Former American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reported on this day in 1953 to the millions of readers of her My Day column on her visit to Toronto. This included her recounting of the crank calls she received while in the Queen City.
“When the dinner broke up, I went at once to my room and to bed, hoping for a good night's sleep, since I had to leave at eight, but somewhere between midnight and one a.m., the telephone rang and a voice asked to speak with me,” she wrote. “When the gentleman ascertained that I was on the phone, he was much embarrassed, and when I enquired who he was, said: ‘I was an officer of the German army. I am not as old as you but we young people have an organization we would like to talk to you about.’ It seemed to me impossible at that hour to talk over the phone, so I rather rudely brought the conversation to an end.”
Her account then continued. “Ten minutes later the phone rang again and the poor man tried again to talk to me. By this time, I was determined that sleep was the only thing I cared to think about and told him so firmly, and he gave up and I went back to sleep!”
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.