Letter head 1921 Montreal City Hall
Comme le loi exige que le directeur des services n'exerce aucune autre fonction ni emploi et qu'il consacre tout son temps durant les jours ouvrables au services de la Cite, je donne pare les presentes ma demission comme Greffier-Adjoint de la ville. November 30, 1921.
Well, well.
As I write Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, using my grandfather, Jules Crepeau and my husband's grandfather, Thomas Wells, as characters, I am seeing things more clearly.
The Coderre Inquiry into Police Corruption, 1923, 24, plays a big part in my story, even if my focus is WATER, as in the evolving beliefs about the right to healthy drinking water in the city, which (in itself) shaped the city.
But my grandfather himself was named in the Coderre Report. Juge Coderre expressed confusion over his post and his duties. He claimed the position Director of Services wasn't a part of the City Code or whatever it was called. Charter. (There was a new one written up for 1921.)
Yet here's my grandfather in November 1921, giving up his post of Assistant City Clerk to be Director. He was making 5,000 a year as Assistant Clerk, one thousand less than the City Clerk, but his new salary would be 8,000. Big jump. Just as they were expecting another baby, my mom.
Now, Michele Dagenais, who wrote about Montreal Civic History, claims in her book that the position was created due to the size of the City and that fact that each city service was an little empire in itself. (If I recall. The book is downstairs. Must go re-read it.)
OK. According to the book, Des Pouvoirs et des Hommes, I have just figured out that the Executive Committee level of bureaucracy and the position of Director of Services was created in response to calls of corruption at City Hall from mostly businessmen, worried about patronage and pork barrel politics at City Hall by the elected members. It was a kind of compromise.
(And then in January y 1923 the Committee of 16, a one-issue advocacy group trying to stamp out the Social Evil, Prostitution, demands an inquiry into Police Corruption, claiming that the City Hall allows for, even encourages, the drug trade by turning a blind eye to prostitution, which results in the Coderre Inquiry of 1923 and 24, where Juge Coderre specifically outs my Grandfather, asking Who the Hell is this Guy and what is his job and why does he have power over the Police? (Talk about weird!)
A certain Alderman Brodeur became Chairman of the Executive Committee in 1921. Then he died of a heart attack in 1928, just before Mayor Martin was ousted by Camillien Houde (well, by voters) and my grandfather lost his job, too, under bizarre circumstances.
I dunno, maybe the Executive Committee used my grandfather to buffer them from the press.
You know, from what I see, that was a main thrust of my grandfather's job. He was porte-parole, because he addressed all issues in the city, from dance halls to expropriations. Coderre directly accused him of controlling the Police Chief. I dare say he was doing this for someone else. The Executive Committee. Or Brodeur, described at his death as the most powerful man in Montreal. The Mayor had little power, or so complained former Mayor Duquette (1923-24). I suspect this is what Houde didn't like about the system, so got rid of my grandfather.
I had to laugh. A few posts ago I transcribed the Montreal Gazette report of the Council Meeting where my grandfather's resignation was accepted after a rowdy session. (September 29, 1930.)The report was funny. Apparently Mayor Houde's false teeth popped out while he gave a speech. Well, today, I went through the photocopies of my grandfather's City Hall file (for the pictures here) and found a short article from a unmarked French newspaper claiming that Houde was most upset by the Gazette report, especially by two things: the fact the reporter wrote that the people in the audience pulled for the Opposition (for my grandfather) and the fact he mentioned the teeth business. Houde was such a comedian himself, you think he might have appreciated the humour in that image of false teeth falling out... (Nabokov uses it in PNIN)....but no. He turned the story around to suit him, using humour.
He said: "J'ai lu l'article de la Gazette..."Quant a ce qui concerne mes fausses dents et le role public que leur a fait jouer, lors de cette seance memorable, le zele journaliste de la Gazette, je dois avouer publiquement une autre infirmite, un hernie.
I'm guessing that no other paper talked about Houde's false teeth popping out at the session. He caught them 'deftly' (says the Gazette report) and put them in his pocket.
