CANADA: Paw Strikes It Rich

In the half-century since he moved from Ontario to a scrubby homestead near Alberta's Bon Accord, life for weather-lined Bill Mulligan, 62, had been hard-pressed. Old Bill and his wife Florence were a local Maw & Paw (The Egg and I) Kettle. They lived in an unpainted shack with their eleven kids. Through the hard winters they had to rip up the floor for firewood. The family's income fell so low that the boys would hire out to neighbors, then borrow the neighbors' farm machinery in lieu of wages to work their own land.

Then, last April, Alberta's great oil...

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