1926-1936 жылдардағы "Лелек Дербісі" жарысы

Contest held from 1926 to 1936

The Great Stork Derby was a contest held from 1926 to 1936. Female residents of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, competed to produce the most babies in order to qualify for an unusual bequest in a will.

The race was the product of a scheme by Charles Vance Millar (1853–1926), a Toronto lawyer, financier, and practical joker, who bequeathed the residue of his significant estate to the woman in Toronto who could produce the most children in the decade following his death. It is one of many unusual bequests in his will, along with giving a vacation home in Jamaica to a group of three men who detested each other under the condition that they live in the estate together indefinitely, brewery stocks to a group of prominent teetotal Protestant ministers if they participated in its operations and collected its dividends, and jockey club stocks to a group of anti horse racing advocates. Litigation over the validity of the contest was resolved when the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the clause's validity. The Court further held the clause did not encompass children born out of wedlock, or stillborn. Seven of them were disqualified, (Annie Katherine Smith, Kathleen Ellen Nagle, Lucy Alice Timleck and Isabel Mary Maclean) who each received $110,000 for their nine children ($ in 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. In 2016, Toronto's Muddy York Brewing Company produced a Stork Derby Stout as a nod to the unusual event. The 2023 novel Prize Women by Caroline Lea is a fictionalized account of the Stork Derby, and includes several real life figures as characters.