In the late twenties my Aunt Alice was married and living in New Jersey. Hmm. But she isn't in any of the Atlantic City pictures of the Crepeaus.
I awoke last night thinking I have a picture, somewhere, of Jules talking to another man on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
Must find it..Then this morning, I'm not as sure as I was last night that such a picture exists. But I think it does. The man he's talking to is much much taller, as I recall.
As I write Milk and Water, my play about Montreal in 1927 (still an era of Prohibition in the US, but not so much in Canada) I found an advert in the July 1, Dominion Day Montreal Gazette where the Quebec Liquor Commission is congratulating itself on its sensible policy.
THE QUEBEC LIQUOR LAW
"It is noteworthy that with all the liquor laws enacted in the different provinces in Canada, in all the last few years, the Quebec liquor law has not been materially modified.
It stands today, after six years of the most severe trial, exactly as it was when first put into operation in 1921.
Other laws have been challenged and overthrown, losing favor from year to year until they had to be abandoned altogether.
Severely attacked at its origin, the Quebec Liquor Law has seen its enemies lose in number and in vigor until at the present time it has come to be surrounded by almost unanimous approval by the population of Quebec...." and so on.... in absolutely lovely English. Oh, and with with special credit extended to the Premier of Quebec and his colleagues "who had the courage and foresight to break away from the apparently irresistible trend of prohibition."
Hmm. Interesting. Of course, if this were 100 percent the case, there would be no need for this newspaper PR exercise.
But even W.E.Raney, the former Ontario Attorney General, who testified to the US Congress in 1926 against Quebec's Liquor law, using second hand info from the 1925 Coderre Report on Police Corruption totally out of context, agreed that it was useless for him to go to Quebec to complain, as no one there listened to him. (Quebeckers are DIFFERENT he explained to the Americans. )
Raney (or Coderre) singled out my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, saying he controlled the Chief of Police in Montreal, but the transgressions cited had nothing to do with liquor. They had to do with Motion Picture Houses.
(Raney quoted from a Montreal Star story on the Coderre Inquiry Report. That story claimed my grandfather forced police officers to turn a blind eye to theatre owners who admitted under age children without guardians. My grandfather supposedly tore up 'actions' against these theatres' and fired policemen who complained. In truth, the cop in question was fired for bribery. Phew. Complicated.) My grandfather's brother, Isadore, was the VP of United Amusements, a chain of 16 motion picture theatres.
1927 was Canada's Diamond Jubilee Anniversary, 60 years since Confederation and the rest of the newspaper was filled with grandiose patriotic promotions, much like in 1967.
My mother told me that her family, the Crepeaus had a huge party on St Jean Baptiste day and then left for summer vacation in the US. That is, everyone but Jules.
Oh, and another article that summer, related to the inquiry in the Laurier Theatre Fire, claims that Labour people had complained in 1926 to the City about crowded theatres and underage patrons.
And yet my grandfather's name didn't come up in the Boyer Report. He testified at the inquiry, indeed he was the first, but he was there to explain why the theatre was operating without a license.
Of course. Thomas Wells' cousins, the Townsends, made a fortune one year, mailing hard liquor from Quebec to the rest of Canada, using a loop hole in the law. I wonder when this was, before 1921, or after.
They had a huge operation, employing many young women to open orders around the clock, apparently. The Townsend brothers, 2 of them, made enough in one year to retire for life.
Thomas will mention that to my grandfather in my play. My grandfather, around then, was working with Montreal Greeks, on an import business. All kinds of Mediterranean goodies. Too before its time. He would have been jealous to hear about how easy it was for the Townsends to make money.
Olives are lovely, but olives in vermouth and gin are better for business. I guess I have to use that line now :) I just read that the martini was invented in around 1910 but that with Prohibition and bathtub gin it become the most popular drink.
