@article{ref1,
title="Glimpsing working-class childhood through the Laurier Palace fire of 1927: the ordinary, the tragic, and the historian's gaze",
journal="Journal of the history of childhood and youth",
year="2015",
author="Fahrni, Magda",
volume="8",
number="3",
pages="426-450",
abstract="On January 9, 1927, a fire tore through the Laurier Palace, a cinema located in a French-speaking, working-class neighborhood on the east side of Montreal. Seventy-eight children died. This article uses the abundant documentation generated by the fire to explore a number of themes related to working-class childhood in early-twentieth-century Montreal: children's autonomy versus parental surveillance and authority; the place of commercial leisure and petty consumption in the lives of working-class children; and contemporary understandings of such tragic accidents as the Laurier Palace fire. The article reflects on the promise and perils of what David Lowenthal has termed the &quot;voyeuristic empathy&quot; promoted by historians. Are historians of youth, what one scholar calls &quot;latter-day child savers,&quot; more likely than others to adopt a perspective reliant upon (or vulnerable to) such empathy?<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1941-3599",
doi="10.1353/hcy.2015.0047",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hcy.2015.0047"
}