Council, dated September 23, 1930. It is stamped by the City Clerk’s office, Sept 29 and was debated in Council that very evening.

(Before Jules Crepeau, my grandfather,  was appointed Director of Services in 1920, he was the Assistant City Clerk. I thought that ‘ a little job ‘ but it wasn’t. EVERYTHING pertaining to City Business went through that office and my grandfather had a memory like a steel trap.)

Anyway, I have transcribed part of the long debate over my grandfather’s resignation, that has it all, anger, indignation, innuendo, veiled threats, humour and buffoonery, even some wit and clever repartee (a skill now extinct among politicians of all stripes and levels.)

I put it on my other blog, which mirrors this one: Flo in the City:

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.com/2011/11/mayor-houde-picks-up-gloveand-loses-his.html

Hmm. The more I read this front page Gazette report, the more questions I have about the REAL reason my grandfather was fired. Indeed, the opposition keeps asking this very question. I suspect EVERYBODY knows, but no one wants to spell it out.

The given reason, that it was his job as Director of Services to STOP the purchase of Montreal Water and Power is nutty. As if it was his job to tell the elected officials what to do.

During this debate, towards the end, Houde brings up the Laurier Theatre Fire, totally out of context. Now, that was, from what I have dug out of Internet archives, a troubling issue with respect to my grandfather….That’s the infamous fire where many children were killed and the reason why I couldn’t see movies in theatres as a child in Montreal.

So much so, I am wondering whether I should change the working title of my play about Montreal in 1927, Milk and Water, to Fire and Water.

My grandfather’s brother was VP of United Theatre Amusements. He ended up falling from an office window in 1932. In 1926, My grandfather is accused of allowing theatre owners to break the rules and let in young children unattended(by controlling the Police) by a Mr. Raney testifying before a US Senate hearing on Prohibition. Raney is a former Ontario Attorney General and one of those anal anti-everything fun Presbyterians. )

(I thought my mother once told me another brother was Fire Chief, but I have found no evidence of that.)

The 1927 Typhoid epidemic was caused by milk, not water, although the US scientists brought in to investigate couldn’t pinpoint the genesis of the epidemic, which  afflicted 5,000 and killed a few hundred.

An article was published in September in the Journal of the American Medical Association. My grandfather will talk about this in the play, which takes place in early September.

The scientists gave Montreal Tap water a clean bill  of health then. My grandfather will get down on my husband’s grandfather for exploiting the situation to sell his bottled water. As he did in 1909 the date of the last big typhoid epidemic, and since.

“It was from MILK, not water, ” my grandfather will say.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, “my husband’s grandfather will say. (This is an inside joke, as my husband uses this expression a lot!) It’s also what most people thought.

“Then why are we here?” my husband’s grandfather will ask.

“The Prince never drinks tap water, anywhere,” will reply my grandfather.

“I’m here to get him to approve of my new ginger ale, ” says my husband’s grandfather.

Something like that.

Here’s the ironic part. I found an article from the 1927 in the Gazette which claimed that 3,000 caught typhoid (“not alot in a city of a million”) when 4,500 did, according to the JAMA report.

That May article doesn’t say where the contagion came from though, so they didn’t know then. The article says city water is tested for bacteria daily and then goes on to praise Montreal’s wonderful water works.

So, in early September, when Milk and Water takes place, because the Royal Princes are in town to decompress and have fun, it probably wasn’t widely known that the epidemic came from milk.

I can play around with this.

The article mentions that the last great typhoid epidemic was in 1909. Funny,  no one seems too concerned about city water in the Nicholson Letters. There are no warnings from Mother Margaret, and she worries about EVERYTHING. Especially about her daughters catching colds and La Grippe.

I think this speaks to another key ‘angle’ of the MILK AND WATER  story… The Presbyterians weren’t worried so much about water and stuff, as they were CLEAN in spirit and body and habits.

Disease was a French and immigrant problem. Or so it was thought.

And the French and Immigrants looked skeptically upon the HYGIENIST movement because they were aware, of some level, that clean and pure meant WHITE and Protestant. They were aware the PURITY MOVEMENT was as much about ridding the world of certain races, as about health and well-being.

Father Norman, who had typhoid in 1896, says he doesn’t trust the water up North on the railway and goes around parched all the time. Funny.

Marion, Flora and Edith Nicholson: representative of their time in Quebec

Well, I’m trying to figure out what was happening in 1906, with respect to Macdonald College deciding to absorb the McGill Normal School.

As far as I can figure, there was some political wrangling going on: Macdonald College was going to create a school for rural teachers, separate from the Normal School. Some people felt the Normal School had neglected the needs of rural people. (I saw that they gave free tuition to city dwelling candidates starting in 1906, the year after Marion attended.)

But then with a two million dollar donation from Macdonald, Sir William that is, the Normal School was accepted into Macdonald College and a special committee of the Protestant Committee was set up to decide terms.

