Well, I'm plotting out my story Milk and Water (a free ebook) a play. There's virtually only one setting. Outside a dance hall. A dance hall which some people suspect is a lot more than that.
I found this article from 1925, the Gazette, where Jules Crepeau is discussing Dance Halls and the Lord's Day act.
"Instructions have been given to the Chief of Police to close all dance halls a midnight, according to Jules Crepeau. The Lord's Day Act will be invoked. That's because the City had just lost a case against a proprietor of a dance hall over the same issue, invoking a less toothy by-law. (Apparently.)
Charity balls, like the St. Andrew's Ball, are exempt. Hmm. (It's those Presbyterians who brought in this law in 1908, joining forces with Big Labour. Theatres had to close on Sunday, but not movie houses, due to the fact that the law only specified 'theatres.'
So this article appeared in 1925 and plenty of places stayed open... enough for someone called W.E. Raney to complain to the American Senate hearings on Prohibition that Montreal was a Sin Pit and that my grandfather, a civil servant, told the Chief of Police what to do. (See my earlier Boardwalk Empire posts.)
So in my play Milk and Water, set at the end of August, 1927, I have my grandfather and my husband's grandfather, a French Canadian and an English Canadian spending four hours in front of one of the more infamous 'dance halls' in town, on the instructions of the Mayor, lest the Prince of Wales and his brother show up.
They are there delivering pure water, as there's a typhoid epidemic. My grandfather, the dutiful soldier, isn't complaining, although he has plenty of things on his mind... the Water and Power Scandal and the Laurier Palace Fire Scandal...My husband's grandfather isn't complaining, as he has his new soft drinks on hand, and hopes he can get a thumbs up from the Princes. The Radnor people are the official suppliers of Water to the Crown in Canada, and this irks him.
A police constable will be posted with them, to make sure any other constable doesn't interfere.
Interesting people will come and go....And they'll go at each other...and this is where I have to be clever: my grandfather who had a fabulous memory will attack Thomas Wells for the fear tactics in his advertising 'that are ruining the reputation of Montreal and keeping American tourists away."
Thomas Wells will attack him for City Hall patronage, etc.
