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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   7325 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Charles Vance Millar (June 28, 1854 – October 31, 1926) was a Canadian lawyer and financier. He was the president and part-owner of the Toronto brewery of O'Keefe Brewery. He also owned racehorses, including the 1915 King's Plate–winning horse Tartarean. However, he is now best known for his unusual will which touched off the Great Stork Derby.

Millar's final prank was his will, which says in part:

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.

The will had several unusual bequests:

  • Three men who were known to despise each other (T. P. Galt, KC; J. D. Montgomery and James Haverson, KC) were granted joint lifetime tenancy in Millar's vacation home in Jamaica, on condition that they live in the property together.
  • To each practicing Protestant minister in Toronto, and every Orange Lodge in Toronto, a share of O'Keefe Brewery stock, a Catholic business, if they participated in its management and drew on its dividends.
  • Two anti-horse-racing advocates (Hon. William Raney, Reverend Samuel Chown) and a man who detested the Ontario Jockey Club (Abe Orpen) were to receive a share of Ontario Jockey Club stock, provided they are shareholders in three years. Raney's and Chown's share were eventually given to charity and Orpen accepted his share.
  • Each duly ordained Christian minister in Walkerville, Sandwich, and Windsor, "except Spracklin, who shot a hotelkeeper" was to receive a share of the Kenilworth Park Racetrack, located just outside Windsor, Ontario.

The tenth and final clause of his will was the largest. It required that the balance of Millar's estate was to be converted to cash ten years after his death and given to the Toronto woman who gave birth to the most children in that time. In the event of a tie, the bequest would be divided equally. The resulting contest became known as the Great Stork Derby.

Eleven families competed in the "baby race." Seven of them were disqualified, but eventually Judge William Edward Middleton ruled in favour of four mothers (Annie Katherine Smith, Kathleen Ellen Nagle, Lucy Alice Timleck, and Isabel Mary Maclean) who each received $110,000 for their nine children ($2.24 million in 2023 dollars). Three of the four had to pay back relief money given to them by the City of Toronto government. Two of the disqualified candidates, Lillian Kenny and Pauline Mae Clarke, each received $12,500 out of court in exchange for abandoning pending appeals.

I'm too lazy to dig deep so I'm gonna rely on the bigbrains here to ask: is it legal for such an open lottery system to have race clauses baked into it? Like, most babies born of 2 parents whose combined skin tone is or is below a certain reflectivity or some weird shit like that?

I ask because there have been similar legal challenges here in my neck of the woods to extremely patriarchal wills. A common issue used to be where an alleged deathbed conversion of the patriarch to islam (or a marriage cert found in Indonesia where underage prostitution is conducted under the guise of temporary marriages - 'convert' marry pump dump divorce in about 1 hour) invalidates previous wills which specifically state that no property can be disbursed to muslims. A new tactic gaining (weak) traction is that such wills are invalid because of their discriminatory nature against mixed marriages, but southeast asia doesn't really play that game. Does such stuff happen in the west?

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