Marion Nicholson's First Day as a Teacher

Marion Nicholson, my husband's grandmother with teachers of Sherbrooke Academy 1908.

Well, January is a depressing time of year, I think. Last year I spent some time cheering myself up by putting video of car rides in sunny Malibu on the Big Screen. 

This year, in February my husband and I are going to California and we're going to drive with my cousin to San Fran. It may be coldish and raining  at that time, but it beats this 20 below I'm experiencing. I'm not a winter person. Who is these days?  Marion Nicholson, above, spent her off time in winter skating, I have her diary from 1907. The skating rink was where you met men and her diary is all full of nonsense related to dating. Nothing about teaching, even though she was  a most serious career girl. I do believe the rules of courtship were more relaxed in small towns. The Nicholson letters suggest that a girl in Montreal could not go skating at the MAAA unless with a beau.

I am writing Edith's story now, the follow up to Threshold Girl about her sister Flora.  It's making me more depressed, because her story centers around the loss of her 'great love' in a fire, the Rossmore Hotel Fire.  April 1910. That happens a week before King Edward VII dies, so I have her walking the street on that day in an opium-induced daze. She's in Westmount, a place that no doubt went berzerk when the king died. The week before, Marion and she had bought big hats at Ogilvy on Ste. Catherine. 

And then I backtrack to 1907 when Edith is at a small company town near Three Rivers and Marion is at Sherbrooke Academy. Edith will be jealous of Marion as her younger sister is having fun in Sherbrooke, going to dances and skating. Sherbrooke was a fairly big town. Still, Marion ended up taking work in Montreal, in 1908, because the pay was much better. 50 kids, mostly very poor. Luckily, the Nicholsons had friends there, for finding a place to live was a very difficult thing for a young woman in 1910.

Rural school were not easy places to teach either.. In 1907, Marion is offered a job as a principal of a rural school. The man offering her the job, says the boys can be rough... In another letter, she says an older boy and the principal (of Sherbrooke Academy?) had a fist fight. So no wonder she doesn't take the position as principal.

Here's a letter she wrote after her first day of teaching in 1906. She liked the little ones. In a letter from Normal School she talked about an incident while she was practice teaching. Apparently, she said an ungrammatical sentence to a young student and asked him to tell her what was wrong with it. He replied. "T'aint grammer." She thought that very cute. I'm going to use that in her own story, when I get around to writing it. 

Sherbrooke Quebec
September 10, 06

Dear Mother,

Have just finished my first day at school and it is not half as bad as I expected. But most of my pupils had never been at school before and their mothers had to come with them and tell me their particular troubles so that I would take particular care of them and I did not know one from the other after they had gone. Had 38 pupils today. Pretty good for a start, don't you think. Expect I will have more tomorrow. Mr Gruel came up today to hear me teach. I think he was very mean to come so soon. He might have waited till I was really settled down to work. The Phonic system is not half as bad as I thought it would be, although I have a lot to study up yet. Sat Mill Long and her cousin Irene, Ruth and I drove to Lennoxville and had a fine time. Don't know if I will send my wasting home or have it done here. Will see what it will cost first. I think that if you have not started to make that green dress, that I will have shirt waist suit and a short coat. Wish I had that black skirt. I feel like a kid among all the old maid teachers. Wish you could see them, they almost beat the Rd. ones. Wore my red and white shirtwaist suit because it was the longest one I had and I thought I would look more dignified and more like a school marm.