My Aunts Flo and Cecile, circa 1925. Sexy? Not Really.
Hmm.
As I research Milk and Water, my story about Montreal in 1927, about my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, the Director of City Services and my husband’s grandfather, Thomas Wells, the President of Laurentian Spring Water, I think I have found the ‘nightclub’ where I will have them meet, the Bagdad Nights Restaurant. (They are meeting to provide fresh water for the Prince of Wales and brother, should they turn up as the Mayor has suggested they might.)
That’s because this venue is mentioned in W.E.Raney’s statement to the American Senate (or is it Congress) as particularly seedy. Their hearings on Prohibition.
What a useful document for my book. (Too bad it exists only in Google Books. Abebooks has Part 1 of the testimony, for a song, but Raney’s 40 page statement is in the Second Part.
Still, I have puzzled together a whole lot. Raney was the former Attorney General of Ontario and a Presybyterian, one of those kind who hates any and all the vices.
He especially hates Montreal City Hall, which he explains, in great detail to the Senators, is Corrupt. Much of this testimony against Montreal’s Administration is unrelated to alcohol.
He discusses how contracts for Roads and Construction work and such are given to companies that ‘don’t even own a wheelbarrow’ which then sublet them to others.
He even mentions my Grandfather, Jules Crepeau, by name. Jules can veto the orders of the Chief of Police. He sees this as ridiculous and believes Jules is acting on behalf of the Executive Committee.
He says the council runs in such a manner “as to favor the private interests of their relatives and friends, to whom contracts and positions were distributed, to the detriment of the general interest of the City and it’s taxpayers.”
He discussed the Coderre Commission, on corruption in the Police. Corruption is like an octopus that has his tentacles in every corner of the Administration, he says, quoting from Coderre’s Report.
He also quotes a lot from the Montreal Witness, an evangelical newpaper founded to promote Temperance… So really, what does that prove?
And here I am with a special interest. My whole adolescence was coloured by this, or should I say, dulled down, even blackened.
“You talk like a girl from de Bullion Street.” That’s what my Mom used to say when I swore. I had no idea de Bullion was the Red Light District until lately actually. No doubt this is what her mother, a daughter of a Master Butcher, told her. She said the same thing when I wore my skirts too short..”You look like a girl from de Bullion Street.”
My aunts may have been dressing sexy, in 1920′s, but any dirty thoughts at home were quickly expunged by their Mom, my grandmother, by the liberal use of Holy Water, I think.
Actually, Flo, the aunt on the left, was a naturally sexy woman, adopted at age 6 or so. The aunt at right, Cecile, was a prude, who married a geezer late in life, for companionship and economy, but never consummated said marriage, because she thought her heart, which had been damaged from rheumatic fever, couldn’t take it. (So she told my mom.) Hey, don’t worry, I would have told her. Sex ain’t that amazing. (Aunt Cecile was an excellent artist, Gold Medal Winner at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montreal. She had painted a peacock in full display on a giant screen and put it behind the double beds in her bedroom. Even as a child, I could sense the irony here. Her teachers at school said she had great potential, "but she should 'go out an live a little." All she generally painted were still lives of religious icons, statues and such. Lugubrious. She did a nice painting of someone putting a flower in Flo's hair, but it didn't pass down to our family. Too bad.
Anyway, Aunt Flo, who married at 45 or so, also to a much older man, was a big flirt. She was a recruiter in WWII, one of those sirens, sent around Quebec Province, attracting boys to their doom.
She once told me that her sister, Cecile wanted to crawl up the stairs of St. Joseph’s Oratory, as some kind of religious thing. She said she’d only do it if a handsome many crawled behind her, looking up her dress.
Anyway, all to say. According to this testimony from a Presbyterian from Ontario, Montreal was Sin City in the 1920′s and my grandfather was a pivotal person in all this. A go-between.
Yet, his own family was so prim and proper, so repressed. The Presybyterian Nicholsons, of my story Threshold Girl, www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf had a lot more leeway when it came to dating. Yes, they were repressed by today’s standards, but they also dated a lot. And not always under the eye of some matron. I have plenty of photos of them fooling in the grass with guys.
You see, towns were not considered dangerous to live in for young girls. Everyone knew everyone else. And if anyone stepped out of line, well, look out! In the Tighsolas letters at www.tighsolas.ca the Nicholsons are all up in arms, because a certain married man who is boarding at the brother in law’s, is making goo goo eyes at another unmarried female relation.
Anyway, accusing City Hall as being rife with patronage back in 1927 was kind of hypocritical. The Presbyterians had their own kind of patronage, just as powerful. Why do you think my husband’s great grandfather, despite being broke, paid his huge dues to the Masons? If you were not a Mason, you were ‘out of the Club.’ A pariah.
As my story Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf shows, Flora Nicholson got into Macdonald College despite failing French because of her family’s connections in the education field. Indeed, you couldn’t get into Macdonald (or McGill) without the stamp of approval of your local Minister.
Ps. I had always heard that my grandfather rose up in City Hall on his own steam, starting with sweeping the floors at 8 years old. It’s a myth. Yes, he started as a message boy in the health department at 14 or so, but he was also related to the Forgets, the most powerful French Canadian industrialist, who owned the companies that provided electricity and transport to the City and who headed the Montreal Stock Exchange.
