To Dance at the Palais Royale

Description

218 pages
$11.95
ISBN 1-895387-70-1
DDC jC813'.54

Year

1996

Contributor

Reviewed by Patricia Morley

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Review

To Dance at the Palais Royale is the moving story of a young Scottish
girl who comes to Toronto in the late 1920s to work as a domestic.
Seventeen-year-old Aggie is determined to help her struggling family in
Loughlinter, where the coal mines have already destroyed her older
brother. She meets with both harsh and kindly people, in a class-ridden
society where existence for the poor is measured in cents, and the
struggle for a pair of old boots can turn friends into enemies. There is
high drama when a lost watch in her employer’s house puts her job and
her reputation at risk. There are also many touches of humor, such as
the Scottish belief that Canada is a country so wealthy that it can heat
the streets, a legend bred from the steam arising from the grates of
storm sewers.

Place, era, and society are vividly re-created in this powerful
coming-of-age tale by an author whose aunts were among the thousands of
girls who came from the British Isles as domestics in the 1920s and
1930s. Highly recommended.

Citation

McNaughton, Janet., “To Dance at the Palais Royale,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed October 15, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/19767.