Tag Archives: Montreal

Genealogy, United States

An Ingenue, a Diary and the Goddess of Love

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.elizabethfair

Young Elizabeth Hardy Fair of Virginia. Daughter of Elizabeth Hardy, who was  sister to Mary ‘Pinky’ Hardy, United States General Douglas MacArthur’s mother.

As a schoolgirl back in the 1960’s before Expo 67 opened in Montreal, the only works of art I would have recognized were the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.  I would have seen them, you see, on TV caricatured in advertisements for toothpaste or gloves, or on sophisticated Saturday morning cartoons like the Bugs Bunny Show.

Today, when I think of the Venus de Milo, I think of my husband’s Great Aunt  Elizabeth.

In 1910 Elizabeth Hardy Fair,a single society girl from Warrenton, Virginia, USA, was visiting the Continent for the first time. She was in her mid twenties.

The aging ingénue kept a written record in diary form and I have  it.  This European diary reveals that she started her trip in London (hated it, too gloomy) and then went on to Paris,  (loved it, so pretty).

Sorry to say, that’s about as deep as she gets.

Still, Elizabeth penned this one rather intriguing phrase from a visit to the Louvre:  “Saw Gaylord Clarke coming out of the Venus de Milo Room. Second time we have met since abroad.”

Now, if this were a scene from an E.M. Forster novel, and Miss Elizabeth Fair were a luminous young woman of head-strong character, this  ‘chance meeting’ at the Louvre would have been, no doubt, a significant turning point in the trajectory of  Miss Elizabeth’s life.

Just think of it.  In 1910, women such as Elizabeth covered themselves, neck to toes,  in starchy shirtwaists and princess skirts.

Now  contemplate  the Venus de Milo with her sumptuous drapery dipping below the upper curve of her perfect buttocks, and  then figure what it must have felt to be  a young man coming out of the Venus de Milo room  in that era–before the age of California beach volleyball. And then imagine what an opportune moment it was for the very eligible Miss Elizabeth Hardy Fair of Warrenton, Virginia.

As it is, this Mr. Clarke left for England the next day. End of their story.

Elizabeth soon returned to Warrenton, still very much single. Soon she would travel to Montreal (to visit cousins of her father) and find a husband in the form of one Fred Tofield,  banker.

She would live out her life in the posh Linton apartments on Sherbrooke Street West in ‘uptown’ Montreal, impressing her great nephews and nieces at every Sunday dinner with the button on­­­ the floor under the dining room table that she used to summon the staff with her foot.

Now, as someone who likes to write about ancestors, I like to think that everyone who ever lived is worthy of at least one book, or at least a good short story, but my husband’s Great Aunt Elizabeth may be an exception.

Elizabeth and Frank had no children and all she left behind  to her nephew is a tattered scrapbook with a few yellowed clippings like this one from a 1904 St. Louis Social Notes page: .

Miss Elizabeth Fair of Warrenton VA is the guest of Dr. and Mrs. John O’Fallon and is a beautiful girl who has been a great deal feted and admired around St. Louis. The 1904 World’s Fair!

The year before, in  1903, she attended her soon-to-be famous first cousin, Douglas MacArthur’s, West Point graduation.  She glued the dance card into her scrapbook. Mae had the first dance, a waltz; she had the third, a gavotte.

And then there’s this diary, this pedestrian record of her 1910 European experience visiting  all the usual landmarks, Hyde Park, Les Champs Elysees  and Le Bon Marche where she bought handkerchiefs and gloves. It is a diary exposing no wicked sense of humour, sharing no penetrating insights, and including not even one memorable phrase like, say,   “I shall return.”

Well, she did mention seeing suffragettes on the march in London.

Oh, she does pencil in this candid opinion on Da Vinci’s most famous work.

Went to the Louvre in the morning. Pictures most interesting. Mona Lisa was carefully inspected but it does not appeal to me in the least. After lunch, shopped and then drove through Parc Mont Claire. This park is lovely, abloom with flowers, statuary and strollers galore. Great place for lovers and babies… So, no surprise, in 1910, Elizabeth, had love and babies on the mind.

I wonder what was wrong, then, with this mysterious Mr. Clarke?  If things had gone well, it might have been a very good thing for one Frank Tofield. Family legend has it the well-to-do couple argued incessantly over the decades over her spendthrift ways.