At stake, who was to decide how the teachers there should be trained. Well, they arrived at some compromise. All teachers now took Manual Training and Nature Study, for instance.

So now the tables were turned. In the past, it was the rural teachers who had trouble finding lodgings in Montreal while they were at school. (Marion. above, lodged at the Y). Now, students staying at home in the city while attending Macdonald would have to commute two hours a day.

I’m reading what articles I can find on the subject: what I did find out is that the Protestant Committee was committed to creating a bilingual province,committed to teaching French in the schools.

Yet, in the 1960′s, when I attended school in Montreal, French class was ineffective. (In large part this was because Catholic teachers couldn’t teach in the Protestant system.)

Today, all English schools are French immersion, but this is no bilingual province.

Very odd.

Anyway, in 1906 a resolution was passed allowing teachers without diploma to teach under special circumstances in rural schools. These teachers had to have at least Academy II. That is why Edith could teach. Many people were against this resolution, they saw it as lowering standards, going backwards…although it was said that no other jurisdiction in North America or Europe could expect most of its teachers to have a diploma. (That’s how special the Protestant Quebeckers felt they were with respect to education. Superior.)

Others thought it was just practical to allow some teachers to practice without a diploma: rural schools had trouble getting qualified teachers, what with the lonliness and boredom and tiny classes and lack of facilities, but especially since they didn’t want to pay good salaries.

I found a notice from April 1911, showing that Melbourne needs an elementary specialist with diploma and wants to pay out 20 dollars a month. Well, May Watters, who graduated that year, didn’t want that job. She wanted to work in the city for big bucks, and live with Marion. And she got a job in the city. I have to find someway to stick this in my story, possibly when Flora meets with her Principal in April 1911… to discuss her failing grade in French.

No question, Marion, Edith, and Flora Nicholson are representative of their time.

Everyone Hates the Normal

Marion, second from left, in Normal School photo.

Well, I was able to find a newspaper description of the 1927 Macdonald Normal School Graduation and the 1907 Mcgill Normal School Graduation, so that I can probably mesh the two and describe what likely happened at Flo’s graduation in 1911. Prayer to start, some choir singing (Flora was in the choir), lots of important people attending, some giving speeches. Prizes awarded.

I am pretty sure, a few years ago as I embarked on this research for Flora in the City, I read that Macdonald only absorbed the Mcgill Normal School reluctantly. Where did I read this?

I have puzzled together something about it from Gazette reports. In 1905, Macdonald (the Tobacco benefactor) said that his new school would not be absorbing the McGill Normal School (despite the fact that many assumed it would, that it was a natural thing.)

Then suddenly they are absorbing it…Political wrangling I guess. I’m assuming Principal Robins was against the move, as he resigned or lost his job when the transfer occurred, while all the other teachers moved to Macdonald, literally.

In 1906, the Normal School is saying it is looking for ways to create residences for women students, a big problem that keeps rural women from applying. (The Nicholson letters describe the huge problems young had getting places to live in Montreal.)

John Ferguson Snell’s book on Macdonald College states Macdonald absorbed the Normal School because in 1906, an educational official did a survey and figured out that Women Teaching Students had difficulty finding places to live in Montreal.

(Marion’s letters from Normal School reveal this. She stayed at the Y and hated it. Too many rules! I think I will have her talking to this official in 1906. Maybe she did! The Y rooms were cold, it seems, from Marion’s letters. Also, there’s an interesting bit in her letters about a Gazette letter that claims the Y, situated near the Windsor, is too good a location for teaching students, proving that women, alone in the city, were looked down upon.

One of Marion’s fellow students is writing a reply to the letter.)

I also found an article that showed that there was some kind of smear campaign agains the Normal School and its teachers in 1907 that went all the way to the Legislative Assembly and then the Head Instructor, a Miss Peebles, took an extended vacation to Europe.

And Dr. Robins, long time Principal of the Normal School, resigned when Macdonald took over the Normal School and he said, enigmatically, in his last speech during the graduation ceremonies that Macdonald had ‘wider connections.’

The fact is, I think, Macdonald always expected to have a teaching school, but one that taught manual training and nature study to rural candidates who would go back to the country to teach. In other words, they wanted to fill the void.

Neither Macdonald nor Robertson gave a hoot about city students, whose parents ‘herded to the city.’

And yet, that’s who they ended up helping. Teachers like Flora Nicholson didn’t want to teach in boring, ill-equipped rural schools, where there was no chance to find a husband. Not if they could help it.

The short of it is, Marion’s experiences in 1905/1906 at the Normal School, influenced the decision to have the Normal School put at Macdonald, where there were state of the art residences, new building, excellent ventilation, clean water and electricity!

