VERI OLD NEWS!

Ticket for Diamond Jubilee Exposition, August 20 to 28, 1897. Montreal. Nicholson Collection.

I thought I’d track down the story of this ticket I have in the “Nicholson Collection.” I’ve been thinking a bit about Royalty, what with the King’s Speech coming out.

My mother, a French Canadian, knew all about the British kings and queens, past and present, but I get all the Georges and Edwards and VII’s and X’s mixed up.

A few years ago, I was in a library at McGill, trying to track down the story of Edith Nicholson’s great love who died in a hotel fire in early May 1910 – and found out that the King (Edward VII) died at the same time, and the Montreal Star newspaper had a full section on that event.

Edith Nicholson, I’m sure, did not grieve with the rest of the loyal Colonials upon that sovereign’s death. Her pain was more personal.

Anyway, I was able to track down the story of this Diamond Jubilee Exposition, which was not a success, despite being blessed with good weather.

It had been postponed from an earlier date, due to some huge conflagration, and many farmers couldn’t get into town in late August to exhibit -or something to that effect.

It was not a special occasion anyway. An exposition was held every year (in the fashion of ‘the great industrial expositions’ worthy of ‘a great industrial city’ like Montreal, except it seems the city’s business elite “the prince merchants and others… did not come forward with enthusiasm.”

Well, Norman Nicholson attended: I have his ticket. I wonder if any tanners were exhibiting. In 1897, the year after he built TIGHSOLAS, Norman was still supplying hemlock bark to the tanning industry.

This 1897 Expo was merely dedicated to the Queen at the time of her Diamond Jubilee. (In other words, no special event was mounted, as in other Canadian cities. Apparently the Parliament Buildings were garlanded in lights.)

“At the opening of this Jubilee Exposition, it is appropriate for us to assure you of our highest appreciation of your labours in promoting and carrying out the memorial tribute of this city to her most gracious Majesty the Queen, whom we both love and revere.”

On the opening day of this “International” exposition, many exhibitors hadn’t yet bothered to set up their displays, it seems.

The President of the Montreal Exposition listed the names of the non-agricultural exhibitors in his opening speech: Christie Brown Biscuits; Bovril “everyone knows Bovril”; Karn Piano Company; Leeming Miles and Company pharmaceuticals; National Cash Register; the Canadian Rubber Company; American Dunlop Tire Company; Canadian Liquor Company; and other companies showcasing their metal ranges, hot water boilers, metal roofs, fire hoses… and of course, a number of local Textile companies, including Dominion Textile, exhibited. (Hmm, lots of metals, rubber and textiles: major UK exports of the era.)

There was also an exhibition of ‘ladies work.’

On the last day of the Exhibition, a Montreal alderman complained that one of the the textile companies were exhibiting unlabeled dry goods manufactured outside of Canada.

Or could it be that Montreal manufacturers were ashamed of their products, the left them unlabeled so that customers would suppose they were manufactured elsewhere.

Wilfried Laurier returned to Canada on the day the exhibition closed. He had been attending the Jubilee Celebrations in England and lobbying for a kind of free trade among Commonwealth Countries.

I guess Montreal had to wait until 1967 to get it right.

Other tidbits I found interesting in that 1897 newspaper: “Remarkable, if true.”X-rays it is said will show the bones in the bodies of people.

Also this one: “Veriscopes were being shown at the theatres. Just another name for early film. Wanna go see a Veri today? What’s that veri with Colin Firth, where he plays a stammering king who is only 2 years old right now? Could have been…

And among the many other entertainments advertised in the local fun houses, a show call Moulin Rouge. Hmm. I didn’t think the Moulin Rouge act was famous back then as it just a sleazy Montmartre show, featuring fallen women… I must be wrong. Must check it out.

Fire of Genius

The Lauriers. Library and Archives Canada Image.

This snippet is from Maclean’s 1911 “the Four Lauriers” an essay that claims that there are at least four sides to the Laurier personality: the Laurier in ‘hostile’ Ontario; the Laurier in Quebec; the Laurier in Parliament; and the Laurier in his private office. This part is the Quebec part: Laurier would lose the election that year. In my novel Flo in the City, I have Margaret see him at the 1908 Tercentenary. She did attend, but was more interested in the Prince, I think.

The second Laurier that claims attention is the Laurier in Quebec. He has all those other heroes of that hero worshipping province , Lafontaine, Cartier, Mercier, Champlain, beaten a mile. Leaving the navy and individual politics out of the question, he unites all qualities the French demand of their public men, grace, distinction, eloquence and stage presence. He is a man to turn and look at in any company in the world. He might be taken for a great poet, a great actor, a great statesman. And any guess would be a good one, for he needs to be all three in his business. At all events, it is Quebec’s boast that you couldn’t mistake him for a little man anywhere. He is greater than the clergy; greater than that mauvais sujet Henri Bourassa; greater even than Quebec, for he thinks in half continents and Quebec thinks only for herself.

