If my first doll, Magda, had not been of a cheaper make than
my later dolls, I would never have learned about the Montreal Doll Hospital.
This was a highlight of my early life.
I
learned that:
- dolls get sick
- dolls have hospitals
- all dolls can get better
- it costs small money to repair dolls
- it takes
a few days for a sick doll to get well
- some places
don't have Doll Hospitals
Magda was a name I selected
myself, inspired by a Russian girl I was not allowed to play with, in rural Ontario, That was because she was too old
for me, that was all. Magda had a skin of thin cheap rubber, and this tore very easily.
Her skin required several trips to the Doll Hospital, that my good hearted parents paid for. There was an admissions
process.
The lady behind the counter formally received
Magda, carefully attaching a numbered white tag to one of her feet. She was placed carefully in s wall of shelves behind the
counter.
"Pick her up Tuesday," said the lady.
"Okay," said my mom, folding the receipt into her purse.
Later on with Gloria, the ballerina doll, and Julie, the Miss Canada doll,
and their hard superior skins, I missed the caring that went on with a Sick Doll, a doll that really needed you. Just
the plain fun of going to the Doll Hospital and seeing hundreds of dolls that belonged to girls throughout the city of Montreal.
Montreal, a caring community, so caring that it even thought up a Doll
Hospital!
