Doris Hilda Anderson, (November 10, 1921 – March 2, 2007 Her activism beyond the magazine helped drive social and political change, enshrining women's equality in the Canadian Constitution and making her one of the most well-known names in the women's movement in Canada.
Personal life
Doris Anderson was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta as Hilda Doris Buck to Rebecca Laycock Buck and Thomas McCubbin. Buck and McCubbin married shortly before Anderson's eighth birthday.
Anderson described her father as difficult and domineering, rebuking her forward and unladylike demeanour. Her mother wanted Anderson to be demure, keep her head down and conform to "respectable" expectations,
Anderson married Prince Edward Island-born lawyer and Liberal Party organizer David Anderson in 1957. The pair had three sons: Peter (born 1958), Stephen (born 1961), and Mitchell (born 1963), before divorcing in 1972. Theirs was not a love match; she married because she wanted children.
Career at Chatelaine
Upon receiving her degree, Anderson wrote and sold pieces of fiction and spent time in Europe 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), child abuse (1960), Canadian divorce laws (1961) and a call for equal pay for women (1962). The female 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. The publisher said that she wouldn't have been able to represent the company publicly, but couldn't explain why. - on the cover. For much of her life, Anderson supported greater representation of women in Parliament.
She departed Chatelaine in 1977. and made it the most profitable of the Maclean-Hunter publications.
In 2008, the magazine was recognized as the second-most influential magazine in Canada – just ahead of Maclean's.
Post-Chatelaine career
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. It was clear, Anderson 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."
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.
From 1982 to 1984, she was the president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, where she was known as a peacemaker within the movement. For almost a decade, beginning in 1984, she was a columnist for the Toronto Star (that ended when she refused to cross a picket line when Star writers were on strike). 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."
Final years
Anderson was named the chair of the Ontario Press Council in 1998,
Anderson's final years were marked by ill health, from heart failure in 2001 to numerous other health problems that developed after a 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.
Anderson's autobiography, 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
Her impact on Canadian feminism was documented in a 2007 edition of Canadian Woman Studies, entitled Celebrating Doris Anderson.
In 1981 a grass-roots, feminist group opened an emergency shelter for women and children fleeing violence and named it Anderson House, after Doris Anderson. The shelter is still in operation today.
Honours
Doris Anderson was widely recognized, and received many awards during her life:
- 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; 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)
Selected works
- Rebel Daughter: An Autobiography (1996, )
- The Unfinished Revolution: Status of Women in Twelve Countries (1991, )
- Affairs of State (1988, 0-3852-5154-8)
- Rough Layout (1981, )
- Two Women (1978, )
Archives
There is a Doris H. Anderson fonds at Library and Archives Canada. The archival reference number is R12700. 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.