(I found Frank’s signed Bible and it was filled with dozens of brittle, faded four leaf clovers.)

So, no book about Great Aunt Elizabeth Hardy Fair, by all definitions a most ordinary Southern Belle and first cousin to a genuine history-book legend. No short story either.

Just this short blog post.

The End.

Below: Elizabeth at her wedding: lavish tastes

elizabethfairmarriage

Genealogy, Genealogy societies, Quebec

The Beautiful Montreal Metro System

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By Sandra McHugh

Genealogy is much more than filling in names and dates on a family tree.  It is also about the social history and context in which our ancestors lived.  It is about technological, economic, and social advances and how they affected our ancestors and changed their lives. This is why I love local historical societies and what they bring to local and personal histories.

The Montreal metro system changed everything about Montreal.  It improved the public transportation system and allowed people to go back and forth from work comfortably and quickly.  It also enhanced neighbourhoods and created synergies between different areas of Montreal.

The metro system was inaugurated on October 14, 1966 during the tenure of Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau.1 Montreal City council voted to build the metro system in 1961, and a year later, in 1962, Montreal’s bid for the world fair was granted and therefore the push was on to have the system completed in time for Expo 67.2 Expo 67, a celebration of Canada’s centennial, was held from April 1967 to October 1967.3

Montreal’s metro system is renowned for its architecture and public art.  Each station is unique.  Today, more than fifty stations are decorated with over one hundred works of art. Some of the more noteworthy pieces of art include the stained glass window at the Champs de Mars Station by Quebec artist Marcelle Ferron and the Guimard entrance to the Square Victoria Station. This is the only authentic Guimard entrance outside of Paris, although there are other subway systems around the world that have reproductions of Guimard entrances. 4

Guimard entrance

Guimard entrance to Square Victoria Station

In celebration of Montreal metro’s system and its fifty years, Heritage Montreal is offering architectural walking tours of the Montreal metro system that include information on how the metro stations transformed the surrounding neighbourhoods.  These tours are open to all for a modest fee and will run every weekend until September 25.  Heritage Montreal is a non-profit organization that “promotes and protects the architectural, historic, natural and cultural heritage of Greater Montreal.”5 You can find information on these walking tours here:

http://www.heritagemontreal.org/en/activite/architectours/

In 2017, Montreal will be celebrating its 375th anniversary.  Over the centuries, the building of bridges, roads, the railroad, trams, and bus and metro systems have shaped and transformed the economic, social, and cultural aspects of Montreal.  The Montreal metro system is a beautiful and integral part of Montreal’s heritage.  Let’s appreciate it.

 

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Line_(Montreal_Metro)

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_67

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro

5 http://www.heritagemontreal.org/en/about-us/our-mission/

 

Genealogy, Quebec, Resources Outside of Montreal

Société de Généalogie des Laurentides

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Société de Généalogie des Laurentides

www.sglaurentides.org/publications

450-553-1182

info@sglaurentides.org

This short research guide addresses indexes of marriages, baptisms and deaths of English-speaking families of Lower Canada and Québec, both Protestant and Catholic, that can be purchased as spiral binders from the Société de Généalogie des Laurentides (the genealogy society of the Laurentians). These indexes refer to records from the vast Laurentian region north of Montreal, as well as Irish-Scottish Catholic parishes in Montreal.

Family lineage researchers in Québec have compiled this information at various repositories of the Archives nationales du Québec, and by visiting the vaults of Protestant churches and English-language Catholic churches. These record will help you determine precisely in which church a child was baptized, in which church young couples were married or the place of burial of a person or persons. Contrary to popular belief, indexes of people and places at various commercial online search engines in genealogy are not complete and not always precise.

