Fire and Water and Milk.

My grandfather’s letter of resignation to the City Council, dated September 23, 1930. It is stamped by the City Clerk’s office, Sept 29 and was debated in Council that very evening.

(Before Jules Crepeau, my grandfather,  was appointed Director of Services in 1920, he was the Assistant City Clerk. I thought that ‘ a little job ‘ but it wasn’t. EVERYTHING pertaining to City Business went through that office and my grandfather had a memory like a steel trap.)

Anyway, I have transcribed part of the long debate over my grandfather’s resignation, that has it all, anger, indignation, innuendo, veiled threats, humour and buffoonery, even some wit and clever repartee (a skill now extinct among politicians of all stripes and levels.)

I put it on my other blog, which mirrors this one: Flo in the City:

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.com/2011/11/mayor-houde-picks-up-gloveand-loses-his.html

Hmm. The more I read this front page Gazette report, the more questions I have about the REAL reason my grandfather was fired. Indeed, the opposition keeps asking this very question. I suspect EVERYBODY knows, but no one wants to spell it out.

The given reason, that it was his job as Director of Services to STOP the purchase of Montreal Water and Power is nutty. As if it was his job to tell the elected officials what to do.

During this debate, towards the end, Houde brings up the Laurier Theatre Fire, totally out of context. Now, that was, from what I have dug out of Internet archives, a troubling issue with respect to my grandfather….That’s the infamous fire where many children were killed and the reason why I couldn’t see movies in theatres as a child in Montreal.

So much so, I am wondering whether I should change the working title of my play about Montreal in 1927, Milk and Water, to Fire and Water.

My grandfather’s brother was VP of United Theatre Amusements. He ended up falling from an office window in 1932. In 1926, My grandfather is accused of allowing theatre owners to break the rules and let in young children unattended(by controlling the Police) by a Mr. Raney testifying before a US Senate hearing on Prohibition. Raney is a former Ontario Attorney General and one of those anal anti-everything fun Presbyterians. )

(I thought my mother once told me another brother was Fire Chief, but I have found no evidence of that.)

The 1927 Typhoid epidemic was caused by milk, not water, although the US scientists brought in to investigate couldn’t pinpoint the genesis of the epidemic, which  afflicted 5,000 and killed a few hundred.

An article was published in September in the Journal of the American Medical Association. My grandfather will talk about this in the play, which takes place in early September.

The scientists gave Montreal Tap water a clean bill  of health then. My grandfather will get down on my husband’s grandfather for exploiting the situation to sell his bottled water. As he did in 1909 the date of the last big typhoid epidemic, and since.

“It was from MILK, not water, ” my grandfather will say.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, “my husband’s grandfather will say. (This is an inside joke, as my husband uses this expression a lot!) It’s also what most people thought.

“Then why are we here?” my husband’s grandfather will ask.

“The Prince never drinks tap water, anywhere,” will reply my grandfather.

“I’m here to get him to approve of my new ginger ale, ” says my husband’s grandfather.

Something like that.

Here’s the ironic part. I found an article from the 1927 in the Gazette which claimed that 3,000 caught typhoid (“not alot in a city of a million”) when 4,500 did, according to the JAMA report.

That May article doesn’t say where the contagion came from though, so they didn’t know then. The article says city water is tested for bacteria daily and then goes on to praise Montreal’s wonderful water works.

So, in early September, when Milk and Water takes place, because the Royal Princes are in town to decompress and have fun, it probably wasn’t widely known that the epidemic came from milk.

I can play around with this.

The article mentions that the last great typhoid epidemic was in 1909. Funny,  no one seems too concerned about city water in the Nicholson Letters. There are no warnings from Mother Margaret, and she worries about EVERYTHING. Especially about her daughters catching colds and La Grippe.

I think this speaks to another key ‘angle’ of the MILK AND WATER  story… The Presbyterians weren’t worried so much about water and stuff, as they were CLEAN in spirit and body and habits.

Disease was a French and immigrant problem. Or so it was thought.

And the French and Immigrants looked skeptically upon the HYGIENIST movement because they were aware, of some level, that clean and pure meant WHITE and Protestant. They were aware the PURITY MOVEMENT was as much about ridding the world of certain races, as about health and well-being.

Father Norman, who had typhoid in 1896, says he doesn’t trust the water up North on the railway and goes around parched all the time. Funny.

A Real Good Story of 1927

Mary Hardy Fair Wells, my husband’s grandmother. In the twenties

Well, I’m taking a break from the first draft of Threshold Girl, my story about Flora Nicholson in 1911, and the best way to do that is NOT to start working on Edith’s story, because that only serves to give me more ideas for Flo’s story.

So, I’ve turned my attention to Milk and Water….and the more I look into it, the more I see a TERRIFIC story here, in the style of a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play. (I wonder if Alison Hindell is still the head of BBC Radio 4 Drama? Or is it Caroline Raphael? She was a Commissioning Editor…No, I checked, it is Jeremy Howe. But I’m not sure if they take Canadian submissions: their mandate is to promote UK playwrights. And the CBC has NOTHING.)

The Montreal typhoid epidemic of 1927 was truly an historic event, one that changed the way the city of Montreal dealt with public health. It was a huge story elsewhere, too, which was very bad for Montreal’s public image, especially when it came to the US. Montreal was a favorite vacation spot for Americans.

That is a pre-requisite for a story like mine…. I have to bring to light an historic event that has relevance today, and, BOY, does it have relevance, considering that the world’s fresh water supply is dwindling, big time. And considering all the nonsense relating to Green Marketing. All the bait and switch. My husband’s grandfather Thomas Wells, used all the modern advertising (see fear) techniques to sell his bottled water, never quite saying the truth, and never quite lying.

And, of course, The Prince of Wales really did visit Montreal in 1927 and he really did like partying with Mayor Mederic Martin, my grandfather’s boss. So that helps too.

And, I just found out, my grandfather really was directly involved with the Montreal water problem. I knew, as Director of City Services, this was likely to be the case, but I had no hard proof.

My grandfather, Jules Crepeau, was somehow forced to be a member of the Montreal Improvement League and I have a newspaper report where that group brings in ‘an expert’ to explain how Montreal water was purer than pure.

So, here, I have my Roman Catholic French Canadian grandfather having to work with those Presbyterian and Methodist do-gooder types. I can think of sooooo many good lines already.

I also want a reason to juxtapose the images of May Hardy Fair and my grandmother. My grandmother was the ideal woman of the 1900′s and May was the ideal woman of the 1920′s.

And since May was a bossy loudmouth American with a tall pencil thin body that she used to good effect showing off the latest 20′s styles, I have to get a funny line in there somewhere…that brings to mind Mrs. Simpson.