The More Things Change..

Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services.

Today, I saw that Montreal’s Police Force was coming under fire for being soft on organized crime.  It came up on my Google News as it is set for “Quebec” (automatically I guess) but it’s a Vancouver Sun article reprint of a Postmedia article by Henry Aubin. According to Aubin Montreal has a huge police force that is very ineffective, against all crime.

Hmm. That’s what they said in 1927 with the Coderre Report. It’s all in my play MIlk and Water  -about Montreal in the Jazz Age, where I have my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services have a talk with my husband’s grandfather, Thomas Wells, Westmount Businessman.

Anyway, another article in the same box is from the Montreal Gazette: Best Treated Minority? Think Again. Apparently, an economic think tank has come out with figures showing that Angl0-Quebeckers are underfunded. Surprise! I have written before how virtually all projects focusing on Anglo Arts are funded by ONE government agency, Heritage Canada that also funds French outside of Quebec and since we’re ‘a minority within a minority’ we get short shrift. I’ve given up on ever getting any funding for my projects, which don’t fit the bill anyway. They are big into funding projects to do with the Military these days.  It’s all a scam, let’s face it. It’s all about Control.

But this article, by Don MacPherson discusses a report that compared Provincial funding across Canada for minorities and apparently, Quebec came out dead last for funding for minority language by far.

How is this a surprise, tho?

It’s sad that Anglo schools are poorly funded though. As I have written elsewhere, in the 1960′s the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal was the best performing in North America.

And so many of these students went on to brilliant careers, mostly in Ontario.

I was thinking of this last night. Sometimes I play this game, where I try to invoke a ‘new’ childhood memory… It seldom works.. But last night I remembered my grade six play. I won the lead, the Princess.  I recalled going to the audition, wearing this old purple sweater I had.  We wore tunics in those days, uniforms, but there were still opportunities to show off nice clothes. I had none. (My mother had grown up rich as my play Milk and Water shows, and didn’t know how  to manage a family on a middle class budget.

Anyway, I went to the audition after school and the director was not a school teacher, but some ‘older’ woman who looked like Agnes Moorehead – who we knew as Samatha’s mother on Bewitched. Everyone made fun of that, and then they made fun of my sweater (can’t recall the context, I think because it was “royal” purple and our play as about Royalty. It had a Prince Charming. A spinning wheel. I guess it was Cinderella/Rapunzel.

So, as I said, I won the lead, perhaps because of my sad sweater (maybe Agnes Moorehead was sorry for me)… Then again, at the performance, (I recall being scared to death and HATING being on stage), my Dad said I was the only one who articulated properly.

Anyway, Prince Charming was a guy called Lorne Abugov and he refused to kiss me, (as 11 years olds tend to do) which was traumatizing enough. I think (although not 100 percent sure) that Lorne’s brother is Jeff, a man who went on to write for Hollywood, and on top shows. Cheers the Golden Girls, producer Roseanne and now he’s producer of Two and a Half Men.

Well,  maybe not a typical career of a former ango-Montrealer, but an example.

 

As it happens, I’m getting to work on Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about two teachers in 1910, (Edith and Marion Nicholson) the follow up to Threshold Girl and I am contemplating that angle, wondering exactly how classrooms ran in those days. Probably not unlike the way they ran in my day. Marion left behind a diary during her first year of teaching, but it’s all about her boyfriends and her activities at the skating rink. No shop talk. (Well, I guess diaries for teachers are considered an invasion of privacy. Tell that to What’s his name, Gervais Gervase Phinn, the guy who writes his experiences about North Yorkshire schools.) Or maybe they don’t have time to keep work diaries. Marion didn’t have time with her 50 ‘very bad’ students. Or maybe teachers, as a rule, are ‘action=oriented’ not introspective. Marion was totally action-oriented. That’s why she became a union leader during the War.)

I know a diary exists at Harvard, of a more serious girl who did no dating….

Apparently teachers who were interested in getting boyfriends (the majority) didn’t mention that they were teachers. A teacher was not a profession that attracted the boys. So it goes. Marion was an exception and this makes Edith jealous (in my story).