Item #R 12 – District judiciaire de Terrebonne – Judicial District of Terrebonne – Protestant Marriages (1900-1992) – 846 pages – Indexes by names of both husband and wife – Towns and churches – Arundel : Holiness Movement – Standard American Church – Anglican Church – Methodist Church Presbyterian Church – United Church of Rouge Valley – Avoca-Rivington – Baptist Church – Presbyterian Church – United Church – Belle-Rivière – Église Évangélique Française – United Church – Boisbriand – Pentecostal Assemblies – Brownsburg – Maple Baptist Church – Second Baptist Church – Pentecostal Assemblies – United Church – Calumet – Pentecostal Assemblies – Chatham-Brownsburg – Baptist Church – Cushing – St. Mungo’s Presbyterian Church –  Dalesville – Baptist Church – Deux-Montages (Lake of Two Mountains) – All Saints Church – Christ Church Anglican – People Associated Gospel Church – Grenville – Baptist Church – Methodist Church – Pentecostal Church – Presbyterian Church – Church of England (Episcopal) – Harrington – Presbyterian Church – Lac-Marois – United Church – Lac-St-Denis – Protestant Chapel – Lachute – St. Simeon’s Anglican – T. Henry’s Presbyterian Church – Wesleyan Methodist Church – Margaret Rogers Memorial Presbyterian Chapel – Baptist Church – United Church – People’s Church & Associate Gospel – Église Évangélique Baptiste – Centre Chrétien Évangélique – Église Groupe Évangélique Chrétien – Lakefield – Holy Trinity Anglican – Methodist Church – St. Simeon’s Anglican Mission of Lachute in Lakefield – Lakefield-Dunany – St. Paul’s Anglican – Lakeview – Presbyterian Church – Lorraine – Église Évangélique Chrétienne – Lost River – Presbyterian Church – Louisa (Wentworth) – St. Aidan’s Anglican – Mille Iles – Christ Church Anglican – Presbyterian Church – Mont-Tremblant – St. Bernard’s United Church – Morin Flats – Holiness Movement – Morin Heights – Trinity Anglican Church – Methodist Church – United Church – New Glascow – Church of England – Presbyterian Church – United Church – St. John’s Anglican Church – Oka – Methodist Church – Pentecostal Church – United Church – Rosemere – St. James Anglican – United Memorial Church – Centre Évangélique Chrétien – Shawbridge – Methodist Church – United Church – Shrewsbury (West Gore) – St. John’s Anglican – St. Andrew’s East (St-André-Est) Christ Church Anglican – St-Eustache – Trinity United Church – All Saints Church – Église du Nazaréen – Église Évangélique Rive-Nord – Mennonites Church – St-Jérôme – St. Andrew’s United – Témoins de Jéhovah – Armée du Salut – Groupe Évangélique – St-Jovite – Methodist Church – Centre Évangélique Hautes-Laurentides – Apötres-de-l’Amour Infini – St-Sauveur – St. Francis of the Birds Anglican – Ste-Adèle – United Church – Assemblée Chrétienne du Nord – Ste-Agathe – United Church – Holy Trinity Anglican – House of Israel – Centre Évangélique – Église Chrétienne – Ste-Marguerite – St. Christopher’s Anglican – Ste-Thérèse – Presbyterian Church – United Church – Mennonites Church – Témoins de Jéhovah – Terrebonne – St. Michael’s Anglican – Assemblée Chrétienne La Mater – Église Baptiste Évangélique – Centre Évangélique Chrétien > Spiral binders $105. + taxes-shipping

Item #L 6 – St. Colomban’s Irish Catholic Parish – Catholic Marriages (1836-1984) – 521 marriages – Please note: This research guide in the form of a spiral binder also contains the Catholic Marriages of the parish of Bellefeuille – The latter with 545 marriages (1954-1991) > Spiral binders $10. + taxes-shipping

 Item #R 33 – St. Colomban’s Irish Catholic Parish – Catholic births, baptisms, deaths (1836-1939) > Spiral binders $35. + taxes-shipping

Montreal Irish–Scottish Catholic Parishes

Item #H 8 – St. Patrick’s Irish Catholic Parish – Montreal – Marriages (1859-1899) – 316 pages > Spiral binders $40. + taxes-shipping

Item #H 9 – St. Patrick’s Irish Catholic Parish – Montreal – Marriages (1900-1941) – 360 pages including indexes of brides > Spiral binders $45. + taxes-shipping

Item #H 10 – St. Patrick’s Irish Catholic Parish – Montreal – Births & baptisms (1859-1899) – 1,253 pages > Spiral binders $160. + taxes-shipping

Item #H 11 – St. Anthony’s of Padua Catholic Parish – Montreal – Marriages (1884-1941) – 277 pages > Spiral binders $30. + taxes-shipping

Item #H 12 – St. Patrick’s Irish Catholic Parish – Montreal – Baptisms (1900-1945) – 659 pages > Spiral binders $85. + taxes-shipping

Item #H 13 – St. Anthony’s of Padua Catholic Parish – Montreal – Baptisms (1884-1941) – 649 pages > Spiral binders $85 + taxes-shipping.

