My grandfather Jules Crepeau, Director of Services, Montreal 1921-1930.
"One of these days there's going to be a catastrophe. If a fire breaks out these days, many of those inside will not be able to get out."
Constable Conrad Trudeau at the Coderre Probe into Police Impropriety, December 13, 1924.
Well, well.
As I write Milk and Water my story about Montreal in 1927, featuring a long conversation between my French Canadian Grandfather, Jules Crepeau and my husband's anglo grandfather, Westmount businessman Thomas Wells, I've been wondering about the Laurier Palace Fire that happened in January of that year. I am thinking of adding a word or two to my play to show that my grandfather has his suspicions about the fatal event.
According to one eye-witness account, a child's, the fire started in the projection room, with melting celluloid, as happened in theatres. But it was asphixiation that killed most of the kids in the Ste Catherine East movie house. They succumbed to the smoke or were crushed to death by panicking patrons.
Only one adult died, so it appears that adults trampled kids. Or there were few adults at the Sunday showing.
I haven 't read the complete details of the Boyer Inquiry into the fire, though.
But as I read the testimony of this Coderre Report, from 1925, I am struck by the testimony of one Constable Conrad Trudeau. He claims he is a super-conscientious cop, whose efforts are being thwarted at every turn - and he singles out my grandfather, Jules Crepeau the Director of Services. Trudeau is charged with watching coal weights and inspecting motion picture theatres. He says he has not been supported in his work, that charges are dropped or tiny sentences meted out, without him giving evidence.
Trudeau's testimony on December 13 against by grandfather (as reported in the Gazette) has to do with coal, but Juge Coderre, in his final report, reveals that my grandfather also interfered in motion picture 'actions' or citations. On numerous occasions.
This Trudeau guy is especially against children attending motion pictures, where he says that boys first learn about guns and thievery (from the motion pictures about cops and robbers.) He says that certain people hang out outside theatres and purchased tickets for the underage kids. "There has been an epidemic of allowing children to enter the movies," he claims. (This is nothing new to cities. Young boys all across North America were attending motion pictures without a guardian. I've read statistics that suggest that as much as 30 percent of all theatre attendance were such kids.)
Well, as it happens, Conrad Trudeau is also in a bit of a pickle. He has 'loaned' money to an alderman in the hopes of getting a tavern license for a relation.
As it further happens, he is FIRED for this, by my grandfather, BEFORE the enquiry ends in March. Juge Coderre cites the incident as in his final report.
Later on Trudeau asks for his loan back. LOL!
And then in January 1927, there's a terrible (game-changing) fire at a theatre, (directly across from a firehouse) just as Constable Trudeau predicted to the Coderre Inquiry. So now the Presbyterians, Catholics and Nationalists get their way: no children under 16 AT ALL can see Hollywood movies.
What I find especially odd is that my grandfather's part in all this (his brother was a VP of a theatre company)is never brought up, not during the Inquiry into the Fire and not later, by the Houdists, in 1930, when they wanted so desperately to get rid of him - and succeeded. And yet it all had been printed in the Gazette and Star, and likely in the French papers. Sure, Camillien Houde often brought up the Laurier Fire in his speeches, even at the rowdy session of City Council in December 1930 where my grandfather's 'resignation' was debated and finally accepted. But he never mentioned the specifics about my grandfather interfering in police work with respect to motion picture by-laws regarding under age patrons.
My grandfather is ousted in December 1930 and then in 1933 Jules' Brother, Isadore, VP of United Amusements, falls out his St James Street office window. Hmm.
Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. (Or maybe not)
