Girl in a Red River Coat: Growing up in Montreal in the Thirties

by Mary Peate

Mary has lost her bedroom. She is shuffled back and forth from her parents’ room to the couch in the living room. She has no place to keep all her belongings. She has no place to write her stories about Soapy Sobby.
Loud complaining does no good. The room is being occupied by Mary’s aunt who is recovering from a stroke. A concert pianist and music teacher, she now stays in her bed and is tended to by Mary’s mother. The demands upon her mother’s time do not help the situation.
Mary’s dream of reclaiming her room is set in the 1930s in Montreal, specifically Norte Dame de Grace (NDG), Montreal. Against the background of the Depression, she buys cent candy in Mr. Meyer’s store, exasperates the nuns at St. Augustine’s school, rides in the Golden Chariot, and schemes with her friend Margaret. One of the “landmarks” in John Robert Columbo’s Canadian Literary Landmarks is Notre-Dame-de-Grace, about which he says, “The west-end district of NDG comes alive as a residential quarter in the memoir, Girl in a Red River Coat (1970), by Mary Peate. The author lived at 2296 Harvard Avenue, attended St. Augustine of Canterbury school and church, both on Cote Saint-Antoine at Marcil. Her girlhood was a period rich in emotion and excitement.”

149 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1970

Reviews

[Laura Falby]

I wanted to read this book because my mother mentioned it in a letter to her sister 40 years ago. It reminded me of some aspects of my childhood.