Charles Vance Millar

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Charles Vance Millar (born 1853 in Aylmer , Ontario , † October 31, 1926 in Toronto ) was a Canadian lawyer and entrepreneur. He gained particular fame through his will, in which he promised a large part of his fortune to the woman from Toronto who had the most children within ten years. This led to the so-called Grand Stork Derby (Great Stork Derby) , in which numerous women tried to preserve Millar's inheritance by bearing many children.

Life

Millar was the only child of a wealthy farmer who lived near the town of Aylmer in the Canadian state of Ontario. His mother insisted on higher education, so he enrolled in the University of Toronto . Since he received only the most necessary financial support from his father, he had no money for student activities and instead concentrated on his studies, which he graduated with top grades in 1878. After that he attended a law school. After graduation, he worked as a corporate and contract law attorney in Toronto. He also campaigned for the rights of the underprivileged. However, he made most of his fortune in real estate and investment business. In 1897, for example, he invested in a transport company that also operated the postal service in the Cariboo area around the Cariboo Mountains . He also acquired shares in a cobalt silver mine in 1905 , which became a profitable business after the discovery of a large silver deposit.

Millar remained unmarried and childless and lived in a hotel room for many years until he built a house for his widowed mother. He lived there with her until her death. He died of a heart attack on the steps of his office on October 31, 1926 .

The testament

Millar's will, which is the main reason for its notoriety, contained some very unusual passages. Millar made this unusual already clear in the introduction.

“This Will is necessarily uncommon and capricious because I have no dependents or near relations and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death and what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime . ”

“This will is quite unusual and capricious, for I have no family members or close ties and I have no obligations to leave anything after my death, and what I leave behind is evidence of my folly to collect and keep more than I do during my life. "

- Charles Vance Millar : Introduction of his will

For example, he bequeathed a vacation home in Kingston , Jamaica to three fellow lawyers who hated each other. Should either of the three sell their stake in the house, the proceeds would be distributed among the Kingston poor. However, it later emerged that Millar had sold the house before his death. He bequeathed shares in a Catholic brewery to Protestant priests and members of the Orange Order who campaigned for Prohibition . Here, too, it later turned out that Millar did not even own these shares. He also bequeathed shares in two horse racing tracks to priests who were opponents of horse racing.

The best known, however, is the tenth paragraph in Millar's will.

“All the rest and residue of my property wherever situate I give, devise and bequeath unto my Executors and Trustees named below in Trust to convert into money as they deem advisable and invest all the money until the expiration of nine years from my death and then call in and convert it all into money and at the expiration of ten years from my death to give it and its accumulations to the Mother who has since my death given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children as shown by the Registrations under the Vital Statistics Act. If one or more mothers have equal highest number of registrations under the said Act to divide the said moneys and accumulations equally between them. "

“All of the rest of my property, wherever it is, is being held in trust to my agents and trustees listed below for them to monetize and invest at their discretion for up to nine years after my death. After that, they are supposed to monetize everything and give it, together with the interest, ten years after my death to the mother who has given birth to most children since my death in Toronto. Proof of this must be provided by registering under the Vital Statistics Act . If one or more mothers have the same number of registrations under the said Act, the said money and interest shall be divided equally among them. "

- Charles Vance Millar : paragraph 10 of his will

There are various statements about Millar's motivation for his will and especially the tenth paragraph. Millar is often portrayed as a man with a special sense of humor who would have seen his last trick in his will. According to the Toronto Daily Star , shortly before his death, he is said to have told a friend that he would make sex the most popular sport in Canada for the next ten years. Distant relatives, when challenging the will in court, let it be known that it had thought people were hypocritical and false. Other sources report that he had a great respect for women and believed that they were being treated badly. In his view, poorer women in particular would be forced to give birth to unwanted children that they could not feed because of the ban on birth control . With the competition he wanted to initiate a reform of this system.

The big stork derby

The tenth paragraph of Millars Testament made for a competition that as The Great Stork Derby (The Great Stork Derby) was known. The term refers to the legend that the stork brought the children and goes back to the Toronto Daily Star . In addition to other Canadian and US newspapers, it reported extensively on the status of the competition and had also signed exclusive contracts with the participating mothers.

The competition coincided with the Great Depression , which also affected Canada and Toronto. In 1933, a third of Toronto's residents were unemployed. In addition, wages had fallen by around 50%. However, Millar's fortune was unaffected and instead increased. The figures range from 500,000 to 750,000 Canadian dollars . That corresponded to between six and nine million euros in 2017. The main reason for this was its share in the construction of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel , which increased significantly in value after its opening in 1930.

Cousins ​​Millars who had been removed from the USA tried to declare paragraph ten invalid and thereby secure their claim to inheritance. This was rejected by a court in May 1930 because they were not Millar's closest relatives. This was a California woman who died a year after Millar. Her executor also attempted to challenge Millar's will, but withdrew the challenge when Millar's trustee asked for bail to cover his legal expenses.

Politicians also tried to challenge Millar's will. In March 1932, William H. Price introduced a law into the Ontario parliament that was to add Millar's estate to the University of Toronto , which was to use it for scholarships, among other things. However, this provoked great protest from the population. Price is said to have received up to 14,000 letters of protest. The bill was then withdrawn.

