Part 19 (2/2)

I closed my eyes and thought about that. Even today language and religion determined so much in Montreal. The Catholic schools. The Protestant schools. The Nationalists. The Federalists. I wondered where elisabeth Nicolet's loyalties would lie.

The room dimmed and the lamps clicked to life. I read on.

In the late nineteenth century Montreal was a major commercial hub, boasting a magnificent harbor, huge stone warehouses, tanneries, soapworks, factories. McGill was already a leading university. But, like other Victorian cities, it was a place of contrasts, with the huge mansions of the merchant princes overshadowing the hovels of the working poor. Just off the wide, paved avenues, beyond Sherbrooke and Dorchester, lay hundreds of dirt lanes and unpaved alleys.

The city then was poorly drained, with garbage and animal carca.s.ses rotting in vacant lots, and excrement everywhere. The river was used as an open sewer. Though frozen in winter, the offal and refuse rotted and reeked in the warmer months. Everyone complained of the foul odors.

My tea had grown cold so I uncurled, stretched, and made a fresh cup. When I reopened the book, I skipped ahead to a section on sanitation. It had been one of Louis-Philippe's recurring gripes about the Hotel Dieu Hospital. Sure enough, there was a reference to the old boy. He'd gone on to become a member of the Health Committee of the City Council.

I read an engrossing account of the council discussing human waste. Disposal was chaotic at the time. Some Montrealers flushed excrement into city sewers that led into the river. Some used earth closets, sprinkling dirt over their deposits then putting them out for garbage collectors. Others defecated into outdoor privy pits.

The city's medical officer reported that inhabitants produced approximately 170 tons of excrement each day, or over 215,000 tons per year. He warned that the 10,000 privy pits and cesspools in the city were the primary source of zymotic diseases, including typhoid, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. The council decided in favor of a system of collection and incineration. Louis-Philippe voted yea. It was January 28, 1885.

The day after the vote, Grand Trunk Railway's western train pulled into Bonaventure Station. A conductor was ill and the railroad's doctor was called. The man was examined and diagnosed as having smallpox. Being Protestant, he was taken to the Montreal General Hospital, but was refused admission. The patient was allowed to wait in an isolated room in the contagious diseases wing. Finally, at the railroad doctor's pleading, he was grudgingly admitted to the Catholic Hotel Dieu Hospital.

I got up to stoke the fire. As I rearranged the logs I pictured the rambling, gray-stone building that stood at avenue des Pins and rue St-Urbain. The Hotel Dieu was still a functioning hospital. I'd driven past it many times.

I went back to the book. My stomach was growling, but I wanted to read until Harry arrived.

The doctors at the Montreal General thought those at the Hotel Dieu had reported the smallpox to public health authorities. Those at the Hotel Dieu thought the converse. No one told the authorities, and no one told the medical staff at either hospital. By the time the epidemic ended, over three thousand people were dead, most of them children.

I closed the book. My eyes were burning and my temples throbbed. The clock said seven-fifteen. Where was Harry?

I went to the kitchen, took out and rinsed the salmon steaks. As I mixed dill sauce I tried to picture my neighborhood a century earlier. How did one face smallpox in those days? To what home remedies did one turn? Over two thirds of the dead were children. What was it like to see your neighbors' children die? How did one deal with the helplessness of caring for a doomed child?

I scrubbed two potatoes and put them in the toaster oven, then washed lettuce, tomatoes, and cuc.u.mbers. Still no Harry.

Though the reading had taken my mind off Mathias and Malachy and Carole Comptois, I was still tense and my head hurt. I ran a hot bath and added aromatherapy ocean mineral salts. Then I put on a Leonard Cohen CD and slipped in for a long soak.

I used elisabeth to keep my mind off my recent homicide cases. The trip through history had been fascinating, but I hadn't learned what I needed to know. I was already familiar with elisabeth's work during the epidemic through the volumes of information Sister Julienne had sent before the exhumation.

elisabeth had been a recluse for years, but when the epidemic raged out of control she became an advocate for medical moderni-zation. She wrote letters to the Provincial Board of Health, to the Health Committee of the City Council, and to Honore Beaugrand, mayor of Montreal, begging for improved sanitation. She bombarded the French- and English-language papers, demanding the reopening of the city smallpox hospital and arguing for public vaccination.

She wrote to her bishop, pointing out that the fever was spread in places where crowds gathered, and begging him to temporarily close the churches. Bishop Fabre refused, stating that to close the churches would be to laugh at G.o.d. The bishop urged his flock to church, telling them that united prayer was more powerful than prayer in isolation.

Good thinking, Bishop. That's why French Catholics were dying and English Protestants were not. The heathens got inoculated and stayed home.

I added hot water, imagining elisabeth's frustration and how much tact I would have used.

O.K. I knew about her work, and I knew aboust her death. The nuns had gone to town on that. I'd read reams on her final illness and the public funeral that followed.

But I needed to know about her birth.

I took the soap and worked up a lather.

There was no avoiding the journals.

I ran the bar over my shoulders.

But I had the photocopies, so that could wait until I got to Charlotte.

I washed my feet.

Newspapers. That had been Jeannotte's suggestion. Yes. I'd use the time I had on Monday to view old newspapers. I had to go to McGill anyway to return the diaries.

I slid back into the hot water and thought about my sister. Poor Harry. I'd pretty much ignored her yesterday. I'd been tired, but was that it? Or was it Ryan? She had every right to sleep with him if she wanted. So why had I been so cold? I resolved to be more friendly tonight.

I was toweling off when I heard the beep of the security alarm. I dug out a flannel Disney nights.h.i.+rt Harry had given me one Christmas, and pulled it over my head.

I found her standing in the living room, still wearing her jacket, gloves, and hat, her eyes fixed on something a million miles away.

”Long day, I'd say.”

”Yeah.” She refocused on the present, and gave me a half smile.

”Hungry?”

”I guess. Just let me have a few minutes.” She threw her pack onto the couch and flopped down beside it.

”Sure. Take your coat off and stay awhile.”

”Right. d.a.m.n, it gets cold here. I feel like a Popsicle just walking from the metro.”

A few minutes later I heard her in the guest room, then she joined me in the kitchen. I grilled the salmon and tossed the salad while she set the table.

When we sat down to eat I asked about her day.

”It was fine.” She cut her potato, squeezed it, and added sour cream.

”Fine?” I encouraged.

”Yeah. We covered a lot.”

”You look like you covered forty miles of bad road.”

”Yeah. I'm pretty beat.” She didn't smile at my use of her expression.

”So what did you do?”

”Lots of lectures, exercises.” She spooned sauce onto her fish. ”What are these little green threads?”

”Dill. What kinds of exercises?”

<script>