Montreal City Hall, turn of the last century.
Last night I told my husband, "I wish someone would tell me, 'You have to finish your Milk and Water play by next week OR ELSE'. Then I would just focus and do it. I have all the information. I have the plot. It's all there."
I was a copywriter by profession, all my work done to deadline. And I did my best work to the tightest deadlines, with the gun barrel pressed to my temple.
I was an essayist (well, still am) And I did my best work overnight while I slept, getting up early in the morning to capture it on paper. 5 am was my best time to write. I couldn't think straight after 3.pm. Well, still can't.
So last night I went to bed during the second period of the hockey game (the Canadiens lost to Pittsburg in OT, I see) leaving my husband with two purring kitty-cats on his lap and two jealous farting dogs at his feet.
And I told myself: "Tomorrow, I'll write the outline of my play."
And I got up at 4: 30 am and yes, I had it figured out. Mostly. Not as clearly as I would have had 20 years ago, but I got it.
And I took my pad and pen and scribbled what I had figured out in my sleep. (That is once I'd found a pen that worked!)
(I think working on the computer tires my eyes and therefore tires me out.)
So I have half an outline and some pretty good ideas.
But I was having a problem with one scene for lack of information. I didn't know if Montreal City Hall had any water coolers in the offices in 1927. If they did, Mr. Wells, the President of Laurentian Spring Water in 1927 could catch my grandfather, the Director of City Services on that point. And if they didn't, what did the visitors to the place do for drinking water?
This is key to my story. So I went online but couldn't find any information about City Hall water coolers in 1927. I did find many modern sites talking about a bottled water ban.
Many municipalities in Canada, Montreal NOT being one of them, want to ban bottled water. London is one of them and Nestle, a major bottled water company contested. I got his quote off Publicvalues.ca ...Councillor Joni Baechler noted, "I don't think Nestle sells Evian water in its offices. We hear about running this city like a business. You don't run a business by inviting a competitor's product into your suite of products."
I found a Concordia website Sustainable Concordia where they wrote something that sums up at least one side of the argument in my play Milk and Water: I quote "Bottled water is a growing industry that threatens water safety, equity, and ecosystem health. The United Nations has declared, "The human right to drinking water is fundamental to life and health.”. But when water becomes a commodity to be bought and sold, it means those who can afford it get it while those who can’t go thirsty."
One website I found claimed that 'public water fountains' are not being provided or kept up.' PUBLIC WATER FOUNTAINS. EUREKA!
I am 57 years old (in a few days) and I had FORGOTTEN about the existence of public water fountains. The kind we had in school! Slurp. Slurp. Slurp.
Still, I will have Mr. Wells say to Mr. Crepeau, "Are you telling me that not one alderman, not even the Mayor, has bottled water in his office, for esteemed guests?... I don't know yet what my grandfather will answer, exactly, except it will echo what the Councillor at London Ontario is quoted as saying.
(I don't think they called it A Water Cooler back then. Did they have the technology to cool? I don't think so. The era ads don't suggest it.)
With that point figured out, I have worked out the ebb and flow (so to speak) of the conversation Thomas Wells, my husband's grandfather, has with Jules Crepeau, my grandfather, and vice versa outside of a shady nightclub in the early morning hours in early September 1927, as they await the possible arrival of the Prince of Wales and his party-pal the Mayor, Mederic Martin, to provide them with bottled water in the year of a typhoid epidemic.
The conversation will cover the Laurier Palace Fire, the Coderre Inquiry into Police Corruption and Incompetence, The Montreal Water and Power Purchase and brewing scandal (which eventually proved my grandfather's downfall.)
But it will also be about two very similar upper middle class men of a certain age, both with lots of children to support, both with wives who are domineering and bossy (but who are as different as night and day in all other respects) and both with very good jobs with morally ambiguous aspects to them. One French Canadian. One English Canadian. Business or Politics? Which is more corrupt? Which benefits the people more? I guess that's the essence of it.
