A PRIMER ON BILL 82, QUEBEC’S NEW HERITAGE LAW $10 Quebec VOL. 7, NO. 1 W INTER 2013 HeritageNews Stones and Bones Sherbrooke’s Winter Prison and Sir John Johnson’s Vault Producing Potash Horatio Gates and Others Do a Roaring Trade Heritage on Tap The Career of Ethel May Bruneau QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Quebec CONTENTS HeritageNews EDITOR Editor’s Desk 3 RODERICK MACLEOD Wee Kiddies on picket duty Rod MacLeod PRODUCTION DAN PINESE Timelines 5 QAHN joins in Traf’s 125th PUBLISHER THE QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE Sherbrooke’s Winter Prison inside and out Jessica Campbell HERITAGE NETWORK 400-257 QUEEN STREET Right step or misstep? Quebec’s new cultural heritage law Kevin O’Donnell SHERBROOKE, QUEBEC J1M 1K7 The restoration of Sir John Johnson’s burial vault Jessica Campbell PHONE 1-877-964-0409 Miss Swing 13 (819) 564-9595 Ethel Bruneau from Harlem to Rockhead’s Lys Stevens FAX (819) 564-6872 Trudeau Park’s Hidden Treasure 18 CORRESPONDENCE The Human Right’s Walkway Myra Shuster [email protected] WEBSITES The Ghost of the Ottawa 21 WWW.QAHN.ORG Joseph Graham WWW.QUEBECHERITAGEWEB.COM The Potash Process 22 PRESIDENT Exploring a grand old trade Susan McGuire KEVIN O’DONNELL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & Horatio Gates 24 WEBMAGAZINES EDITOR An American in Montreal during the War of 1812 Susan McGuire MATTHEW FARFAN OFFICE MANAGER Alec C. Booth 26 KATHY TEASDALE Richmond County’s “Working Man” poet Nick Fonda Quebec Heritage News is produced four Reviews 28 times yearly by the Quebec Anglophone Worthy of the Annals Heritage Network (QAHN) with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage Irish Settlement and National Identity by Peter Southam Sandra Stock and Quebec’s Ministère de la Culture et des Communications. QAHN is a non-profit New History, Old Dilemmas Nick Fonda and non-partisan umbrella organization whose mission is to help advance knowl- An Illustrated History of Quebec by Peter Gossage and J. I. Little edge of the history and culture of the English-speaking communities of Quebec. Annual Subscription Rates: Editor’s note: Individual: $30.00; Organization: $40.00 Please note that the previous issue of Quebec Heritage News (Vol. 6 No. 7) was the final issue Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 405610004. of that volume. With the current issue (Vol. 7, No. 1), we are “rebooting” our numbering sys- ISSN 17707-2670 tem to better reflect our quarterly format. Henceforth, each volume will include four numbers. PRINTED IN CANADA Cover image: For sale! Sherbrooke’s Winter Prison, 2012. Photo: Matthew Farfan 2 WINTER 2013 EDITOR’S DESK Wee kiddies on picket duty by Rod MacLeod o, you thought this past year in with Protestants “for education purpos- in part excuse certain discriminatory ten- Quebec saw a shocking level of es,” the position of Jewish children in dencies on the part of one Miss McKin- student protest and clashes in classrooms was always precarious, even ley, teacher of a Grade Six class at Ab- the streets? Small potatoes. in schools such as Mount Royal, Lans- erdeen School, her sense of timing was SNothing compared to the scene one hun- downe, and Aberdeen where Jews made clearly abysmal. On the morning of dred years ago this February when Mon- up the majority of students. There were Thursday, February 27, 1913, she told treal’s St. Louis Square was turned into virtually no Jewish teachers working in her almost entirely Jewish class that the strike headquarters of hundreds of the public system. Certainly cultural Jews were dirty and should be banned picketing students whose actions would sensitivity training was not part of the from the school. Given the political cli- have revolutionary consequences for ed- Normal School curriculum. mate, this outburst electrified the stu- ucation and ethnic relations in Quebec. In early 1913, however, the issue dents – five boys in particular: Harry And most of them were under ten. that would have dominated discussions Singer, Frank Sherman, Joe Orenstein, There were lots of strikes in those around kitchen tables in homes on and Moses Skibelsky, and Moses Margolis days – vicious ones, too, with went straight to the principal police and/or private goon to complain. Unfortunately, squads breaking up marching although a staunch discipli- workers, both collectively and narian, Principal Henry Cock- individually. 