CHAPTER XI
The Canadian Women’s Press Club—How It Originated—With
“Kit” of the Toronto Mail at St.
Louis and Elsewhere—The Lamented
“Francoise” Barry—Successful Triennial
Gatherings—The Girls Visit
Different Parts of Canada—Threatened
Invasion of the
Pacific Coast.
One fine day in June, 1904, a handsome and fashionably dressed young lady came into my office at C.P.R. headquarters, and started cyclonically to tell me that while the C.P.R. had taken men to all the excursions to fairs and other things, women had altogether been ignobly ignored and she demonstratively demanded to know why poor downtrodden females should thus be so shabbily treated. When she had finished her harangue—I guess from lack of a further supply of breath—I politely motioned her to a seat and calmly said:
“Sit down, Miggsy, sit down and keep cool,” which she did.
She was Margaret Graham, a writer for the press, and a champion of woman’s rights—which I had already sagaciously surmised.
When quietness was restored, she explained that her mission was to persuade the C.P.R. to take a bunch—I don’t think she used the word bunch—of women to the St. Louis fair, to which I had recently accompanied a party of newspaper men. Miggsy’s idea appealed to me, and we arranged for a party of sixteen—sweet sixteen, though some of them didn’t think they were—to visit St. Louis.
The trip was a huge success in every way, and not only was the Fair taken in, but a visit was paid to Chicago, where the party was entertained by the well-known Jane Addams, at Hull House. On the way home, by a happy inspiration, a woman’s press club was formed with Kit, of the Toronto Mail, as president, and somehow or other—guess for lack of better material—was I made honorary president, and have been the only male member of a female press club in the world ever since. Some are born great, you know, others achieve greatness, and others still have greatness thrust upon them. You can readily see to which class I belong, can’t you? And now at the recent triennial, the club transformed me into an active member. I have qualified through writing these reminiscences, and have been initiated into the solemn mysteries of the lodge. There was no goat—at least no four-legged one—but, there, I must not divulge the secret mysteries of the girls’ conclave.
Since then, this press club has had outings to different parts of Canada every three years—until the Great War broke out—when they were discontinued, but renewed again in 1920 with Montreal as the meeting place, and a delightful visit to Quebec, Ste. Anne de Beaupre and Ottawa, and in 1923 they threaten to invade Vancouver and Victoria. These triennial outings have been very enjoyable and I always came home with a gold-headed umbrella or a swagger valise or hand bag or gold sleeve links and other jewelry, and I firmly believe that if the trips had been made annually instead of triennially, I would have been able to start up a second-hand departmental store with the untaxed luxuries I lugged home. The club has prospered amazingly, notwithstanding my association with it, and its membership has increased from 16 to more than 350.
Amongst the charter members were some writers of note: “Kit” of the Mail, the first president (Mrs. Coleman) and “Francoise” of her own paper (Miss Barry) have passed to the Great Beyond—God rest their souls—and other distinguished writers were “Mary Markwell” (Mrs. Kate Simpson Hayes); “Happiness”, as we called her, (now Mrs. Jerry Snider of Toronto); Irene Love of London, Ont. (now Mrs. Eldred Archibald), who, under the nom de plume, Margaret Currie, daily enlightens the readers of the Montreal Star with words of advice and wisdom; Katherine Hughes, who is now trying to free Ireland with that distinguished person of Spanish parentage and born in the United States, de Valera; Miss Alice Asselin, of Le Nationalist; Mrs. Balmer Watt, of Brantford, now of Edmonton; Miss Gerin-Lajoie; Miss Plouffe; Miss Laberge; Miss Madeleine Gleason; Miss Marie Beaupré (Helene Dumont) of La Presse; Miss Valois of Ottawa and of course Miggsy (Mrs. Albert Horton, of Ottawa) who was the originator of the trip which led to the formation of the club.