brainylady

Globe and Mail, September 3, 1945



I'm at the library, looking for articles about immediate-postwar food shortages and rationing in the Globe. I love that the paper is archived digitally, each page a PDF file -- my search is finding all stories that include the word "meat," but I also get to see the whole page that each of those stories is on. This allows for the discovery of gems like the article above. In case you can't read it, here's what happened to Mrs. T. F. Rahilly, while vacationing at Point des Chenes, Ontario, in early September 1945:

     Wife of the general manager of the Toronto Iron Works, she was sitting by a living-room fire knitting with a young companion, Dorothy Bonspiel, when she heard bears sniffing at the door. She handed Dorothy a flashlight, took the rifle and went outside. Dorothy aimed the flashlight, Mrs. Rahilly aimed the rifle and plugged a 300-pound bear. She repeated on two more, these smaller.
     She plans to use the skins as cottage trophies.

The reporter was obviously not a knitter. Hello, did Mrs. Rahilly drop any stitches?

(If I ever write under a pseudonym, it's totally going to be "Dorothy Bonspiel." How excellent is that name? Or maybe I'll write a Nancy Drew-type story in which Dorothy Bonspiel, the clever heroine, is a crime fighter and a champion curler.)