Canada at War: ONTARIO: Up from Indiana

It was a long, hard climb but ambitious Mary Martin made it.

Obsessed with an itch for riches, Mary Martin (then Mary Violette) left her native Goshen, Indiana when she was about 30, sold diamonds for a while, then heard about something better—northern Ontario's gold fields. In 1906 she got a job in a Haileybury, Ont. law office and for a month made out 60 to 65 prospec tors' affidavits daily at $2.50 each.

Then: "When I asked for a raise that wasn't granted, I painted my own shingle and opened my own office [at Swastika, Ont.]. My desk was...

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