88-year-old Saanich woman knits more than 200 toques for charity
“I call myself the Chicken Lady!” Daphne beams before breaking into infectious laughter.
Despite there being a painting of chickens hanging beside her front door (“Every time I look at it I feel happy!”), despite one of the roosters being named after her late husband Mike (“I just love chickens!”), this is not a story about chickens.
This is a story that begins during the Second World War, in northern England, when young Daphne was waiting in her family’s underground air-raid shelter.
“I can remember the big bomber planes going over,” Daphne recalls. “Because there was the boom, boom, boom.”
Which led to the loudest boom of all.
“Our house was bombed,” Daphne says. “But I had a very happy family [even though] we didn’t have a lot.”
But what Daphne did have was the ability to knit and an unwavering propensity for positivity.
“I was a bit of a goody-goody at school,” Daphne admits with a laugh.
Now — according to her nephew Tony — she’s always busy-busy with her knitting.
“I asked, ‘Who are these for Daph?’” Tony recalls. “And she said, ‘Oh, I’m knitting a few toques for some people who might need them.”
It turns out Daphne was knitting for the clients at Our Place Society, creating a new hat every day.
“The speed in which she makes them is beyond me,” Tony laughs with amazement, before revealing that Daphne has donated more than 200 toques to some of the capital’s most vulnerable people. “It’s staggering!”
“I hope [my knitting] gives somebody a bit of warmth and pleasure,” Daphne smiles.
After surviving a war, caring for chickens, and living 88 years, Daphne says the best way to knit a happy life for yourself is to simply spread kindness to others.
It’s a simple as that? I ask.
“Yes!” Daphne bursts out laughing. “[But] I’m a simple person!”
Simply wonderful, it seems.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Cargo ship had engine maintenance in port before Baltimore bridge collapse, officials say
The cargo ship that lost power and crashed into a bridge in Baltimore underwent 'routine engine maintenance' in port beforehand, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.
A Nigerian woman reviewed some tomato puree online. Now she faces jail
A Nigerian woman who wrote an online review of a can of tomato puree is facing imprisonment after its manufacturer accused her of making a “malicious allegation” that damaged its business.
Far North police 'dispatch' polar bear stalking schoolyard
Police and local hunters in an Ontario Far North First Nation community have “dispatched” a polar that was showing abnormal behaviour and treating the area as a hunting ground.
Donald Trump assails judge and his daughter after gag order in N.Y. hush-money criminal case
Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order that bars him from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial.
Families shocked after Niagara Falls hotel cancels bookings made year in advance of solar eclipse
After having the foresight to book their Niagara Falls hotel rooms more than a year in advance, several families planning to take in the solar eclipse next month were shocked to find out their reservations had been cancelled.
B.C. rescuers face 'high likelihood' of failure to reunite orphaned orca with pod
The race to reunite an orphaned orca calf that’s stuck in a shallow lagoon with a neighbouring pod has entered its fifth day, and a marine scientist says the clock is ticking.
Video shows police interrupting auto theft in progress outside Toronto home
New video footage obtained by CP24 shows the attempted theft of a vehicle in a North York driveway earlier this month that was ultimately interrupted by police.
Majority of Canadians believe in life after death: Angus Reid survey
A new survey from the Angus Reid Institute has found that a majority of Canadians believe in some form of life after death, a proportion that has held steady for decades.
MyPillow, owned by U.S. election denier Mike Lindell, formally evicted from Minnesota warehouse
A court ordered the eviction Wednesday of MyPillow from a suburban Minneapolis warehouse that it formerly used.