White Wedding Dresses?

Here’s the ‘iconic’ pic from my website TIGHSOLAS, www.tighsolas.ca that contains the Nicholson family letters from the 1910 era. It is a detail of a ‘tea party’ on the grass in front of their comfortable brick-encased Queen Anne style home in Richmond, Quebec.
I like the picture because it is pretty, but it really does embody the hopes and dreams of the middle class in Canada in 1910.

I watched the show Sunday Morning, yesterday, taped and the comedic editorialist (I don’t know her name) talked about her upcoming marriage and the high cost of weddings and wedding gowns. She setttled on a off white number, floor model.

She mentioned that white wedding dresses didn’t originally signify purity; that Queen Victoria got married in white to promote the lace industry in her country

I suspect white came to signify purity around 1910, as we had the Purity Movement, which I have written about extensively on this blog.

The comedienne also mentioned that white was worn by some women because white cloth was more expensive, and hard to wear (stains) and hard to wash, hence wearing it was a sign of prosperity. Bingo!

That’s what these white dresses meant to the Nicholson Women, who did their own clothes washing most of the time, despite aspring to a genteen lifestyle. In 1911, it takes Flora Nicholson, 19, TWO days to wash and iron her white dresses on a weekend she returns from Macdonald Teaching College.

So this all underscores the points I want to make with my ebook Threshold Girl, about Flora at School in 1911/12 and based on the Nicholson letters.

Threshold Girl is about a lot of things pertaining to Laurier Era History, but it’s mostly about women and clothes and what these clothes mean to them and what their clothes lust means to other less fortunate working women in the textile trade.

http://www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

The picture above is deceptive. It is of Marion Nicholson, my husband’s grandmother, who went on to lead the Teachers’ Union in Montreal. She was no slacker: she had tonnes of energy and directed it in many useful ways. I will write about her later, in another book, which will deal with the Jewish question in Montreal schools.. Edith Nicholson, the subject of my next novellette was more of a dreamer, although she could could be a woman of action, if necessary. I’m turning her into an opium addict for in my next book, The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.

History Redefined.

Tighsolas porch circa 1900, Richmond Quebec.

Today, it was reported in the Montreal Gazette, and only the Montreal Gazette from what I can see, that Canadians, today, aren’t big into History.

Very few Canadians read history books, or scope websites about history.

No real surprise here. Not if the poll defines history in the traditional way.

Of course, if you include ‘genealogy’ in history, and movies etc, it’s a different story.

As I continue to procrastinate on editing my novel, Flo in The City, about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era in Montreal, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, I am always thinking about history. But not so much wars and such (since my story takes place in those years before WWI) but about fashion history, technological history, women’s social history, the history of medicine. EVERYTHING is history. Anyway who collects things is an historian of sorts, a curator.

The problem is traditional history books are boring. They are written by scholars and not writers. (Pierre Berton was a notable exception.) Historical writers tend to put story above facts. I just watched Young Victoria and and it was girly fun but who knows how close it was to history. I imagine a young pre-Victorian (tsk)teenager, even a princess, would have acted very different from the girl in the movie.

Anyway, I must get to writing. I am thinking of making this blog bilingual. But my French….

Aujourd’hui on a publié une sondage dans La Gazette qui disait que les Canadiens ne sont pas les grands consommateurs de l’histoire. Aucune surprise ici, mais je me demande, c’est quoi l’histoire? Est-ce que la genealogie est l’histoire? Bien sur. Les flics? La mode? Pourquoi pas? S’il les Canadiens n’aime pas lire les livres d’histoires, c’est par-ce que la plupart de ces livres sont ennuyeux, écrites par les academiques et pas par les écrivains.

A la Francaise

an early nichelodeon

I haven’t been working on my first draft edit of Flo in the City, my novel in progress about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas/. But I did take the hard copy out from under the coffee table and smooth it down a bit with my hand.

I have been listening to French audio books free online at http://www.litteratureaudio.com/. For a while I have tried to find the equivalent of BBC Radio Four readings online in French and I just found this large library of books – recently posted – and believe it or not – I am listening to Sense and Sensibility in French only because I stumbled upon it first and I have just heard a dramatization on BBC Radio 7. I should be listening to Zola..which I will.

I’m trying to upgrade my French. I have classic anglo Quebec French, very strong in some areas, poor in others. Classic for my age group, who learned French in the classroom mostly. Almost all of my classmates moved to Ontario or beyond, largely for lack of French. (As I wrote elsewhere, the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal was the second highest performing school board in North American in the 60′s. My classmates went to to career success for the most part.) My kids attended 50 50 immersion and aren’t totally bilingual. You don’t learn French in a classroom. (I actually found document form the late 1800′s, Quebec Education Ministry, where this was stated and underlined for emphasis. They knew it back then.

(My mother was a very well educated French Canadian, but that’s another story.) I am also listening to Curb Your Enthusiasm in French. It has snappy dialogue so is good to listen to.) I don’t like French TV anymore than I like English daytime TV. I am watching Musee Eden on Societe Radio Canada, and have been blogging about it.

Improving your language skills is much easier in the age of DVDs and the Internet. Although I do not like listening to Colin Firth doublé as the actor who voices his characters does not that that rich theatre voice, which is one of CF’s many charms.

I have also been reading essays for the Heritage Course I will be taking online starting next month. Very interesting and very well written essays on an area I am now convinced is right for me. Museums are all about MEDIA. And I have worked in the non-profit sector and I have an understanding of early education issues like learning styles.

My favorite and most influential read back in college, where I studied Film and Communications, was WAYS Of SEEING, which was a small book based on a BBC Television Program.

I’ve taken 30 years to find out what I really want to do, sort of. Because I haven’t changed much from what I wanted to do in my twenties. There are just so many more options now. I also taped Young Victoria off the satellite. Well, I bought it. So I have lots to do – and nothing at the same time.

Anyway, I’ve been practicing my French at the hospital, talking to nurses as my father in law, 90, is ill. Most doctors can speak English, but few nurses from what I see. One nurse, according to my aged father in law, actually told him “You’re 90. You should speak French by now.” It’s an awful statement, especially since it’s the old folk in Quebec who don’t know French. But I won’t complain: I don’t want to rock the boat. If I get people mad, he could get worse treatment (and they are fairly nice)or worse, be kicked out of the system, like my mother, last year, and left to fend for himself. Hey, it’s sleeting outside. Gee. We’ve had such a warm dry spring so far, and now it sort of snows.