(Apparently, the Belmont classrooms of the Normal School had terrible ventilation. A student passed out from gas poisoning or something. This is an interesting fact, if you consider the ‘health concerns’ of the era, tuberculosis, etc. )

Somehow I have to get this all in the novel…A little in the Flo novel, a lot in the Marion novel.

Just One More Magazine and Then I’ll Stop

Norman Nicholson, probably around 1920, a year or so before his death from an embolism.

I just purchased a 1909 Delineator from eBay. Cost a small fortune, but I can’t find my other edition that I bought about 5 years ago, and this one had an article about The Corset: Uses and Abuses. Also a bit about Ellis Island. It seemed promising.

I have written in a mention of this magazine into Flora and the City. I feel I must, it has been written out of history.

And I just found out, Theodore Dreiser was the publisher of this magazine between 1907 and 1910. Big on ‘child rescue’ as in adoption.

He left under a cloud of scandal, but it had nothing to do with his work.

Ahem.

Just took a walk around the old Macdonald Campus, now John Abbott as I was picking up a relation at the bus there.

I walked the dogs near the Stewart Hall, which is the old women’s residence, I guess. A big building, now apartments. “Danger” say some signs around it. I guess the building is losing bits and pieces.

A Familiar Sounding Guide to Phonics

Hmm. Here’s a book titled Phonics Made Easy.

It’s aimed at teachers and Moms.

It is written by one Samuel Bower Sinclair, who happened to be the Principal of the Macdonald Teaching School from 1909 and 1911. So this man, a white haired Scot like Flora’s father Norman Nicholson, was the Principal when both May and Flora attended. I have his picture, too, from the McGill Education website.

In my first draft of Flora in the City, I mistakenly wrote that Sinclair Laird, the legendary Quebec educator, was the Principal (I have her shaking his hand at the graduation) but that wasn’t the case. He came on in 1913 and stayed for a long while.

S.B. Sinclair (as he called himself) was the one who probably shook her little hand at graduation. I figured this out when I perused the definitive book on Macdonald College, by John Ferguson Snell at the Westmount Library Yesterday. I had read it five years ago. Dr. Sinclair (as he had a PhD) was mentioned, but only briefly.

I went on the Internet and found nothing about him, except his full name. But now, with his full name, I was able to track down a few books on education he wrote. One in 1909, actually, about educational psychology and this one in 1917.

Reading this particular book, I was gob-smacked by the fact that the first three sample lessons seem to focus on the words cat and ham and sam. Get my drift.

I have seen a number of Royal Crown Readers of the era (as I research Flo and the City) and their beginning exercises are SO BORING I always think of Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)and how much FUN we ALL had reading Sr. Seuss, when my sons were young. “Do you like my hat?” Just thinking of the story lines tickles me pink.

Then I find this old book and I wonder if Dr. Seuss saw it too and then thought, “I can go one better than CAT on the MAT. That’s not how the story goes, according to Wikipedia, anyway. The brilliant man was supposedly given a list of words by the Director of Education at Houghton Mifflin, which he honed down and used to write his books. So maybe this Director of Education had this Sinclair book on hand.

Now, oddly, I spent some time last decade on Literacy Projects and I am certain I read a paper that claimed that Dr. Seuss’s books did not teach reading through phonics, but through Word Recognition.

Here’s Lesson 1 of Sinclair’s book. Now, S.B. Sinclair had a doctorate, too, like Geisel, and he wanted to teach reading, too, and he had the concept down, CAT MAT -HAM -SAM but what he didn’t have is GENIUS, and he hadn’t worked in advertising, either, as had Dr. Seuss. (I know Albert Einstein is thought to be the man who best illustrates genius, but I choose Dr. Seuss.)

Now, I happen to have one of Flora’s notebooks, with notes about “Reading.” It is not totally out of the realm of possiblity that Sinclair gave a lecture to her class (even thought he was Principal and not a teacher).

Flora writes: Sounds: paper, metal, water, animal, vehicles. Direct attention is position of throat. Tell them things to do the sounds.

Stories: Don’t read stories directly to young children TELL them.

Sinclair gives the same advice in his book.

This is all very useful for my Flora in the City story.

OH, and while looking for S.B. Sinclair online, an archive.org document came up that completely describes Macdonald College, the layout of the buildings and what rooms are in them, in a way no other book I found does. What luck!

Some things I learned: Teachers take class on the second and third floor of the main building. All students must study in their rooms between 8 pm and 10 pm each night.

And most interesting: It is plainly stated that Macdonald is about training RURAL teachers, which makes it all so ironic. Also interesting: A candidate for Macdonald must have a recommendation from the School Inspector. (Mr. Carmichael?.. must check Census. Carmichael was the Prebyterian Minister.. but that doesn’t preclude him being School Inspector. Margaret also mentions a Mr. Cleveland.)

There are no academic qualifications for the Household Science…. although, like the teachers and agriculture students, candidates must be of sound moral character. That might be why the Clergyman has such sway in education matters; although it is likely he is attached to the school.