His name is music in the Quebec believer’s ear, for after all is said and done it is a French name and honor to Laurier is honor to the race. Envious people say that what Laurier gets in Quebec is divine homage such as the ancient Romans paid their emperors…

Sir Wilfrid himself is not without a sense of his own value with his own people. Being twitted once by a platform opponent, he quoted the words of a French philosopher, who, when asked what he thought of himself, replied “Very little when I judge; very much when I compare.”

Sir Wilfrid loves his Quebec and his Quebec loves him. And of all places in it he loves most its quaint old capital city, which was the beginning of Canada. The reason Sir Wilfrid loves Quebec is because it is soaked in history. Every foot of it is sacred ground; every inch of it teems with sentiment. The world is ruled by sentiment and there is no place in the world where sentiment is better conserved and oftener used than in Quebec. Politicians have to grasp this point at the start or they don’t go far – in Quebec. In Ontario they call it rhetoric and sniff at it, in Quebec they speak of it as the fire of genius and warm themselves at it. Sir Wilfrid is a great orator of the kind Quebec likes. Critics say that his English is better than his French – and that may be.

POWDERED WIGS AND PURPLE HOSE 20th installment

A studio photo of Margaret, my husband’s great grandmother taken around 1910.

“Well, she may be French, but she does not read Salon de la Mode, that’s for certain.”

Flora, seated on a sturdy pine kitchen chair, was reading out a letter from Mother which the written Saturday morning. The tea was steeping on the kitchen table in the family pot bundled in a dark brown crocheted cozy. Margaret was being uncharacteristically catty about Madame Laurier, at Quebec, where she was participating in the Tercentenary Celebrations. “Her dress was a crumpled balloon-shaped mess.”Of course, we all looked dowdy compared to the Heralds walking the streets in their purple capes and green bloomers and big broad hats with enormous feathers.Sir Wilfrid has all the style in that couple. . Yes, I saw the great man, but only from afar. I do have a lot to tell you but I will wait until I get home. I will probably write more in this letter when I get to La Tuque and mail it from there. We are leaving soon.”

Marion and Edith and Flo all chuckled.

Salon de la Mode was a high fashion magazine, one that the Nicholsons didn’t read either. When Ethel C,’s aunt went to Europe she brought back a copy of the magazine from Paris; it was a flimsy publication compared to the Delineator or even the Ladies’ Home Journal, but it contained a two page spread of an elegant wedding party with a simply delicious bridal gown, a voluptuous cascade of silk, crepe, and organdy, all beaded in mother of pearl. Ethel sighed and swore, in far-too-sincere fashion, that she was going to wear a dress just like that – and within two years. And ever since then the Nicholsons had used Salon de la Mode as a private code for high fashion.

Edith poured some green tea and Flora continued. Sunday afternoon:We arrived here at half past eleven, had a hot, dirty trip. Had to drive a mile to the hotel where we are boarding and the worst hills you ever saw. Where we boarded in Quebec was very nice,by the way. I thought I liked the cooking. This is not very nice and I don’t think I will stay here very long and the flies just terrible and today has been very hot. Father is going down to Grand Ligne tomorrow, so I will go with him. I hope you are getting along all right. Father says to get Stanley to cut the grass. The scenery is just beautiful here. I may go fishing or picking berries tomorrow, at the camp. It will be lovely, the peace and quiet after Quebec. I’ve had my fill of hearing bands playing O Canada, I tell you.” Love Mother. Remember to eat!

“I guess,” said Marion “we will have to wait to hear all about the celebrations.” She was disappointed.

But Flora suspected, as did Marion, that Mother was being tactful. She did not want to rub it in, especially to Edith, about how grand everything was. It was no secret: The newspapers had been full of stories about the pageant performances, with photographs of the many members of Quebec high society dressed up in powdered wigs and purple hose to entertain – and educate- the 10′s of thousands visitors to their city with some leading citizens dressed as Henry IV and his entourage, Jacques Cartier and Dollard, even as some bronzed Indians, in their war feathers and stripped to the waist. The concerts, the sports for the soldiers, the tattoos and military parades in the crowded and festooned streets of the old city, where every window was draped in bunting, and the spectacular military review on the Plains of Abraham, it had all been described in detail. The French Bluejackets swarming all over town, on friendly terms with all their British, Canadian and American counterparts. Lord Roberts, the greatest living soldier walking in the steps of General Wolfe and mourning at the grave of Montcalm. The New Hampshire, the last of the great white ships, been blown into Harbour. The Prince of Wales arriving on a great modern battleship, the Indomitable, and being met by the Governor General and then spirited to the Citadel in a fine carriage pulled by eight glistening black horses and feted at a great ball at Parliament.

No, Margaret was holding back this time, for she normally wrote about her adventures in detail while away. Even if she was just around the corner in Kingsbury or Coaticook, she described a good (or bad meal) or even the scenery. That’s what letters were for. In 1902, on a trip to New York to see her friend Mrs. Pray, she wrote enthusiastically in letters home about all the tall tall buildings, busy department stores, the chaotic city streets, teeming with pedestrians and trams and wagons, and her eventful trip across the Brooklyn Bridge where she was caught in an open carriage in a squall with hail the size of peas and cherries, raining down on her. No, clearly something was on her mind. Something was keeping her pen unusually still.