Читать книгу Let It Snow. Keeping Canada's Winter Sports Alive онлайн

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We dedicate this book to the memory of Alfred Humber, the grandfather/father of Darryl and Bill, in recognition of his long nights of backyard ice-making. Neither he nor the mysterious lady in our introduction who befriended Joseph Atkinson could have known they would find their way into a book so many years later. The good they did, however, lives forever and this is its small reward.

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The following story might be apocryphal, but one hopes it is true.

Joseph E. Atkinson began his career as a journalist and rose to become publisher of the Toronto Star, from which he developed a reputation as a reformer and defender of the less fortunate. Born near Newcastle, Ontario, in 1865, he died in 1948, but the charitable foundation bearing his name continues to do good work over sixty years later.

It does so perhaps because of an incident Atkinson recalled from his boyhood days in Newcastle. He was, by his own description, a small and fragile lad with a speech impediment lasting into his twenties.