From the time he was a boy, Lorne was very interested in bees, and persuaded his parents to help him get his own hive when he was 8 or 9 years old. It was an unusual interest; there were not many other beekeepers around Dunsford. As a teenager, he built a honey house on his parents’ farm. At 2,2 he fell ill with Polio and would never be as strong again—he could no longer lift his arm over his shoulder.

Freda’s father was the legendary local blacksmith Dick Bulmer, a man whom practically everyone in Fenelon Falls knew. In the era before television, this trickster entertained his many visitors with his practical jokes.

Amy Cosh was born in 1902. Her parents were both from local families. Her mother, Jane Junkin, was the eldest daughter of Bobcaygeon merchant Irvine Junkin, while her father Hedley Vicars “Vic” Cosh was descended from a family of masons and farmers.