The Mount Royal Look Out 1910 (Valentine and son’s postcard)
In a 1913 letter, she remarks that she roasted a chicken ‘and on a Sunday.’
The Nicholsons were Presbyterians and very religious. Marion’s daughter, also Marion and my late mother in law, recalls that as a child in the 20′s, Sunday was a very quiet day at Tighsolas, as the kids couldn’t do anything.
Hmm. Margaret Nicholson went to church every day, and often twice a day. After all, there wasn’t much else to do in the house but work. And sermons were entertaining, and if the Minister was a dud, you still met neighbours and heard all the news at church.
In 1907, the Canadian Parliament passed the Lord’s Day Act. This is one case, where the leftist unions representing working people and religious institutions came together to try to give people a day of rest.
The United States hadn’t yet passed a such a law. In the 1909 Delineator, there’s an article. “Saving Sunday for America.” This Lord’s Day issue concerns both the man who carries ‘a dinner pail’ and the man who carries a Bible, says the article. The ordinary man, it seems, is merely inconvenienced. “I was up in Montreal the other day, where they’ve passed that blessed Lord’s Day Act, and do you know, I couldn’t buy a smoke in town. I was making something of a blow about it in the hotel lobby and when a young fellow stepped up to me and said, “Say, look here. Do you want to work seven days a week? ‘No,” I turned on him. “What has that got to do with it?” “Well,” he said.”I’m a cigar clerk and neither do I.”
It has been only since the 1990′s that large stores in Montreal have kept longer hours and stayed open Sunday. We still have few 24 establishments like in the US. Still, the parking lots of the mega shopping malls are now filled to the brim on Sundays. Shopping has become a leisure activity, one that is both ‘free’ and ‘expensive’, if you know what I mean. And with debit cards, and credit cards, money is almost always available. My father’s excuse for not spending on the weekends, “I didn’t get to the bank in time on Friday,” no longer stands up.
And in Quebec, we’ve just got rid of a rule that insists grocery stores keep no more than 6 people on staff on Sunday. They had to, because customers complained about the slow service. Many many people shop for food on Sundays, these days. We are a true 24/7 society, with more and more people working shifts.
Of course, the Lord’s Day Act contains an inherent Catch 22. If people are freed up on Sunday, not having to work, they need someplace to go for fun and leisure, like Dominion Park or the Nickel, and people are needed to run these entertainment establishments.
In Nickelodeons or Motion Picture Houses, apart from the people taking tickets, there was always a piano player and usually a speaker or explainer before and after the film – and sometimes even during the film. In French establishments the person was called a Bonmenteur and he was something of a cultural translator.
Today, in good economies at least, it’s students who take up the slack, taking tickets and doling out overpriced junk food at the local Odeon. It’s a perfect marriage of convenience, but only works if a student can keep up his or her grades.