In November 1936, the tenth paragraph was validated by a Canadian court. However, it was stipulated that only legitimate children are taken into account. This decision was finally upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada on December 22, 1937 . In the end, four women, Isobel MacLean, Kathleen Nagle, Annie Smith and Lucy Timleck, won the competition. They had each given birth to nine legitimate children during the period in question and each received Canada's 125,000 dollars. In 2017, this was roughly equivalent to 1.5 million euros. Two other women received $ 12,500 each on condition that they would not take legal action against the decision. The two had given birth to 14 and 10 children respectively, some of which were not recognized for various reasons.

reception

Based on the Great Stork Derby in 1938, a member of the parliament of the Australian state of New South Wales proposed that such a competition be held there in order to improve the falling birth rate. Probably also inspired by the Great Stork Derby, the former mayor of Toronto Thomas Foster decreed in his will that four more ten-year “competitions” for the most fertile mother should take place after his death, starting in 1945, 1948, 1951 and 1954. In each of the competitions, the three mothers from Toronto with the most children received a total of $ 2,500.

Mark M. Orkin published his book The Great Stork Derby in 1981 . In 2002 the Canadian television film The Stork Derby was released, in which, among other things, Megan Follows starred. The film is based on the master's thesis Bearing The Burden: The Great Toronto Stork Derby 1926-1938 by Elizabeth Wilton, which this 1994 had submitted to Dalhousie University .

In 2016, a Toronto brewery produced a stork derby stout .

literature

  • Malcom W. Bingay: Detroit Is My Own Home Town. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946, pp. 319-325 ( online at the Internet Archive ).
  • Marty Gervais: Ghost Road: and Other Forgotten Stories of Windsor . Biblioasis, 2012, ISBN 9781926845883 , pp. 107–111 ( online at Google Books ) (English).
  • Mark M. Orkin: The Great Stork Derby . General Pub., 1981, ISBN 978-0773600980 (English).
  • Susan Schwartz: Prim Toronto was site of baby race. In: The Montreal Gazette , December 9, 1981, ( online at Google News ).
  • George Sherwood: Legends In Their Time: Young Heroes and Victims of Canada . Natural History Books, 2006, ISBN 1-897045-10-7 , pp. 135-147 ( online at Google Books ) (English).
  • Willis J. West: The "BX" and the Rush to Fort George. In: The British Columbia Historical Quarterly Vol. XIII No. 3 & 4, 1949, pp. 133-137 ( online ) (English).
  • Elizabeth Marjorie Wilton: Bearing The Burden: The Great Toronto Stork Derby 1926–1938 . Master's thesis, Dalhousie University 1994, ISBN 0-612-15836-5 ( document preview at ProQuest ) (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Willis J. West: The "BX" and the Rush to Fort George. In: The British Columbia Historical Quarterly Vol. XIII No. 3 & 4, 1949, pp. 134-136 ( online ) (English)
  2. ^ A b c d Elizabeth Marjorie Wilton: Bearing The Burden: The Great Toronto Stork Derby 1926–1938 . Master's thesis, Dalhousie University 1994, ISBN 0-612-15836-5 , p. 1 ( document preview at ProQuest ) (English).
  3. ^ Susan Schwartz: Prim Toronto was site of baby race. In: The Montreal Gazette , December 9, 1981, ( online from Google News , accessed February 11, 2018)
  4. ↑ a b c d e Katja Iken: Bizarre baby competition in Canada: "I will make sex the most popular sport". In: Spiegel online . November 23, 2017, accessed February 4, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b c Barbara Mikkelson: Toronto Baby Race Stork Derby. In: Snopes.com . November 21, 2013, accessed February 4, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b c Chris Bateman: Historicist: The Great Stork Derby. In: Torontoist. October 29, 2016, accessed March 11, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Malcom W. Bingay: Detroit Is My Own Home Town. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946, pp. 322-323 ( online at the Internet Archive ).
  8. ↑ a b Catherine Dawson March: Special delivery. In: The Globe and Mail . January 5, 2002, accessed March 11, 2018 .
  9. ↑ 'Baby Clause' held valid in Millar Will. In: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , November 21, 1936, p. 2 ( online at Google News , accessed March 11, 2018).
  10. ^ In Re Estate of Charles Millar, Deceased, [1938] SCR 1, 1937 CanLII 10 (SCC). In: Archives of the Canadian Legal Information Institute . December 22, 1937. Retrieved March 11, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Australian 'Stork Derby' Urged to Boost Birth Rate. In: New York Times , August 2, 1938 ( online , full access paid).
  12. ^ Stork Derby Series Faces Toronto; $ 10,000 Is To Go To Most Prolific . In: The Montreal Gazette , March 12, 1946, ( online from Google News , accessed February 17, 2018)
  13. ↑ The Stork Derby in the Internet Movie Database .
  14. ↑ The Great Toronto Stork Derby Stout. In: Muddy York Brewing Co. website December 13, 2016, accessed March 9, 2019 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Various sources speak of the ninth paragraph, such as Iken and Mikkelson. However, a copy of the will, which can be found at Gervais and Goldenberg, shows that it is the tenth paragraph.
  2. ↑ Iken speaks of 750,000 dollars, which would have been around 9,000,000 euros in 2017. This results from a conversion factor of around 12.
personal data
SURNAME Millar, Charles Vance
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian lawyer and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Aylmer , Ontario
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 1926
Place of death Toronto