Nicholson Family Saga: Letter 7. So Bloomingly Poor

Tighsolas,
June 28, 1911
Richmond Quebec

Dear Father,

Your will see by the heading where I am. I only got here Monday evening for I went to Hudson with the Fields’ and had a fine time. They have a cottage by the lakeside and they also have a motor boat where I spent most of my time.

Then one of the men there had a yacht and he took us for a sail from Hudson to Ste. Anne’s and back and after all I find Richmond quite a nice place although it looks queer without a station.

Did I tell you that we really have got an increase of salary for next year so that I will be getting $650 next year and they have given me the next class on my way to the top so that my work I hope will be easier.

The next time you see me you will find me sporting a pair of glasses. I had Dr. Byers examine my eyes and he said that I should wear them all the time but I find that very hard to do and a great deal of the time they stay in their case.

Mother, Edith and Flora have gone to our opera house to hear the famous Lorne Elwyn and I am keeping house with Floss for protection from the tramps. Last night Dr. Skinner took us for a ride from Corris nearly to Trenholmville. It was great and the first time I have been cool for a week.

Since I have not been here very long I have not any Richmond news so will close for this time.

Lovingly,

Marion

Hudson is a picturesque town on the Lake of Two Mountains, just off the island of Montreal. In 1910 it would have been a vacation site. Ste Anne is at the Western most part of island and where Macdonald College and Macdonald Teachers School were situated. The campus now houses John Abbott CEGEP (Junior and Technical College) but also McGill Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.

On May 1, 1911, while still at school in Montreal Marion sent this important letter to her Mother.

Tower Street,
May 1, 1911
Dear Mother,

This is just to let you know that I am still alive and as homely as ever. Got your letter with news of the dance in it and had it not been that I was so bloomingly poor, I might have called on you and perhaps stayed over night. Edith will soon be going home – in about two weeks I think.

There is not much doing now but the Horse Show which as I have not a beau I am not going. Mrs. Ellis (boarding house matron)had two tickets sent to her for tonight so she is taking Edith with her.

I was up at the Cleveland’s Wednesday evening to play bridge and last Friday Mrs. Wylie phoned and asked me to tea to meet a nice man. Of course, I went on the jump. The man turned out to be a Mr. Blair from Three Rivers, a brother of Margaret McLeod’s husband.

I have had my white coat cleaned and am getting a new skirt to go with it and last Saturday I got busy and washed and ironed my linen one. It is time for me to go out and eat so will say adieu for the present.

Lovingly, M A Nicholson ESQ (Men only wrote esquire after their name; this is a joke)

The Horse Show was a yearly event. In a special feature in the Montreal Star about the Horse Show the year before in 1910, it was written:”The automobile shall never replace the horse in man’s affections.” Whoops!

Young women in 1910 were still introduced to young men through connections, not through chance meetings, or on the Internet dating sites.

The Nicholson Family Saga: Letter 5: Fire!

June 21, 1911

Tighsolas
Richmond Quebec

Dear Father,

Just a few lines to give you a little of the news. The station was burned to the ground this afternoon ! It started about half past four. Flora went down to see it with Paul. And at six Dr. Skinner took Mrs. S, Mother,Flora and myself down in the car. All that is left are the tall chimneys so I guess we shall have a new station at last.

I have been up for breakfast and every morning since I came home. That is quite a record, don’t you think. Monday we had a large washing, got up early and had it all finished and out at a quarter to eleven. And finished the ironing today. We are still busy with the sewing.

Marion’s school (Royal Arthur in Little Burgundy) finishes today so she will be home soon. I saw by the paper last night that Isabel McCoy (teacher and family friend) was to be married July 12th.

I had a splendid trip home to Montreal with the Skinners. It was a beautiful day going out. I will name the places we passed through so you will know the country we passed through. Melbourne, Flodden, Racine, Sawyerville, Warden, Waterloo, Granby, Abbotsford, St Caesar, Rougemont, Marieville, Chambly, Longueil, St. Lambert, Pointe St Charles. In Montreal, we went shopping in the morning,to the theatre in the afternoon and to tea at Dr.Cleveland’s. Then Dr. Skinner took us for a ride, from 8 to 10 at night.It is beautiful riding on paved streets.

Don’t you think I was a very fortunate girl to have such a trip? Tomorrow the 22nd I am going to North Hatley with the Skinners. Will be back that evening. They are very kind to us.

Flora is feeling better since the exams are passed. (Results would be posted in the local paper later on.)

Yvonne Villard (daughter of Principal Paul Villard of Ecole Methodiste) is coming out next week for a few days. Miss Wilson’s barn is not yet finished, Walker is still working. They have the foundation very well along at the Montgomery’s.

Another Bryant preached last Sunday evening. He was through the General Assembly. I cannot think of any more news so will close. Hope you are well and that the fly season will soon pass.

We are all well. Write soon.

