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The following is excerpted from the op-ed piece, In Journalism, These Women Paved the Way by Linda Kay. Kay is the author of the upcoming book, The Sweet Sixteen: The Journey That Inspired the Canadian Women's Press Club.
In June 2004, I attended a big party in Ottawa.
The 100th-anniversary celebration of the Canadian Women’s Press Club sent me on a trip back in time.
For years I’d been curious about my female predecessors in the field, who, until recent decades, had been erased from journalism history. I had no idea that women were first hired as journalists in Canada as early as the 1880s.
The pioneers were a select group – and very talented. To earn a vaunted position on a newspaper or magazine they had to be, as publications invariably employed only one woman on staff in those early days. Hired for their literary ability, the first female journalists were published poets, writers of fiction or noted essayists.
At the anniversary celebration in Ottawa, I became intrigued by the story of how the Canadian Women’s Press Club was formed more than a century ago.
In June 1904, 16 Canadian women travelled by train to St. Louis to cover the World’s Fair. Eight were francophone and eight were anglophone. The Canadian Pacific Railway underwrote their trip. The women represented the most important Canadian publications of the day, including Saturday Night, La Presse, La Patrie, the Montreal Star, the Toronto Telegram, the Halifax Herald and the Manitoba Free Press.
The publicity man for the railway dubbed these women The Sweet Sixteen, even though he admitted the cliché did not fit. They were a tenacious and daring group. In 1904, Canadian women did not have the right to vote. They were not regarded as persons under the law. Higher education was discouraged. Marriage and motherhood were deemed a woman’s true calling.
To learn more about The Sweet Sixteen, or to pre-order a copy, click here.
To arrange an interview with the author, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
Happy International Women's Day!
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