Diary Entry.. First Impressions

I just returned from picking up a photocopy of the personal file of Jules Crepeau, the first Director of Services for the City of Montreal and my grandfather, at the archives of the City of Montreal. This is the first baby step toward the book I’m going to write, which I’ve already titled Milk and Water. This work will contrast the lives of my husband's grandfather, Thomas Gavine Wells, a wealthy Westmount businessman who worked for Laurentian Spring Water and Jules Crepeau. The kindly looking clerk at City Hall archives looked at me strangely and asked in French, “But isn’t Crepeau a French name?” I said, “Yes.” Then I explained that my mother, Jules’ daughter, had been educated at Sacred Heart Convent and was perfectly bilingual and that she married a man from England after the war.That’s why I’m an Anglo.

I'd already seen many of the newspaper clippings the file contained, about 20 years ago, as my Aunt Flo kept a scrapbook, and I recall being intrigued even back then, but the Internet didn’t exist twenty years ago, so learning about 'the context' was too much of a slog, and I had little babies to take care of.

All I know, over and above those press clippings, was that Jules died broke, for some reason related to poor investments, leaving my mother at 16 with few marriage prospects. My mother married my Dad, I assume, because she was a well –educated women with no money, no dowry and consequently had to marry a well-educated man who had nothing to bring to the marriage table either.

My Dad, a RAF ferry pilot during the War, was born in Malaya to British colonials, public school educated at St. Bees in County Durham. His Oxford studies were interrupted for the War. The RAF trained in Saskatchewan and the ferry command was headquartered in Montreal so he was often stationed here during the war.

As a child, I asked my father why he came to live in Canada. He replied that England seemed too cramped compared to the wide open spaces of Canada. Hmm. I've learned a lot more about history since and he emigated like so many other young people because England during the austerity post war period wasn't a great place to live. I've recently completed a play about that side of the family.

Jules Crepeau's dossier revealed that he made 10,000 a year as Director of Services in 1929, and after being forced to resign, he negotiated a fine pension of 7,500 a year for life with Camillien Houde, the Mayor.

Jules didn't enjoy this gravy train for a long - he died in 1938 after a short illness. He got hit by a car driven by 'a city constable' in May 1937, and broke a leg. He recovered after months in hospital, but contracted bone cancer as a result. X-rays! Odd,my mom told me the family fielded many calls ostensibly from people representing the Chief of Police, advising them thatdeath threats had been made against Jules and his son,my uncle Louis. Then they'd phone the Chief of Police and he would say he knew nothing about any such threats.

What a great story I have! Although I knew my mother had grown up in privileged circumstances, in a four story greystone on Sherbrooke, I never fully realized how privileged, considering the empoverished circumstances of the majority of Montrealers,especially French Montrealers.

(The family story goes that my grandfather 'worked his way up' at City Hall, starting out as a boy sweeping the floors. The 'official story' is that he started out in the Health Department as an intern at 15 years old. I have since figured out that my grandfather was a cousin of Senator Rodolphe Forget, the most powerful French Canadian industrialist of the time.

My grandfather earned $5,000 to $10,000 in the 1910's and 1920's (and that doesn't include the huge $50,000 dowry my grandmother, Maria Roy (daughter of a Master Butcher) brought to the marriage in 1900.)

NO ONE, however bright and hardworking, works his way up without help, it seems

And this means I am related (rather distantly) to his daughter Therese Forget Casgrain, politician, leader of Quebec's suffrage movement.

I must add a page about her to Tighsolas, which contains a great deal of info on the suffrage movement, from the Anglo point of view. See what exploring family history can do for you? I never knew this.

. My story ’ll take place in 1927, the height of the roaring twenties, the year of a typhoid epidemic in the city. Also, the year The Montreal Administration under Mederic Martin purchased Montreal Water and Light under a cloud of controversy and corruption which gave Mayor Camillien Houde, a few years later, a reason to dump my Grandfather, a self-made man with 42 year of experience at City Hall, and an almost unblemished record, replacing him with a scholarly lawyer Honore Parent.

My grandfather hadn't even been in favor of the purchase. He didn't attend the session where the relevant bill passed. But Houde needed a reason to dump him. My grandfather knew too much. Some newspaper editorialists supported the move, others saw it as a power grab with a knowledgeable and devoted city employee being scape-goated, and others saw it as a waste of a brain-power and city money.

As an example of the kind of man my grandfather was, I will translate a piece from Le Devoir, 1938 that speaks of him upon his death.

(Translated off the top of my head.) “Yesterday, upon his death, the newspapers published some rather dull obituaries of Jules Crepeau, none of which give a just account of the exceptional role the man played in Montreal politics…. Jules Crepeau was intelligent, ambitious, and proactive.His education was rudimentary and didn’t give him a background in culture, unlike his successor Honore Parent. (Crepeau finished his studies at night) But this affable man turned all his considerable intellect and curiosity and energy towards the work at hand. From the start he comprehended the importance of the municipal administration, its vast complexity and its workings and he had a sense of being part of something grand and of great import. He started out as an intern in the Health Department and rose steadily, especially after going to work under L O David in the Head Clerk’s (Greffier)Office…

He rose in the ranks, slowly at first, then more quickly until all the Municipal Councillors and the aldermen had only his name on their tongues. He became the first Director of Services in 1921. Jules Crepeau was too passionate, too uncompromising not to have taken sides in disputes, so he made enemies and he took some hits, some of them nasty.

But it must be stated that no accusations against him stuck. On the outside, his reputation got larger and larger. In Quebec, before the Committee of Private Bills, it was his opinion that held the most weight. He was the one people went to for information because they knew that information would be succinct and exact. I once knew a banker who had thousands of safety deposit boxes in his bank, but if a client showed up he knew exactly which box to open. Jules Crepeau was like this man. The Administration is made up of many many boxes, or more precisely, articles and charters, rules and regulations, and if you wanted to know about any one of them, you called Jules. He had a prodigious memory and you could trust it. It remains only to say that this venerable and brilliant civil servant is an example to all, for his sense of service, his zeal for his work and the pride he took in serving the public.