Flora got your letter With much love, Your affectionate Edith

….Richmond exists because of the Grant Trunk Railway, which in 1910 was still one of the two major employers in the town. Richmond was a railway hub, poised between Quebec City and Portland, Maine.

Norman Nicholson used the GTR to get his loads of hemlock bark to the tanning businesses in New England (mostly New Hampshire) and in Montreal, all by the Lachine Canal, near Marion’s Royal Arthur School. He left his reciept books behind showing that a great deal of money was flowing, at least in the 1880′s, through his bark business.

This is the year they get a big new station, which stills stands (vacant) today. Richmond was already in decline in 1910 (as the letters clearly reveal) but by the 1930′s the railroad had little business.

According to the 1911 census, Mademoiselle Villard lives with her parents at 1095 Greene, in Westmount, the same address Edith stays at during the school year.

It is likely the site of Ecole Methodiste. Today, 1095 Greene is a site of a more modern post war school.

Edith says she enjoys every minute of a 6 and 3/4 hour drive over 94 miles. But if you crunch the numbers, it is clear that the Skinner’s automobile went an average of 14 miles an hour to make that trip.(15 miles an hour was the speed limit in the country, 8 miles an hour in the city). If you consider that the E.T. is very hilly, the drive was probably more fun than the roller-coaster at Dominion Park, the amusement park opened in 1906, on Notre Dame on the eastern side of the island. Imagine how fast the car went down the hills!

NEWSFLASH, January 1911..Montreal Quebec…

Tighsolas. 1910 ish. Ah for simpler times. NOT REALLY!

I’m taking a trip around the newspaper of 1911, the Montreal Gazette. 100 years ago.

Sunkist oranges, seedless, ripe and ready were available from Gravel Freres on Ste. Catherine for 2.60 a case or 25 cents a dozen. (I’m jealous because the oranges I can get are all dry and tasteless.)

Anna Pavlova and the Russian Imperial Ballet were in town, tickets 50 cents to 2.5o. (The Nicholson never mentioned the ballet: I believe that in 1911 Les Ballets Russes and Nijinksy were wowing them in Covent Garden, attracting the intelligentsia and the bohemian class.)

Anna Pavlova.

Speaking of which, also playing in Montreal was a show called Bohemian Burlesque. I’m guessing it wasn’t quite as tasteful as the ballet. The Nicholson girls didn’t attend that event either. Of that I can be certain.

(Although if I wanted to spice up my story, I could have one of them being tricked into going.)

No, “Everywoman” was their speed. That was a morality play also featuring beautiful young women in gorgeous costumes. The play warned agains the sin of vanity.

And, a sign of the times, another play was in town called The N Word.

In other less sexy and less racist and more mercantile news, Chicken was trading at 11 cents to 13 cents per pound. Remember, chicken was a kind of luxury back then, the Nicholsons lived on beef and pork which was fairly cheap.

Gee, I almost bought an organic chicken at Loblaw’s for 25 dollars. It looked about 6 pounds or less. I wasn’t sure if organic meant free range, so that the muscle would have some texture and not be pure MUSH like it always is nowadays, so I didn’t buy it in the end.

There also was a building boom in Montreal, with permits tripling in number between 1905 and 1910.

And there are plenty of statistics about wheat (Russia is supplying most wheat to Europe it seems.) I want to make wheat a big part of Flo in the City, because, well, bread is the staff of life and it was the Wheat Boom Era and wheat flour cost about 5.00 a barrel. It’s a good way to tie in the Big Picture and Little Picture.

Fou Fou and a pretty bowl of fruit. I couldn’t resist these Clementines, which came with the leaves. The leaves curled up within a day. The clementines are SO SO to eat. Much fruit these days is only good for display. No one touched the clementines we bought at Christmas, but I put them in a crystal bowl where they remained but a decoration on the sideboard.

Oh, and they were erecting a statue of Edward VII “the Peacemaker” on the Plains of Abraham. I wonder if it is still there.

Coopers, a Restaurant on Notre Dame, was offering special accomodation for ladies on the first floor, serving tea between 4 and 6.30. This might have been an experiment, as that restaurant advertised regularly and I saw no other mention of this in later papers. They started advertising specials of the day.

I found two articles of special interest which I will comment on further in this blog. A Mr. Boyd gave a speech in front of Henri Bourassa and hundreds of others at the Windsor Hotel, in favor of Canadian nationalism, which seemed to include only English, Irish, Scot or French Canadians. Boyd agreed with HB that immigration was a serious danger and that some immigrants were ‘the scum of the earth.’ He described Laurier’s Naval Bill as a joke in the eyes of the UK and other countries.

And Representatives of various Labour Unions gave ‘a scathing indictment of the local school system’ to Robertson’s Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education. The schools weren’t training working class children for the real world of labour. I’m sure Marion read about this or heard about it.

She certainly will in my book, Flo in the City.