Researched & compiled by: Jacques Gagné – gagne.jacques@sympatico.ca

Genealogy, Germany

The German Soldier – Wolfgang Kempff

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IMG_8356
Wolfgang Kempff 1937

The last letter my father received from Wolfgang Kempff was dated Berlin, September 20, 1939. Canada had declared war on Germany ten days earlier.

We hear many stories about allied soldiers, their heroics in the war and how proud they and their ancestors are of the medals won. This past remembrance day there was a story about a couple who had found medals and were trying to reunite them with the recipient’s family. One person commented that his German father had burned all his medals, not wanting to remember his part in the war. This invoked other comments saying how we have never heard what the German soldiers really felt about Hitler and the war.

I have some letters written to my father from a German fellow, Wolfgang Kempff, who was just 22 in 1939. Wolfgang had followed in the footsteps of his older brother and spent four years in Canada, attending Westmount High School, Westmount Quebec. He enjoyed his time perfecting his english and living the Canadian life. When he graduated in June 1935 he returned to Germany.

He is pictured in the school year book with all the other graduates. His biography is very revealing of his thoughts and feelings about Hitler and the position of Germany at that time.

His Quote: “Nature might stand up and say……”

His Favourite Expression: Heil Hitler

Pet Aversion: The treaty of Versailles

Past Time: Boosting Hitler

Ambition: To be as like Hitler as possible

Activities: Sailing Team, Junior Basketball, Play, Lifesaving and Public Speaking.

Wolfgang corresponded with his school friends after he returned home. He was very anxious for them to come visit him, to enjoy German beer, wine, racing cars, skiing and opera. He lived in Berlin with his mother and their guest room was always available. He even suggested they try to win scholarships so they could study in Berlin.

In 1937 Wolfgang was in the German army. He loved it and thought he would have great success because of his knowledge of English. He was proud of being German and believed Hitler was doing great things for his country. “I really gave myself pains to do everything well, and one can only do that when one is “flesh and blood” for the idea.” Unfortunately because of his health, continual throat infections, he was dismissed from the army. He was very upset as he would have been promoted to the military school that October and become an officer 18 months later.

With his military career over, he decided to study engineering at the University in Berlin. He needed six months of practical experience working in a factory before he could begin his program. It would then take seven and a half years before he would obtain his degree, much longer than his friends in Canada. In the summer of 1938 he worked for the State Railway and found it a very interesting experience. That fall he started his second term in mechanical engineering.

Wolfgang was enjoying the typical student life, going out, drinking beer, ski trips in the Bavarian Alps and chatting up English girls. He was annoyed that his summer holidays were to be cut by five weeks, but in September 1939 he and his mother were to drive to Italy, with stops in Prague and Vienna.

IMG_8355
Wolfgang Ice Skating in Berlin 1938

He wrote about politics. He didn’t think what was reported in the west was the truth. Wolfgang thought German food rationing was a joke. Every person could still have a pound of butter per week and enough eggs for breakfast! Lobster and caviar were expensive but these luxuries were something people could do without. No one was starving as local meat and vegetables were still readily available and there was almost no unemployment. “In 6 years much has been achieved. Perhaps no country in history has undergone such a change in 6 years. Hitler said in one of his last speeches, that Germany would far rather spend cash on things than on an unproductive army but apparently other countries have different ideas.”

The final letter was from September 20, 1939. He said, unfortunately he and his mother had to cancel their trip to Italy. Wolfgang didn’t understand why Britain and Canada had declared war on Germany. “We fight our own battles and won’t stand other people sticking their fingers into things which are none of their business.” He felt the Allies had nothing to gain and everything to lose in fighting the very fine German forces. “I don’t suppose any of you fellows will ever get on French soil. My pity for the “Paile and Tommy” who is going to try to run in our fortresses.”