TOPSY TURVEY WORLD 9th installment

A roll in the hay? Flo and friends. 1907 or 8.

“I have some good news,” Margaret announced to Flora, as she closed the door behind kind neighbour Mr. Skinner, who had picked her up at the train and seen her home. It was Sunday evening, 7 o’clock. Marion was already on her way back to Sherbrooke. Finessing her lesson plan, no doubt. “Edith has given her notice into the head man there. She’ll be returning home for good on the 26th of June.”

Flora blinked, but was not surprised. Her mother had clearly gone to Three Rivers on a mission – and now she knew what the mission had been.

Poor Edie. She’d only taken the position out of a sense of duty to her parents. If she were not getting married, better that she earn her own keep, even if her wages were barely enough to sustain herself, let alone help out her parents.

A year before, on her birthday, things had looked much rosier. Marion and Flora had sent their older sister a note:

My dear old girl,

To greet thee on thy birthday (age?) we the undersigned wish to express our appreciation for your very valuable services rendered so grudgingly and grumblingly up to this venerable old age. We sincerely wish you many happy returns of this notable day and we will multiply our regards a ‘tousan fol’ if by this time next year you would take unto yourself a spouse and charm him into realms of bliss with your exquisite and delicious cooking.

Marion Annie Nicholson and Flora Margaret Nicholson.

The note was kindly meant, as it did look like Edith was soon to be married. Why else had she suddenly decided not to attend the Symons Business School in Boston.

But her beau, one Charlie G. had not proposed as expected (perhaps it had something to do with the Nicholson’s fall in fortunes, Mrs. Montgomery had cruelly speculated) and Edith was left, in 1907, without any plan for the future.

J.R. McLeod, Minister at Three Rivers, came to the rescue with a request. “Dear Edith,

The Manager of Works at a town 15 miles from here says he is looking for a suitable girl to teach 1o children. Her pay would be 20 dollars a month, and it would likely cost 10 dollars a month for room and board. A diploma is not needed. I am sure you are up to the task.”

Edith took the job, hoping, no doubt, that her absence would make his heart grown fonder.

Her work was going well and the people in charge were very pleased – they’d had so much trouble keeping their teachers. And she was something of a fashion plate in the small company town “Everyone here loves the way I do up my hair, ” she wrote in a letter home.

But in winter word got back to Edith that Charlie was attending dances in Richmond.

So the couple parted ways in March.

She called it ‘a growing experience’ in a letter to Marion and seemed to take it all in stride; but Margaret and Norman were worried. Edith was being pursued by a certain Mr. Young. In a letter home, Edith described him as ‘a persistent beggar who won’t take no for an answer’. “He’s not a bad sort, but his people aren’t much,” she added.

This is what Flora knew of the situation, the information Mrs. Montgomery had tried so hard to squeeze out of her at Saturday luncheon.

Flora also knew that Margaret blamed Edie, at least to some degree, for the break up. She had overheard her mom telling Marion at Easter:”She does not put any effort into it. She loves the attention and suspense, but she isn’t practical about romance.

Edie is not practical about very much, replied Marion. She’s impulsive. It’s not in her nature to compromise. She wants to taste it all.

Yes, I’m afraid you have all the focus in the family, Margaret had told her second oldest daughter, which was true enough, but Flora did not like hearing it.

Margaret, at the moment, in the master bedroom, as Flora placed her suitcase beside the giant vanity table, was admitting to nothing.

But then little Flora was deliberately kept out of the loop on so many things. All Margaret offered was this., ” It is such a lonesome place. You should see the sad examples of humanity there. The poor young girls wasting the best years of their lives, the way they cling to friendships and are desperate for news of any kind. Well, at least I learned how my pots and pans are made.

How are they made, Mother?

Well, there’s bogs and iron deposits, and coal and immense furnaces and smokestacks and molten iron and sand and moulds. And father says the ironworks are antiquated, by modern standards. He says they are probably spewing soot into the air and that’s why Edith has suffered from so many headaches lately.

