Doris Anderson

Doris Anderson was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta as Hilda Doris Buck to Rebecca Laycock Buck and Thomas McCubbin. Mrs. Buck, whose first husband had abandoned her and her two young sons, leaving them in debt, met McCubbin when he was a guest at her mother's boarding house in Calgary. She was staying with her sisters in Medicine Hat when Anderson was born, and briefly placed her "illegitimate" child in a home for unwanted babies in Calgary before reclaiming her some months later.[4][note 1] Buck and McCubbin married shortly before Anderson's eighth birthday.

Upon receiving her degree, Anderson wrote and sold pieces of fiction, and spent time in Europe [12] before she returned to Canada, and secured a job writing advertising copy for Chatelaine in 1951. By 1955, she'd worked her way up to associate editor. When John Clare, the editor, stepped down, and a new male editor was appointed, Anderson threatened to quit and her publisher eventually relented and gave her the job instead.

In 1957, Anderson was the first female editor of Chatelaine, a position she held until 1977.[13] Her early tenure at the magazine saw it transformed from a traditional women's publication into one that addressed challenging issues of the day, including legal abortion in specific circumstances (1959), an exposé on child abuse (1960), a critique of Canadian divorce laws (1961) and a call for equal pay for women (1962).[14] The women writers she employed (June Callwood, Barbara Frum, Adrienne Clarkson, and Michele Landsberg) would go on to have successful careers as journalists.

In 1963, Anderson chose not to run an excerpt from a new novel in Chatelaine, feeling the material had already been well explored by the magazine. The book was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.[12]

In 1969, she campaigned for, and did not receive, the editorship of Maclean's magazine, but lost the job to Peter Gzowski despite her significantly longer tenure with the company, and her track record of success. The job would've meant more than increased visibility in the publishing industry - it paid more than twice as much.[10][15] The publisher said that she wouldn't have been able to represent the company publicly, but couldn't explain why.[4]

Promoting the role of women in politics under her direction, Chatelaine identified 50 women who had potential as parliamentarians and put 12 of them - including Member of Parliament Flora MacDonald who referred to it in an interview at Anderson's passing[4] - on the cover. For much of her life, she supported greater representation of women in Parliament.[10]

She departed in 1977.[14] In her two decades as editor, she'd tripled circulation of the magazine,[16] and made it the most profitable of the Maclean-Hunter publications.[8] By the late 1960s, one in every three women in Canada was reading the magazine.[12]

In 2008, the magazine would be recognized as the second-most influential magazine in Canada - just ahead of Maclean's.[17]

In the 1978 by-election, she ran unsuccessfully for the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal in the Toronto riding of Eglinton as the Liberals were swept from office in a wave of anti-Trudeau sentiment.[4]

She was then appointed chair of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW) in 1979. She worked successfully for the inclusion of women's rights in the Canadian Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 28), adding a single statement to the Charter indicating that men and women are equal under law.[6] The specific wording reads: "Notwithstanding anything in the Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed to male and female persons".[18] It was clear, Anderson once said, "that the charter of rights could do good things for women or, if it was a bad charter, it could be a terrible problem for women for generations to come."[16]

With CACSW, she commissioned research into issues such as prevalence and prevention of domestic abuse and other violence against women.[19]

Her frustration with the status quo was evident in a column published in Maclean's in 1980, where she wrote of wage inequality, domestic violence, and being ignored by politicians.[20]

Her activism continued from 1982 to 1984, when she was the president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, where she was known as a peacemaker within the movement.[21] For almost a decade, beginning in 1984, she was also a columnist for the Toronto Star (that ended when she refused to cross a picket line when Star writers were on strike[21]). She was named a recipient of the Governor General's Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 1991,[22] and served as Chancellor of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1992 to 1996.

In 1994, Doris Anderson was invited to be an observer in the South African election that brought Nelson Mandela to power and ended apartheid, an opportunity her son Mitchell described as "one of the greatest thrills of his mother's life".[23]

Anderson was named the chair of the Ontario Press Council in 1998,[10] and in 2001, the Doris Anderson Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Women's Studies was established at York University to recognize her contributions.[8] She was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 2002,[24] the last public award she received during her lifetime.

Anderson's final years were marked by ill health, from heart failure in 2001 to numerous other health problems that developed after her 2006 visit to Costa Rica. In February 2007 she was admitted to St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where she died on March 2 at age 85 from pulmonary fibrosis.[4]

Doris Anderson has been posthumously recognized for her contributions to Canadian society. In 2016, her accomplishments were recognized on a plaque by Heritage Toronto,[13] and in 2017, she was included in the She Who Dares project recognizing women who impacted Calgary, by the Calgary YWCA,[25] as part of Canada's sesquicentennial.

Anderson's novel Rebel Daughter was transformed into a play by students at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College in 2014, which became the subject of a radio documentary entitled Daughters and Sons.[6]

Her impact on Canadian feminism was documented in an edition of Canadian Woman Studies in 2007, entitled Celebrating Doris Anderson.[26]

In her 1996 autobiography, Rebel Daughter, she writes "What I wanted more than anything was to be able to look after myself and make sure that every other woman in the world could do the same."[23]

Doris Anderson was widely recognized, and received many awards during her life:[27]

• National honours: Canadian Centennial Medal (1967); Officer of the Order of Canada (1974); Governor General's Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case (1991); Companion of the Order of Canada (2002)
• Honorary degrees: University of Alberta (1973); Conestoga College (1981); University of Dalhousie (1984); Ryerson Polytechnic University (1987); Concordia University (1990); University of Waterloo and Mount Saint Vincent University (1992); York University and Simon Fraser University (1997)
• Journalism awards: News Hall of Fame (1981); Mediawatch award (1990)
• Regional recognition: City of Toronto award (1981); Toronto YWCA Woman of Distinction award;[28] University of Alberta Hall of Fame (1993); Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Alberta (1994); Member of the Order of Ontario (1995); Distinguished Alumni Award, Mount Royal College (1996)

• Rebel Daughter (1996, ISBN 1-55013-767-0)
• The Unfinished Revolution: Status of Women in Twelve Countries, (1991, ISBN 0-385-25271-4)
• Affairs of State, (1988, 0-3852-5154-8)
• Rough Layout, (1981, ISBN 0-7710-0742-6)
• Two Women, (1978, ISBN 0-7705-1653-X)

There is a Doris H. Anderson fonds at Library and Archives Canada.[29] The archival reference number is R12700.[30] The material covers the date ranges 1935 to 2007. It consists of 3.88 meters of textual records and 102 photographs : 70 b&w negatives; 21 b&w prints; 5 contact sheets; 6 col. prints.

• "Doris Anderson - Themes - Activism - Celebrating Women's Achievements". www.collectionscanada.gc.ca. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved 2019-04-19.
• "Canadian Women Studies/Les Cahiers De La Femme: Celebrating Doris Anderson Vol 26, No 2 (2007)". cws.journals.yorku.ca. Retrieved 2019-04-19.