The baggy coat? Is it in style, or an old style.
Anyway, as I write Milk and Water, my play using my grandfather Jules Crepeau and my husband's grandfather Fuddy Wells as characters, I have a problem, in that the play takes place outdoors in the city on September 2.
They'd both be wearing hats and coats, maybe.
I just checked the temperature. Low 58, high 80. No need for coats. But they'd still be wearing hats.
And then as I checked the weather report in the Gazette I saw something on the same page that was extremely important to my story. Radio programmes came in from the States. They advertised them in the RADIO SECTION.
This didn't happen in my day. Only Canadian stations aired in Montreal and if my brother wanted to hear the Yankee Broadcast he hoped for a clear night and fiddled with the short wave band.
So there you go. That's why the Quebec government was freaked by the arrival of talkies. (At least that's my hypothesis for the story.) They were certainly freaked by American Influence.
Needless to say we all are familiar with the garb of the era. We just have to watch Star Trek, the City on the Edge of Tomorrow. Fedoras were big. They became gangster wear.
Christmas is coming and just as I am getting in the swing of things. Too bad. I scanned the 1890 Sanitary Department Reviews for Montreal (where my grandfather is listed as office boy.. I will have him impress Wells by remembering what's in the reports..) And the City Below the Hill, the 1897 report by social reformer Herbert Ames, where he says there are still too many privies in the City.
My grandfather will argue that the City had been actively removing them, where possible, except they were always playing catch up, because the City kept taking in more suburbs.
In 1890 there are already three public baths, Ste Helene's Island, Wellington and Hochelaga.
Gee, I just read about Ste. Helene's Island. That park was "the Mountain" for poorer French Canadians. SO I realized that when Expo67 was held on those islands, it had an extra special meaning to the French Canadian Community.
My cousins brought me there once a a little girl. Big swimming pools, I recall. But since I could not swim, the pools scared me.