IMG_8369
Wolfgang Kempff 1937

He certainly didn’t think the war would last very long. “My invitation still holds good when the scuffle is over. Please give my regards to everybody and with best wishes to you and your family,

Wolfgang”

Notes:

Letters and photographs from Wolfgang Kempff, Germany to Donald Sutherland, Westmount, Quebec, Canada. Aug 5, 1937, Aug 23, 1938, March 29, 1939 and September 20, 1939.  In the author’s possession.

Westmount High School Annual, Westmount, Quebec, Canada. 1935

IMG_7951

I assume Wolfgang was accepted back into the German army and didn’t survive the war. As yet, I haven’t been able to find any more information about him.

 

Genealogy

Where did your ancestors live in Montreal?

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I am often curious to find out where my ancestors lived at different times of their lives. For most of my 19th and 20th-century Montreal ancestors, this has been relatively easy using online maps and city directories, and I have used the same techniques to find ancestors in Philadelphia, Winnipeg, and other cities. And once I locate them, it is fun to look at the same addresses today using Google Street View.

In Montreal, the main directory has been published by Lovells since 1842, and these resources are searchable online on the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) website. While the directories themselves are in English, this post should help you navigate that French-language provincial archives site.

Go to http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/lovell/index.html and, on the left, click on explore. Then click on Montreal et sa banlieue (Montreal and its suburbs), then on serie principale (1842-1977) and choose the year you want to explore. You can search for either the name of the household head or for the street address. This directory often includes the occupation and/or employer of the household head.

Once you find your ancestor’s home address you can try to find it on a map of the city during the same time period. The page http://services.banq.qc.ca/sdx/cep/accueil.xsp will take you to the BAnQ’s collection of digitized cartes et plans, or maps and diagrams. You can search by lieu (place), by region of Quebec or Canada, or by title of the map, date, author or subject.

If you are looking for the easiest maps of Montreal to understand, go to the left hand side of that opening page and click on the bottom choice of Collections, Pour en savoir plus, “Sur les cartes de Montreal utiles à la recherché” (to learn more about easy-to-use maps of Montreal). This will take you to a list of useful maps of the city, such as Goad’s maps, which were created for insurance purposes and identify property owners.

Searching for property ownership documents is a whole other complicated story I’m not going to talk about here, except to say that these documents can be found — with a lot of effort. Go to https://www.mern.gouv.qc.ca/english/land/register/index.jsp, a site of the provincial department of Énergie et Ressources naturelles Québec, and follow the links to the Land Register of Quebec site.

First, though, you need to know the ward of the city your ancestors lived in, and the cadastral number of the property they owned, which is not the same thing as the street address. You may have to compare different maps of the same area over different time periods to nail this down, remembering that street names and numbers sometimes changed. Once you have a firm idea of your ancestor’s geographic location, the 1874 map titled Cadastral plans, City of Montreal (http://services.banq.qc.ca/sdx/cep/document.xsp?id=0000337579) can help you to identify the cadastral number.

Once you see the image of the map you want, you can click above it on the left to download it (télécharger l’image) or on the right for a full-screen view (image plein écran). Move the red rectangle in the small map at the upper right to navigate your way around the screen.

Good luck and have fun!

 

Genealogy, Quebec

The German Presence in the Montreal Region

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The first German-speaking families probably came to Montreal around 1700. While this community has never been large, it has been well-organized: the German Society of Montreal was set up in 1835 and St. John’s Lutheran Church was established in 1853. Many families of German origin attended Protestant and Catholic churches along with their English, Scottish and French Canadian neighbours. This compilation lists many of the city’s churches and the repositories where their birth, marriage and burial records are kept.

German Presence in Montreal Feb 1

Genealogy, Quebec

The Mysterious Charlie G: An Edwardian Era Love Tragedy

Edith and her beau circa 1909 somewhere near Potton Springs in the Eastern Townships of Quebec
Edith and her beau circa 1909 somewhere near Potton Springs in the Eastern Townships of Quebec

Edith Nicholson (1884-1977), my husband’s Great Aunt Dede, never married. She told her nieces and nephews and great nieces and great nephews that she lost her Great Love in a hotel fire. The couple wasn’t ‘officially engaged’ but there was ‘an understanding’.

