Cleanliness is an Attitude

Attitude Floor and Wood cleaner.

I just found a product I’ve been looking for. Something to polish wood that isn’t toxic. Lately, I inherited some antique furniture but I am loathe to clean it, as I do not like furniture polishes.

Now, admittedly, my job as a child was to polish the furniture, using Pledge (oil and aerosol) and also to clean the bathtub, using Old Dutch Powder. All this crap going into my young lungs,mixing with the ubiquitous clouds of second hand smoke.

But parents didn’t worry about such things back then. They didn’t worry much. It was good times, stable times for the middle class, give or take a Cuban Missile Crisis or two.

I guess the threat of nuclear war looming over the planet made every other worry pale in comparison.

Well, the prosperity helped, too.

Pledge, Old Dutch, DDT and all the sweet smelling lead emanating fromm the tail pipes of those bright pink TBirds with the big fancy tailfins.

And the 60′s air pollution in the city. Legend. Any person who lived in the suburbs or country knew that  visit to the city meant smelly hair and even smokey underwear.

OK. All that and I’ve had only one serious lung disease, pneumonia, when my own kids were about 10, caused by being run down and by being prescribed too many anti-biotics for little things like sore throat and then this mighty bug swept through our household and I didn’t have the resistance to fight it.

Anyway, if the 60′s were bad, the crap in our food has only gotten worse. So I do buy organic veggies when I can and ‘artisanal’ meats like chicken, which, our course actually have texture and taste.

But the other day I had to laugh or cry. I was visiting my sister in law, in her beautiful home with the cathedral windows and she found ants in the kitchen and began spraying all over with Raid.

I turned to my husband and said, “There go all the benefits from eating organic for the past 10 years.”

The woman, a product of the 50′s, is intrepid when it comes to dirt and bugs and such. The stronger the cleaner the better.

And I only use these Attitude Products. Which are fine. For cleanliness. For that 50′s pristine look, well go elsewhere.

Now, my story Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf is about the 1910 era, the era of Pure Soap, Pure Water and Pure Women.

The Soap-Industrial Complex got a toehold in that era. In large part because dirty homes (and the mostly immigrant women who kept them) were being blamed for all the problems of industrialization. All the bodily illnesses and all the ‘moral’ ones too.

The adage “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” was not a mere metaphor,back then, it was to be taken LITERALLY. And it gave the moral high ground automatically to the elite and upper middle class who could afford servants. And it kept other middle class women from getting ‘restless woman syndrome’ and picking up a placard to protest their second class status.

And this ideology filtered down through the century, reaching a kind of apex in the 1950′s, for it was used to drive women back into the home after the war.

And these cleaning product companies, that promoted PURITY above all, because GIANTS over the century and now many of them make anti-cancer and asthma drugs too. And pesticides too. Kind of weird, I’d say. Kind of weird, but good for business and as well all now know WHATEVER IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS IS “GOOD.”

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..

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?