Quote:
"The elements of the active heroine, closeness to nature and animals, and the inadequate male, were aspects manifest in [Nell] Shipman's own life. She did all her own stunts, some of them spectacular and dangerous. She yearned for the wild northwest of Canada and the United States whenever she was away from it. She owned her own zoo and championed animals all her life—Brownie the bear and Laddie the dog in her films were her own pets. In an extraordinary and ironic incident, she even saved Bert Van Tuyle's life when, delirious from gangrene in his foot, he tried to dog sled twenty miles from the movie quarters into town."
-- Janice Kaye

Source:
Kaye, Janice. "Forgotten Filmmaker: Gender and Nation in the Work of Nell Shipman." Spectator (Los Angeles) 17, no. 1 (Autumn-Winter 1996). (p. 34)