A distraught 84-year-old woman told yesterday how she is being driven from Bermuda by soaring rents.

Winifred Dodd, a status Bermudian, is now struggling to get 50 years of her life packed into two trunks by tomorrow.

?I am very bewildered. I can?t stand it any more. I have to go (to Canada) for surgery and I can?t come back and fight any more, fighting over everything.?

For Mrs. Dodd her forced departure from the country she loves comes as one blow too many. Her eventful life has seen her repeatedly fight back from disaster.

As a young woman she lost her husband in a horrific car crash which almost claimed her own life. And then tragedy struck again when her fiance succumbed to cancer three weeks before the wedding.

After a series of financial setbacks, she suffered more health problems ? a stroke in 2002 and a bad fall that left her seriously injured.

Mrs. Dodd?s rent problems were first brought to the attention of the media by Shadow Seniors Minister Louise Jackson, who visited the elderly lady again on Monday.

?She?s been brave up until now, but now she?s just in tears,? said Mrs. Jackson. ?Her mind is clear as a bell. She?s obviously a very bright woman.?

Mrs. Dodd, originally from Ontario, moved to Bermuda 50 years ago and into her Pembroke apartment 38 years ago, where she paid rent of ?30 per month.

She cared for the previous owner, Gertrude Irene Holmes, who lived in the house on the property. Before Miss Holmes died in 1986, she told Mrs. Dodd she could remain in the apartment.

?She said I could stay as long as I wanted, and at the same rent, because I had been such a good tenant,? said Mrs. Dodd. ?But unfortunately she didn?t put it in a will or codicil.?

Miss Holmes? niece, Jean Holmes, then moved in to the house. A diabetic, Ms Holmes died in April, 2003 while Mrs. Dodd was in a hospital in Canada receiving hospital treatment. ?I wasn?t even notified,? she said.

The Bank of Butterfield Trust now possesses the property, she said. On assessing the property, they told Mrs. Dodd her apartment had been classified as a one-bedroom apartment and the rent would be increased to $1,500 per month ? a rent which Mrs. Dodd cannot afford.

The Trust knew about Miss Holmes? promise that Mrs. Dodd could stay at a fixed rent, she said. ?I told them I could pay $600 a month.?

Telling her they were unable to sell the property while she lived in the apartment, the Trust then settled on a rent of $1,000, due by January 1, she said ? an amount which she paid ?in protest?.

However, she said: ?I won?t pay them another month?s rent. I had had it by that time, I told them I was leaving. Well, my heavens, I?ve had nothing but ?When are you leaving? ever since... I told them, I can?t come back and start this all over again. I?m not well enough to be bothered.?

Mrs. Dodd said she had visited Age Concern and the National Office for the Seniors and Physically Challenged, both of whom advised her to explore shared accommodations. ?Which I wouldn?t mind doing. But I can?t even afford those rents ? I?ve never seen rents like this in my life.?

However, when National Office for the Seniors manager Melvin Dickinson heard of Mrs. Dodd?s plight, he was very concerned.

?I really feel for Mrs. Dodd ? I am concerned, because I didn?t know (that she was having difficulties)... I was really, really hurt when I heard what a senior was going through.?

Yesterday he encouraged Mrs. Dodd to contact him personally, and she agreed to. When asked if it was too late to help her, he replied: ?Absolutely not. It?s never too late.?

Mrs. Dodd also visited the Department of Rent Control, and applied for an apartment at Purvis Park, a seniors? residential property managed by the Bermuda Housing Trust, part of the Bermuda Housing Corporation (BHC). Some time before Christmas she was told the apartment would be rented to someone else.

However, residents at Purvis Park have called Mrs. Dodd to say the apartment is still empty. ?It makes you wonder what?s going on,? said Mrs. Jackson yesterday.

BHC general manager Vance Campbell did not return calls from yesterday on the matter.

?This was all so new to me. I was very bewildered about the whole thing after living here for 38 years,? said Mrs. Dodd.

Mrs. Dodd arrived in Bermuda in September, 1953, hoping to make a new beginning after the death of her husband in a horrific car crash which very nearly claimed her life also.

The couple had been living in various islands in the Caribbean working in the hotel industry, she said, until the accident in 1948. ?He was 28 years old.

?I was in the hospital, flat on my back in a cast for a year, then had two years of rehab.

?My whole face had to be reconstructed, there?s a steel plate in my head. I had glass in my eye ? they didn?t have shatterproof glass back then, they?re still pulling glass out of me.?

In fact, Mrs. Dodd had to travel to Canada again in 1998 to get more glass removed from her eye. ?It just missed blinding me.

?I have umbrella wire around my chin, my teeth were wired in. I had multiple fractures and skin grafts. The plastic surgeon wasn?t finished working on me for seven years. He made new eyelids, brought my eyebrows down.?

After the accident, someone suggested to her she take her knowledge of the hotel business to Bermuda. ?I thought that was a good idea.?

She arrived on the Island as the chief cashier at Elbow Beach Hotel, moving several years later to the St. George?s Hotel, where she was for nine years.

?I left to get married,? she said. ?But it didn?t happen.?

Around three weeks before the wedding, she explained, doctors discovered her fiance had cancer. ?It was right through him.?

About three days later, the doctor called. ?He said he had died. I just about fainted.?

Mrs. Dodd quit her job completely and went on a cruise, thinking perhaps to move to Jamaica, away from the memories.

However she did not like Jamaica, and returned to Bermuda. The St. George?s Hotel rehired her, and she stayed with them until 1964, after which she moved to American International and entered the insurance business.

Mrs. Dodd worked in various insurance companies on the Island before moving to Belafonte in 1977, where she stayed for nine years until the company was sold to Allianz of Germany, one of the largest insurance companies in the world.

The company promised nothing would change, she said ? and a month later closed up shop in Bermuda. ?So I retired.

?I lost out on my pensions for all the places I worked, as I was never 15 years in one place, and you needed to be there for 15 years,? she said.

Her financial woes were compounded after she invested all her money in the Canadian dollar, which at the time was stronger than the US dollar. ?I went to England on a trip and the Canadian dollar dropped. I was stuck with all my money in Canadian funds.?

She had a stroke in February, 2002 while in Ontario, and later that year slipped on a ramp which had been put in at the entrance to her apartment against her will. ?I tore all the ligaments in my arm, broke my glasses and my tooth, and three ribs.? Unable to get up, she had to lie there until someone passed by and called the ambulance.

Then, after Ms Holmes? death in April, 2003 the trouble with her apartment began.

Now she is struggling to get packed by tomorrow, while the Worldwide Church and the Hands of Love have offered to help her auction off the rest of her belongings. Locals have also contacted with offers to help Mrs. Dodd with the move.

She will be in a hospital in Ontario for some time, she said, after which she plans to get an apartment in Canada.

However, she said yesterday: ?I would come back. If there was a way, yes, I would. I would come back to Bermuda if I could.?

The Bank of Butterfield Trust could not be reached for comment.