Maclean's

Fiction

UNWANTED GUEST

THE greeting was about what Anne had expected. The car drove up and whirled around the circular drive with a great squealing of gravel and tires and with the horn blowing like crazy in the August heat; and dad and mother came out of the house with big smiles and open arms, and Harvey and Glory swooped out of the car and were swooped upon. By PAUL ERNST

22

Ariticles

SHE'S THE ONLY ONE OF HER KIND

THERE’S a solemn procession each day in the parliament buildings at Victoria, B.C. Sergeant-at-Arms Capt. W. R. Webster booms out: “Make way for Madame Speaker.” Members of the legislature stand. The world’s only woman Speaker, a newspaper columnist named Nancy Hodges, walks in measured tread through wide doors, mounts three blue-carpeted steps to her dais and sits down in a thronelike chair of carved oak. By JIM NESBITT

6

MACKENZIE KING As I Knew Him

SOME PEOPLE think that last journey killed him—the trip to London in October 1948 to the Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. He never quite recovered from the breakdown he had there before the conference even began, so that he never actually got to its meetings. By BLAIR FRASER

18

ON THE MIDWAY

By Len Norris

12

A Maclean's FLASHBACK

THE MURDERED MIDAS OF LAKE SHOW

ON JULY 8 in 1943 Sir Harry Oakes, Bart., was found murdered in his bed in Nassau, the Bahamas. The killer had beaten him about the head and then dumped insecticide over the bedding and set fire to it. When the body was found it was only partially burned but the fan that whirred quietly in the room had blown feathers from the ticking all about and they floated in the hot sticky air, clung to the charred corpse and settled lazily on the bedside table beside the false teeth and a can of foot powder. By BARBARA MOON

18

AT THE CNE

Just Call Me The Gadget King

IF DANNY KAYE meets any rival in showmanship at this year’s Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto it will probably be 35-year-old Bernie Abbott, of Blackpool, England, who during the last 12 months has chattered his way from penury to the blue chips by imparting theatrical know-how to the sale of kitchen gadgets. By McKENZIE PORTER

14

Articles

Two Million Dollars On the Dotted Line

NO CANADIAN life insurance underwriter has yet bettered the single million-dollar policy which Jack Donovan, now retired, sold during the 20’s to the late Harry Hatch, then president of Hiram Walkers, distillers. But the insurance partnership in Toronto of cordial, resolute S. Hume Crawford and urbane, sagacious W. E. N. (“Bill”) Bell has sold in the last eight years an average of $2 millions worth of life insurance annually. By IAN McKENZIE

16

AT THE CNE

STARTING DANNY KAYE

THERE I was, sitting in Danny Kaye’s drawingroom in the St. Regis Hotel, high above Fifth Avenue, New York, waiting for Danny Kaye. Danny was coming back soon from an afternoon of making phonograph records to tell me from his own lips the amazing story of his rise to international fame and reveal the secrets of his act at this year’s Canadian National Exhibition.

14

Articles

THAT GLAMOROUS GOLDEYE

MANITOBA’S famous Winnipeg goldeye, the fish with the golden spectacles and the million-dollar taste, has staged a mysterious but highly welcome comeback. Four years ago it had all but vanished from the waters where fishermen once had hauled it in by the ton. Now, suddenly, the goldeye has turned up in Alberta, 750 miles away. By FRED BODSWORTH

20

Fiction

The Strange Death of Sam Fletcher

ALL THROUGH that summer the old war between people and the other animals was fought pretty much as usual. The reporting of it made a casual, sometimes crazy pattern in odd corners of newspapers during the news-scarce dog days. In fact, if you didn’t know someone like Sam Fletcher you wouldn’t know that there was a war, full of strategy and honor and death, just like the wars between people. By JOHN CLARE

4

LONDON LETTER

What Happens if the Rains Come?

IF YOU had looked in at Westminster at the proper moment, in the evening recently you would have seen a sweet smile on the face of the austere Sir Stafford Cripps. The reason was that the third reading of his finance bill (based on his Budget) was carried without a division. By Beverley Baxter