The Company doctor there said she had to give up drinking tea. Can you imagine?

Both Father and I agreed, she must leave. For her health.

So you will have your sister back, for now. Oh, and I’ve decided on something else. I will be going to Quebec at the end of July for the tercentary celebrations. I must keep an eye on the Prince.

And then you and Mae are off to Massachusetts. Oh, Flora, At least I have one child who is giving me no worries. Speaking of which, was there a letter from Herb in the mail yesterday? Father is frantic.

“No, Mother.” Flora blushed. If mother only knew the truth. If she only realized how topsy turvy her world was at the moment. How confused she was about it all. How she could find no consolation anywhere, even at church. How her favorite place, the verandah at Tighsolas on a sunny afternoon, provided no peace of mind, either. It was June and exams were coming up. And she had no one to help her pass.

Domestic Bliss

I am not 100 percent sure who these people are. The picture was pasted in between pictures of family and the old lady, who died in 1912, so this isn’t likely to be Marion in 1917. Must be other people’s babies.

Before I finally get to writing the next chapter: A Modern Conundrum of my novel Flo in the City (about a young girl coming of age in the exciting 1908-1913 era, based on http://www.tighsolas.ca/ my website, I will ponder two little bits from two letters in my collection I just re-read… One is from a young woman announcing her engagement to Margaret in 1907. Another is from an American relation who is giving news of his family in the same era.

In the first letter the woman says ‘I always feared I would be left on Father’s hands.’ But that didn’t happen, she went to Shawville, a town in the Eastern Townships, and met a man. “He is a fine young man, clever, good position, I think good-looking, a perfect gentleman.. and so kind…”

A perfect man:) I imagine Margaret smiled when she read this. The young lady goes on to say that “We are going to Ottawa to meet Mother. You see, he can meet her in Ottawa and the curious eyes of the Shawvilleites will not be gazing on him to see how he likes his mother in law.” Small town life…you see.

The other letter is most interesting in that it is a man describing his happy home in Boston: “Lizzie is alway busy, housework, sewing for herself and children, helping neighbours, taking painting lessons, painting pictures, doing churchwork, a little of everything.”

However, in the same letter he says how his young daughter just got over a serious bout of pneumonia and it appears his older son is lame (polio?) and that his leg needs to be worked and attended to.

From the stationery, it appears this man is in the business of furnishing concerts, lectures, musical and literary entertainment for churches, lodges, clubs,and drawing rooms. (People had no radio and tv. He must have been doing well. They likely had servants, someone to cook and launder, the two major chores, or the wife would not have had time to paint.) Still, I imagine the wife’s life isn’t so wonderful…what do you think?

And in yet another 1907 letter, a Marion King, from Calgary writes Marion and asks if Edith is married yet and jokes that in Calgary a woman isn’t an old maid until 35, so there is hope for her yet.

So, on to my next chapter. Marion and Edith are at home… Marion will tell her about that letter from Miss King…I wonder how Edith will react. She is oldest and there is pressure to get married.

Oh, and I found an odd letter from February 1908, I had missed. It is to Flora from Dr. Henry Watters in Newton Centre Massachusetts, and it is rather flirtatious in tone, even giddy. (Unless it is merely patronizing.)

He started his practice in 1903, so he is likely around 28-30.

A weird line: “It is truly sorrowful about yourself and Montgomery. I can sympathize but cannot really appreciate the situation never having had experience in that line.” Did she write him about a boyfriend.. and is he mocking her, as a younger person. And has he never had experience in that line? This man never married, and died young in 1937,(he’s buried with the clan in Richmond) after a fairly distinguished career at a Boston hospital, but is it at all possible her visit in August was a set up of sorts.

Edith and Marion went in 1912. Marion mentions at that time that his house is very well appointed and that they have all the latest gadgets. His sister tends house for him. He has a Stanley Steamer in 1908. In 1903, when he first goes to Massachusetts, he writes Norman and says he has only poor patients who pay very little or nothing at all, but that he hopes to get into a good practice – which eventually happens.