Title: The lady lumberjack
Description: "At first settling in Toronto, Dorothea Mitchell worked in a variety of jobs, and, upon receiving word that her mother and sister would soon be joining her, eventually purchased a boarding house. Resulting from a sudden illness that delayed their emigration to Canada, and an urge to explore her adoptive homeland, Mitchell sold the boarding house and answered an ad in the Toronto Globe for companion-help for a mining engineer and his wife operating out of Silver Mountain, Ontario. No sooner had she arrived when the decline in prices that had plagued the silver industry since the 1890s forced the closure of the mine her employer managed. Not yet wanting to leave the region, in early 1910 Mitchell prevailed upon the CNR to allow her to stay as both station master on the PeeDee line [Port Arthur, Duluth and Western rail line, C.N.R. Canadian National Railway] and postmaster in a part-time capacity while she ran her own general store. Mitchell soon found that her store was not very profitable as most patrons bartered for goods. The most common currency was lumber, and Dorothea Mitchell, half a world away from India, took up her former role as a memsahib, or lady boss, and, coupled also with the more 'manly' skills she has been taught in India, purchased a sawmill, hired some workers and became known as the 'lady lumberjack'.

From 1911 to 1920 Dorothea Mitchell operated her sawmill and eventually built, what she fondly referred to, her 'bungalow', where she and her mother and sister lived. By 1921, though, Mitchell (now 44) made the decision to retire from the lumber industry and join her sister Vera and Mother in Port Arthur where they had moved the previous year. In the winter of 1921-22, Dorothea Mitchell took courses at the Business College in Port Arthur, and, by the summer of 1922, had achieved enough proficiency that, while staff was on vacation, she was given the task of teaching courses. While teaching, she used her newly earned credentials and took a variety of jobs working as a bookkeeper and checker for local businesses and the CPR freight office in Fort William. It was while working as a bookkeeper that she met Fred Cooper, a local bakery owner. In the winter of 1929 he approached Mitchell to help organise an amateur cinema society. In April 1929 they formed the Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society, the first such amateur film group in Canada."- from ://www.ladylumberjack.ca/dorothea_mitchell.html.
People: Dorothea Mitchell