Some believed DeDe, some didn’t.

In 2004, I found 300 Nicholson family letters from the 1908-1913 period in an old trunk – and in a letter dated May 3, 1910, Edith writes of this loss to her mother, Margaret:

Your letter received this am. It was so good to hear your voice over the phone. It was quite natural. Oh, how I wish I could talk over everything with you. It seems terribly hard to think it all for the best, when there are so many that are of no use living on and others that are held in esteem cut off in a moment. One thing, I am very thankful for that he wrote me. No doubt one of the last things that he did. I can’t express my feelings. I never felt so badly in my life. But I suppose there are few who have had so pleasant a one as I have, and trouble comes to all.

So the story was true, after all!

Edith mentions many young men in her letters sent from Montreal where she was working as a teacher back to Richmond where her Mom lived. Edith often uses only initials when talking of her romantic life. Apparently, back then, courting was something to be coy about.

It took me long while to figure out but her Great Love was one Charlie Gagne, bank clerk, from Levis, Quebec. A French Canadian man, most likely. Now, that was a surprise.

It seems Edith and this Charlie had an on-again off-again relationship through 1908-1909.

Gagne is a French Canadian name but from the letters it is clear Charlie spent time around Edith’s group of Richmond Protestants. Perhaps he was a convert from Catholicism. In Montreal, Edith worked as a teacher at French Methodist Institute in Westmount, a school where Catholics, mostly French Canadians, were converted to “the Way.”

The Nicholson’s also left behind a photo album from the 1910 era. I have photographs of Edith on a country outing with a handsome young man. If this is Charlie of the May 3, 1910 letter, he is a slim, with a charming smile and a cocky attitude and he is a great dresser. Edith Nicholson would have accepted no less.

There are a few other mysterious mentions of Charlie, or Charlie G or CG in the 1909-10 letters.

In August 1909, Edith writes her Mom saying she managed to ‘show’ Charlie to her father at a train station, (it sounds like a set up) but her father was cool to her young man.

In September 1909, Edith’s mother Margaret writes her father Norman and says “Charlie has gone to Mexico. So that flirtation is over.”

In October 1909, Edith writes her Mom saying she hasn’t heard from Charlie G and that she has no intention of trying to contact him. “He could still be in Mexico, for all I know.”

In February, 1910, Edith writes that she is taking medicine, for ‘her heart has had a jolt’.

Then there’s NOTHING but that May 3 letter about Charlie’s death. Edith writes that she is looking at his picture in the Montreal Star and that “it does not do him justice.”

So I had bits and pieces of a sad love story, but I had to fill in the blanks. I couldn’t even be sure it was Charlie G. who died in the hotel fire.

One sentence in the May 3 missive was especially enigmatic. “It seems if it had only been an accident, it would be easier to understand.”

So, about 5 years ago, I skipped over to the McGill Library to check out the May 1910 Star.

Amidst the pages and pages of stories of Edward VII’s death, I found a story about a Cornwall fire, the Rossmore House Fire, where a Charlie Gagne, bank clerk from Levis, perished.   Proof at last.

Charlie had recently been transferred to the Cornwall branch from the Danville, Quebec branch, which is near Richmond, Edith’s home-base. (The February jolt!)

Only half of Charlie’s body was found at the scene and that was burned beyond recognition. There was only a tie pin to identify him.

The fire had started in a stairwell and, as a boarder who knew the hotel well, Charlie tried to use the stairway to escape the fire, as did a few other boarders, including an entire family.

Most hotel clients had been rescued by fireman at their hotel window, or had frantically jumped to safety.

There was no photograph with this Montreal Gazette newspaper article, though – so I was confused.

Then Google News archives came online and I saw that the Rossmore Fire happened on April 29!

I headed down to Concordia’s Webster Library to check out the January-April reel of the 1910 Montreal Star.

Sure enough, the Cornwall fire was front page news on April 29 as the Star was an afternoon paper.

The next day’s issue had a back of the newspaper follow up article on the fire with a photograph of Charlie Gagne, Levis-born bank teller at the Bank of Montreal.

The photo was of a sober-faced Charlie, but it was without a doubt the man of the family album.

