Therese Forget, 1914 from McCord Museum Collection,II-203044McCord Home Page
I put this picture up because I have mentioned the Forgets as relations and no doubt she is a relative. I can see the family resemblance. When I die I have the right to be buried in the Forget family plot, but I'll chose Richmond, and be with the Tighsolas gals and my hubby. Oooooewww.
Well, last night I got a bit bored with The Egg and I Movie, which was facile and just a series of silly vignettes, unlike the book which was witty and informative and wise. As everyone knows, Marjorie Main, as Ma Kettle, stole the show, and she really had no material to work with.
She brought a powerful humanity to her rather slapstick role. I especially liked her hair. She has exactly the same hair-do that Margaret Nicholson of Tighsolas wore, just a bit dishevelled. And if you think about it, she is the anti-Margaret, or the antidote to all the pressure put on women of the era to be clean housewives. She has so many children she can't remember their names, and she has given up on housework, (Why bother?)yet she has a happy home, indeed her first born is a charming and brilliant boy. She feeds her brood what looks like great quantities of healthy food, clearing the kitchen table with one powerful sweep of her arm (as she scratches the underside of her rather feral bosom with her free hand). I must go back and see the other 9, yes, nine movies about Ma and Pa Kettle. There is more to this Ma and Pa Kettle Phenomenon than mere slapstick. (Yes, I must write a story comparing Margaret and Ma Kettle.)
So, as I said, I was getting bored, I surfed the McCord Museum website for more pictures of Montreal 1910 and they had plenty. (Years ago I had taken a look but the collection has grown.) Their site has many wonderful pictures of some of the era streets where Marion, Edith would have walked. I believe I can post some on this blog with proper credit or embedding, but I have to go back and re-read the conditions.
ON TOP OF THAT! I found evidence in the archived Gazettes that there was a typhoid epidemic in Montreal in 1909. How interesting for my novel in progress, Flo in the City, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.
Companies like Laurentian Spring Water, which was owned by my husband's side of the family, were advertising their clean water. This is all so interesting. I saw an ad in the Gazette where my husband's grandfather, Thomas G. Wells (a contemporary of my grandfather, Jules Crepeau)denies the rumours that Laurentian is running out of water to supply their clients. (Hmmm.) I had wanted to write a book set in the 20's called Water and Milk, contrasting the lives of Thomas G Wells of Westmount and my Grandfather, Jules Crepeau, the Director of City Services, with an intrigue about Montreal water, but now I see I can stick some of it in Tighsolas. (There was another typhoid epidemic in Montreal in 1927.)
I have no record in the letters, but Margaret, who was afraid of everything, must have been concerned for her children with respect to the water. Typhoid was a issue, even in their fine neigbourhood in Richmond. Norman had got it in 1896 and Margaret nurses her neice, Florence Peppler, in 1912 through a bout. Norman gets very worried.
Apparently, in 1909 Montreal, they first thought contaminated milk was causing the epidemic (5,000 cases according to one paper)but then traced it to the water, which came right out of the St. Lawrence River, where, I suspect, Montreal's sewing oops, I mean sewage, was being dumped.
Now, I just have to double check what Jules Crepeau is doing in 1909. Is he still with the Health Department or has he moved on to the Clerk's Department. (I have a stack of info in my bedroom.) Either way, it works. He worked under Dr. Louis Laberge. And he had a mind like a steel trap, so I can have him know anything about the situation. He once went to Holland to investigate something, I wonder if it had to do with water. He brought back a few vases that I have in my house.