1912 saw a par- field was no diplomat. Seeing ticularly bitter dispute in Mon- only pre-teen troublemakers, treal’s garment industry, which he dismissed the boys out of was close to my story’s home hand. in that both factory owners So they called a strike. and workers were Jewish. The Applying what they had workers were Yiddish-speak- learned from their parents, ing, secular, and socialist, their Aberdeen school students political views imported from from all grades picketed in the Pale of Russia from which front of the school gates Fri- they (unlike the factory own- day morning, February 28. ers) hailed. The children of Soon over 200 children (some these families earned their said as many as 600) had Poli-Sci degrees around the gathered, at which point they kitchen table, just as they crossed St. Denis Street to the learned English, Math, Geog- park in St. Louis Square, raphy, and how to be a good citizen of off The Main was the Plamondon affair. which became strike HQ. There, they the Empire at the local Protestant school. Three years earlier, notary Jacques- vowed not to return to class until they There was also lots of anti-semitism Edouard Plamondon, addressing a gath- received an apology, and declared that in those days. Very few Canadians of ering of the Association catholique de la any student who did so would be consid- non-Jewish persuasion were immune to jeunesse canadienne-française in Quebec ered a scab. Someone, possibly a resi- this form of mental illness, although for City, denounced Jews and Judaism, dent of this otherwise tony square, called most the symptoms either did not mani- evoking no less than the ancient blood the police. Two officers arrived and tried fest or were cleverly concealed. Protes- libel as evidence of a mounting conspir- to force the children out of the park, but tant school administrators were usually acy. This speech provoked several in- this proved harder than herding cats. adept at masking whatever distaste they stances of street fighting and vandalism According to reporters, who also turned may have felt towards the growing num- between Jews and Catholics, and these up in search of curious news, the chil- ber of Jewish children in their class- in turn spurred the provincial Jewish dren were slippery but neither aggres- rooms with expressions of concern for leadership to sue Plamondon for libel – sive nor provocative; apparently not maintaining the “Christian character” of an unprecedented course of action. The even a single snowball was thrown. schooling and for having to provide edu- trial was set to begin in May 1913, its Their sense of calm purpose is especial- cation to hundreds of pupils whose par- outcome eagerly awaited by the entire ly impressive given that these children ents, as renters, did not pay school taxes. Jewish community. had reason to be afraid of police after Even though a 1903 law equated Jews And so, although upbringing might witnessing what had occurred during the 3 Montreal Herald, March 1, 1913. QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS recent garment workers’ strike. the matter of hiring Jewish teachers. This was good publicity, but not Sure enough, after legal counsel de- enough. The savvy strike leaders sent a clared there was no impediment, the delegation to march on the offices of the board began to accept non-Protestant ap- Keneder Adler (the “Canadian Eagle”), plications for teaching positions. In the Montreal’s principal Yiddish newspaper, fall of 1913, Misses F. Novick, whose editor Reuben Brainen and pub- L. Chaskelson and Rebecca Smilovitz lisher Hirsch Wolofsky proved sympa- (all clearly identified as “Jewesses”) thetic to the children’s cause. Over the took charge of classrooms in various following days, Brainen’s numerous arti- Protestant schools. Within a decade of cles about the strike presented it as evi- the Aberdeen School Strike, the board dence of a nascent sense of Jewish dig- was employing over seventy Jewish nity and solidarity: “What interests me is teachers – hardly enough to go around that the children did not seek justice for all the schools with large Jewish popula- themselves,” he wrote. “It was their na- tions, but a definite improvement over tional sensibility that was offended and the situation at the beginning of the cen- that provoked their little fists against tury. their highest government (for to children A colleague and I first learned of their teachers and schools are the highest the Aberdeen School Strike some time government).” ago from a book of articles taken from Another delegation of students was the early years of Keneder Adler, but felt let go of.) sent to the Baron de Hirsch Institute, much more could be done with the story. And so, after countless drafts and where the city’s Jewish political leader- We particularly wanted to explore the numerous conference presentations (in- ship (including Samuel Jacobs, one of variety of reactions to the strike, from cluding Klez Canada Laurentian Retreat the lawyers in the Plamondon case) held support to hostility, both within the Jew- and the LeMood festival of “unexpected their meetings. The Institute’s legislative ish community (Abramowitz, for one, Jewish learning”) we lucked out on a committee agreed to send a negotiating was initially very skeptical) and outside. fast publishing turnaround at Labour/Le party to Aberdeen School, consisting of We also wanted to present a story of re- Travail and the story of the Aberdeen Jacobs and Rabbi Herman Abramovitz.