Daisy Adelaide McIlmoyle (1911–1985)

If this recipe archive feels a little different — more like opening a family scrapbook than scrolling a modern recipe blog — that's because, in many ways, it started as one. The heart of this collection comes from my mother, Daisy Adelaide McIlmoyle, who quietly saved the kinds of things most people throw away: clippings, handwritten notes, magazine pages, and the everyday recipes that families actually made (and made again).

Mom wasn't trying to build an "archive." She was simply preserving what she loved — good food, good memories, and the small tidbits of household wisdom that gets passed along in kitchens more than it ever does in books. Years later, when I inherited her notebooks and scrapbooks, I realized I wasn't just looking at dessert recipes. I was looking at a record of a life: the times she lived through, the family she cared for, and the way she brought warmth to ordinary days.

Born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1911, Mom's story stretches from early prairie-era roots to the Ontario farm life I grew up around — and along the way, she left behind the written traces that made this site possible. This page is my way of telling her story in full, alongside the recipes she so carefully kept.

Daisy Adelaide McIlmoyle: My "Mom" — Keeper of the Scrapbooks

Daisy Adelaide McIlmoyle (1911-1985)
(Source: ©Don Bell)

Daisy Adelaide McIlmoyle (1911-1985), my "Mom," was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1911. She and her twin brother Herbert were the youngest of ten children — six girls and four boys.

Her father was Herbert Leslie McIlmoyle (1872-1936), and her mother was Margaret Annie Adelaide Butler (1878-1951). Originally from Ontario, Margaret (Daisy) and Herbert took out a homestead near Airdrie in 1901, before moving to Calgary sometime before 1911.

The year Mom was born, her family returned to Ontario, and she was raised on the McIlmoyle family farm at Selwyn, near Lakefield. She often remarked how wonderful it was to grow up in a large, loving family where there was seldom an idle moment, and always time for a Sunday picnic and fun.

Mom Enjoying a Family Picnic circa 1930
(Source: ©Don Bell)

As a young woman starting life, Mom worked as a cook at a Stony Lake resort, and later as an assembler at the Western Clock Company (formerly the Westclox) in Peterborough, until she married my father, William Robert (Bill) Bell (1908–1990), in the fall of 1939.

It always fascinated me that the McIlmoyles and the Bells lived just 15 miles apart while in Alberta, yet it wasn't until both families moved east to Ontario that Mom and Dad met, while again living just 15 miles apart.

Dad first met my mother when he and his father, Ernest L. Bell, visited the McIlmoyle farm to buy a breeding cow. They married in October 1939, after the Great Depression when money and work were still scarce.

Dad had scoured area farms collecting hundreds of used seed bags which he mended and washed then redeemed for 6 cents apiece to earn enough for Mom's wedding ring. She so treasured that gold wedding band with its tiny diamonds!

Dad and Mom farmed Grannie Bell's property in Otonabee Township, which they eventually inherited in 1955. As an only child in a rural area, I found farm life lonely at times, but looking back, I wouldn't change it for anything.

When they retired from farming in 1965, they sold the farm but retained ownership of a 65-acre parcel of land nearby where they built a new house. I eventually inherited the property and moved there with my family.

While in her late teens, around the time the above portrait had been taken, Mom created two remarkable scrapbooks in which she pasted clippings from the popular magazines and newspapers of her day.

The clippings mostly feature dessert recipes, but there's also party ideas, homemaking advice, and helpful kitchen tips, along with colorful vintage illustrations — a treasure trove of nostalgia.

Throughout her marriage, Mom also kept several small notebooks in which she wrote her mother's and grandmother's recipes for homemade desserts. Many were obtained either directly from her mother or indirectly through her sisters after Grandma McIlmoyle's death.

This website owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mom. Many old fashioned dessert recipes featured on this site are carefully transcribed from her handwritten recipe notebooks and scrapbooks.

Return to Don Bell and Preserving Mom's Recipes

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Don Bell, Founder & Archivist, Old Fashioned Dessert Recipes. Don has spent over two decades preserving heritage dessert recipes from handwritten family notebooks, vintage cookbooks, and recipe scrapbooks. His collection spans hundreds of authentic, old fashioned recipes presented exactly as originally written.