http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070812/wl_canada_nm/canada_cuba_widow_col"After Castro and his guerrillas took power in 1959, the Canadian widow visited her wealthy friends in their Miami exile. She found them in temporary lodgings waiting to return to Havana as soon as the United States ousted Castro.
McCarthy decided to go home and wait it out. Four decades later, Castro's government is still in power, though the ailing Cuban leader has not appeared in public for a whole year, and Mary McCarthy is as cash-strapped as Cuba's state-run economy.
"I stayed in Cuba because my husband was dead and I inherited the property," said McCarthy, who has no family that she knows of left in Canada. "Besides, I like Cubans. They are the best people in the world."
Last year Stan Keyes, the Canadian consul general in Boston at the time, wrote to the U.S. Treasury office that enforces sanctions against Cuba, to request the transfer of her funds to Canada.
"She is an unfortunate, albeit unintentional, victim of political circumstances," Keyes wrote. "She relies on charity. She deserves to live the rest of her days in comfort."
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