By Jamie Bradburn

Source: Saturday Night, November 21, 1959.

Mary sighed. Her heart had been set on being the greatest figure skater the world had ever seen. But now the life insurance funds she and her mother had received after her father’s fatal encounter with an exploding kiln had dwindled to nothing, which made the replacement of the last pair of disintegrating skates handed down from her cousin in Don Mills an impossible task. Mary’s mother saw the tears well up in the sad little girl’s eyes during the bus ride home and knew who could help restore the beaming smile on her daughter’s face: the MAN FROM MANUFACTURERS. Surely he could sympathize with the family’s plight and provide dear Mary with a Christmas miracle.
December 25 arrived. Mary was so thrilled when the MAN FROM MANUFACTURERS dropped in for a surprise visit and dangled from his right hand the skates she had so longingly looked at in the store window. So was Mary’s mother. Within a year, the MAN FROM MANUFACTURERS was Mary’s new father. He was always there to cheer her on from the grandstand as she pursued her dreams of figure-skating stardom.
He was also there to make sure all of the family’s insurance needs were met, which came in handy the night teenage Mary and her fellow skaters wrapped the family car around a tree after a wild post-show celebration.