At long last, mystery over.

Then, much later, on Ancestry.ca, I found Charlie’s name on the 1901 Census and his 1910 death certificate that claims he died accidentally in a fire. Charlie, the snappy dresser, was the son of a modiste, a widow, and he had a younger sister. And he was buried as a Roman Catholic!

Quebec

Portrait of a Scandal: a Book Review

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Portrait of a Scandal: the Abortion Trial of Robert Notman, by Elaine Kalman Naves, is many things: a non-fiction courtroom page-turner, a story about illicit love, a tale of Scottish immigrant families in mid-19th century Montreal, and an exploration of some of the social customs and beliefs of the times. The fact that the book describes abortion practices and life in Kingston Penitentiary makes it all the grittier, while the high-profile identity of the main individual — the younger brother of society photographer William Notman — makes the details all the juicier.

I wanted to learn more about life in 19th century Montreal, home to several of my ancestors. But this real-life story hooked me within a few pages, with the mysterious death of a young physician, Dr. Patton. I won’t be spoiling the book by revealing that Patton committed suicide because he mistakenly believed his patient, a student named Margaret Galbraith, had died as a result of the abortion he performed on her. Her lover, Robert Notman, was charged with procuring the abortion.

The book is full of strong individuals, from the young woman whose hopes of becoming a teacher were doomed the minute she fell for Robert, to the lawyers who argued the case with dramatic flourishes. Their story is in excellent hands. Author Elaine Kalman Naves is an award-winning author, having already written a memoir about her own family, a book about Montreal writers and numerous articles for The Gazette.

Many family historians would relate to Naves’ research process, from her frustration with the red tape she encountered at the McGill University archives to her pleasure following Margaret’s footsteps back to the shores of Loch Lomond in Scotland. Much of the material has been culled from sources familiar to genealogists, including newspaper articles, family papers and city directories. Naves has brought these 150-year-old sources together in a way that makes sense to modern readers. And despite only having fragments of information about Robert’s and Margaret’s lives, she has succeeded in bringing these people back to life.

The bibliographic essay at the end of the book is also worth a look. Two of Naves’ favourite sources, Call Back Yesterdays by Edgar Andrew Collard, and Montreal: Island City of the St. Lawrence by Kathleen Jenkins, are probably on many Montrealers’ bookshelves, while the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online is only a Google search away.

Elaine Kalman Naves. Portrait of a Scandal: the Abortion Trial of Robert Notman. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 2013.

 

Quebec

Montreal’s Black Market Babies

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In the late 1940s and early 1950s, 1,000 babies were sold to adoptive parents through a black market baby ring that operated in Quebec. Most of the babies were born to unwed French Canadian mothers, most of the adoptive families were Jewish. Some of the children went to homes in Quebec and Ontario, and many grew up in the United States.

In 1984, my husband found out he had been adopted and that his parents had paid about $2,000 for him. About 15 years later, he found out about the black market baby ring that had arranged his adoption. Ever since then, he has been sharing his story with friends, with community groups and through the media. Several years ago, Global television told the story of Harold’s search for his birth mother on the program Past Lives.

This week, the Montreal CTV station aired a news feature about the black market baby ring. It puts Harold’s story in context, explaining how most of the mothers who gave birth out of wedlock had no choice but to give up their babies. Harold counts himself lucky that he ended up in a good home and not in an orphanage.

The ring was broken up 60 years ago this year. Some of the birth mothers have no doubt died, and many of their children are probably still trying to find them. The story is still fascinating.

Here is a link to that six-minute CTV feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNKTqkZmIGE

Karen Balcom of McMaster University has written a book that addresses this topic: The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada, 1930-1972 Studies in Gender and History, University of Toronto Press, 2011.

You can learn more about Montreal’s black market baby ring on the Parent Finders Montreal website, http://www.pfmtl.org/BMB/index.html. At the bottom of the page, there is a list of dates, pages and titles of old newspaper articles about the case. Paste in the url for one of these stories from The Gazette, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=Fr8DH2VBP9sC&dat=19540215&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, and from there you can easily browse the newspaper to find the other articles.

There is a Montreal Black Market Baby Facebook page.

Feb. 23 2016, this post has been updated. The link to the CTV feature now works.