Mother's Boarding House

         During the 1930’s, the cloud of the Great Depression hung over everyone, disordering the lives of so many.  By 1934 some

 60 000 Montrealers were unemployed and 240 000 were receiving government assistance of one kind or another.  Unemployment insurance would await the coming of 1940.  The provincial governments were near bankrupt, and the problem of providing social relief settled unevenly on the cities.  Hundreds of men would turn out to clear the snow off Montreal’s streets in winter.  For a dollar a day they would spend eight hours shoveling and pitching snow into the brigades of high-boarded horse-drawn sleds.  Few of them were dressed for the wintry conditions.  It made me shiver with cold to see them.

         Some of those afflicted by the Depression came to live at our house, and a few stand out in my memories of those years.  Mr. and Mrs. Stohmeir, a childless couple who had immigrated to Canada soon after the war, were early arrivals.  He, a sailor and tinsmith, had worked at Vicker’s shipyards.  She had been a domestic.  Both were now unemployed, and without prospects, apart from the seasonal snow removal for which he eagerly lined up. 

         The Wilson’s arrived.  She was married to an English immigrant and they had a rather sickly little boy.  Mrs. Wilson and Mother became quite close friends, although she never took to Mr. Wilson.  I knew my mother’s views on the English well enough!  However, Mr. Wilson and my Dad became friendly enough.  He would sometimes accompany us on fishing weekends at Brome Lake, in the Eastern Townships.  (In later years I would think of the place as the parish of Mordecai Richler.)

         Another one of Mother’s ‘Paying Guests’, as she called them, was an unmarried lady who was expecting a baby. Miss Knowles always seemed to me to be rather mentally undeveloped.  Perhaps because of her own experience, Mother took a proprietary interest in the lady.  She made it her business to meet the married man who had seduced Miss Knowles, and shamed him to the extent he agreed to pay her rent and provide for her and the child when the time came.

         Meals were a major feature of the boarding house.  My mother made a weekly meal menu that seldom varied.  Breakfast might be cream of wheat with eggs on toast, or baked apples and muffins.  If we had bananas and scrambled eggs on toast it was certainly Thursday morning!  I usually made it home for lunch, for I could look forward to bean soup with custard to follow, or baked potatoes, celery stuffed with cheese, and applesauce. On Mother’s laundry days we lunched on grilled cheese sandwiches  and dill pickles.   Fridays I always carried sandwiches to school, so as to avoid the creamed eggs with shrimp on toast followed by preserved figs with cream. 

Supper was always substantial.  Baked trout with mashed potatoes, or a beef roast with duchess potatoes, perhaps chicken a la king with carrots and peas might be offered.  There was always a nice dessert, for Mother was a skilled cook.  She made a wonderful angel food cake, and created all kinds of pastry confections. 

         If my mother’s cooking and baking were my comfort in those days, they were also my downfall.  One wintry night we dined on Irish stew, never my favorite dish.  Under the urging of my mother to finish mine because it was ‘good’ for me, and lured by the prospect of chocolate cake for dessert, I did so.  Some hours later, during a feverish night I parted with my supper.  By morning I was long past caring about anything.  I had come down with Scarlet Fever, and six weeks in hospital followed. 

It would be many years before I could face stew of any sort!