Depression-Era Torontonians Race To Procreate For Cash
None of the Netflix, all of the chill
The 1930s were a difficult decade; dark, dirty, dangerous, and destitute, albeit laden with alliterative possibility. In America, the population posed picturesquely in sepia-toned breadlines, while Europeans brooded over the tragedy of the Great War and plotted a rematch. The people of Toronto, like much of the rest of the world, wallowed in a cesspit of poverty and misery from which no number of Shirley Temple films could extricate them.
However, in the depths of those cheerless days of the Depression, the post-mortem whimsy of an idiosyncratic millionaire sparked a competition that fired the imagination of the public and captured international headlines- The Great Stork Derby.
The race begins
Also known as the Baby Race and probably by other, ruder names, the Derby was the brainchild of Toronto lawyer Charles Vance Millar. In life, Millar was a practical joker and he continued to indulge his eccentricities even after his death at the age of 73 in 1926. Lacking dependents, he disposed of his earthly possessions through a series of capricious bequests of uncertain legality, most notably the famous clause ten, which mandated that the bulk of his estate should go to the Toronto woman who birthed the most…
