I woke up this morning to a mystery: someone (well, my husband) had put an old crate containing a large Laurentian Spring Water bottle by the fireplace, right in front of where I sit to write in the morning on my computer.
The lettering on the crate is faded ( I needed to take a picture in natural light) but it says Laurentian on top and Spring on the bottom. (Green lettering! How before it's time.) It's beautifully crafted, as crates go: the wood is solid and smooth. The patina still intact.. Had I found a bunch of these crates years ago at say, Finnegan's Flea Market, I might have painted them bright red and used them for flower boxes.
I'm lucky. Whoever owned this one left the thing as it was. I wonder if it is from the 20's, or even the 10's.
Now, I am writing a book called Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, where I have my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, the Director of Services meets up with my husband's grandfather, Thomas Wells, the President of Laurentian Spring Water, to discuss the ethics of selling water. During Prohibition, as it were.
Laurentian was one of the first, if not the first bottled water concern in North America. This had something to do with the fact that Montreal's water supply at the turn of the last century wasn't the best.
It was also a fluke... When my husband's ancestor, a Mr. White was drilling on Craig street for water for his shoe making factory, he struck a vein or is the term aqueduct.. No it's aquifer.. Around the 1880's. They opened a bath, women allowed in Wednesdays. (I saw that in an early newspaper ad.) (Before its time too, as public baths were built in the 10's and 20's in Montreal to accommodate immigrants without plumbing.) Craig Street used to be under the Jacques Cartier Bridge. It was nowhere near the Laurentians, which are miles up north.
My book features a fictional chance meeting between our granddads.. The Prince of Wales is in town to blow off steam from a one month official visit, and the Mayor, Mederic Martin has ordered my grandfather to follow him around with fresh water, as there's a typhoid epidemic. The Prince liked to party with Mederic, I have read. This epidemic was due to milk, but no one knew at the time. (I just saw that Prince Albert, Victoria's husband died of typhoid. Good! I'll stick that in my story.
Anyway, my husband works evenings and I was asleep when he got in. He won't get up for two hours - so I have two hours to speculate where he got it.
The company is out of family hands and has been since the 80's.
Even though my birthday is coming up, my husband is not the kind of guy to scope eBay to buy me something special.... or I'd have a lot more Art Deco jewellry.
Hmm. Did someone at his work give it to him?
Or did he get it from his aunt, who is moving this month.
Well, two hours will tell.
As it happens, we own another Laurentian Spring Water Bottle - sans crate -from the early seventies when my husband worked there in the summer. Same shape, but thicker. A little different.
My husband has used it all these decades for collecting his spare change. When I met him, in the early eighties, it was full of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Even some loonies. (A sign to me that he'd make a good husband...;)
When we raised our kids, there were few loonies or quarters ever in the jar, we pinched them as needed.
One year in the 1990's we decided to give the then penny and nickel filled jar to my husband's young nephews as a 'cheap' Christmas present.. They could count the pennies, roll them, and keep them - and return us the jar.. The total turned out to be over 200 dollars. "Best Christmas Ever," as they exclaimed back then.
We still have it. It's in our bedroom, although it's such a fixture, I don't even know it's there. With the price of things, these days, no spare change gets put in it.
Yesterday I read a news story on a report by The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy that says fresh water consumption has skyrocketed in Canada, but it's not individuals. 90% of the water is used for industry, like the oil sands. Some people suggest these industries should pay for the water they use.
The same report said a water shortage is not imminent. A book, The Ripple Effect, came out this year that says quite the opposite. That fresh water is running out in ALL countries and that this drastic state of affairs is being covered up.
Of course, both might be right. Fresh water doesn't necessarily mean drinkable water. Uncontaminated water.
Well, my husband just awoke. A guy at work gave it to him! His family (Italian) used it to make wine. (Now, that's my idea of a wine bottle!) There's a sticker on the bottle. It's green, too. "Crystal Pure" is the slogan with a snowflake. Established 1882. (My husband says their company color was green.. Before its time. But a lot of their sales techniques were oddly very modern.)
The style of the logo looks 30s or 40's....
The bottle is secured at the four corners by stablers that are cushioned with four springs.
