THE CITIZENS’ ASSOCIATION
The “Citizens’ Association,” which was organized in 1909 by the best and most representative citizens of Montreal, was a sequent of the various other associations then either existent, moribund or actually dead, among business men in the past whose aims were to seek charter reform for better municipal government. It arose out of the dissatisfactory state of municipal politics at this date.
Its lines are along those of civic vigilance and it aims at the suppression of attempts at corruption or malversation at the city hall by watching the conduct of those responsible and by seeing to it that future candidates coming up for municipal election should be honest and respected citizens. Its earliest work was the promotion of the amended charter which established the Board of Control system and of securing a “clean slate” at the election of 1910, as already told. It has also promoted reforms for the better regulation of public utilities and for better city management and administrative progress. It has endeavoured to act as a clearing house for other associations having a civic political tendency. In 1913, it sought to promote a simplification of the ward system and at the beginning of 1914 to secure a good representative slate in the municipal elections, but without the dramatic success of 1910. The career of such an organization is necessarily chequered, but good men stand by organized effort for the public good. While its activities should primarily be placed in the constitutional or municipal sections of this history, yet as sociological progress depends so much on good municipal government, it deserves record here as an adjunct of the bodies enumerated.
One gratifying aspect of the movements of late years has been the growth of the spirit of civic cooperation through the central representative associations of a now complex city life.
CHILD WELFARE EXHIBITION
References have been made to the great Child Welfare Exhibition of 1912. This took place in the Drill Hall on Craig Street, opposite the Champ de Mars, on October 8th and lasted for a fortnight. It was the work of all the social workers acting for their institutions of every class—national or religious—in the city. The movement arose out of a desire to combat, by a dramatic object lesson, the evils of infantile mortality, then becoming to be realized more and more in an ever-growing and congested city. But the welfare of the older child or the young person under tutelage was also illustrated by charts and lectures and living demonstrations of what was being done along progressive educational lines at home as well as abroad. It was practically an exhibition of modern social endeavour centering around the home of the children, in their city environment. While it was modelled on a similar exhibition in New York in 1910, it had a peculiar Montreal aspect, as it was conducted largely on local lines and embraced the phases of local endeavour. It had lessons, however, for the Dominion, in bringing to the attention the need of regard for human conservation as well as that of our forest and animal resources. The municipal, provincial and federal governments by gifts of $5,000 each, assisted local subscribers in the organization of the exhibition so that it was able to be thrown open to the public for a fortnight free of charge, with the result that as a public educative movement it surpassed anything previously attempted, at least, in Canada. Thousands of parents crowded the immense hall and annexes daily, as well as large numbers of civic officials, teachers, medical and professional men, clergymen and religious men and women in their habits. It has been the most notable public exhibition in the history of the city and was marked by the spirit of universal cooperation in a degree very gratifying to the promoters.
The exhibition paved the way to the immediate success of many forward movements already existing, notably those for better library and playground accommodations for the city, and the establishment of milk stations or gouttes de lait. As this latter was among the primary by-products of the main thesis of the exhibition which sought to lessen the dangers of infantile life, productive of infantile mortality, this may be now specially noticed. In 1913, from May 11th to the 13th, there was held the first convention of the French “Gouttes de lait,” which outlined hygienic ameliorations through organized educational campaigns that will be of great future value to the virility of our people. Similar movements were initiated or continued among the English-speaking sections.
To mark its approbation of the movement the municipal authorities largely came to the rescue by subsidizing the efforts of the social organizations of the city.
MILK STATION MOVEMENT