[URBAN NOTE] "The Importance of Being Doris": Torontoist on Doris Anderson

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Torontoist's Kaitlin Wainwright explores the life of Doris Anderson, a noteworthy local feminist and journalist.

In 1971, more than half of Canadian women worked outside the home. In the opening of a Take 30 episode from that July, host Adrienne Clarkson notes the practice has become rather unremarkable, and the balance between career and homemaking no longer made a woman an “oddity or social outcast.” The main subject of the episode was, at the time, one of the most famous working mothers in Canada—Chatelaine editor, Doris Anderson.

Born in 1921 in Alberta, Doris had a difficult upbringing in her mother’s Depression-era boarding house. She learned a frugality that became imbued in her later work at Chatelaine. According to journalist Michelle Landsberg, there were no expense accounts at the magazine, the supply cabinet was closely monitored, and, in the adjudication of the annual “Ms. Chatelaine” contest, spendthrift women held little chance against pennywise competition.

Doris graduated from the University of Alberta in 1945, and, finding little work out west, moved to Toronto to begin her career in journalism. A familiar story to modern journalists, she held down multiple jobs, including copy editing for Eaton’s advertising department, and researching and writing for one of Canada’s first female radio hosts, Claire Wallace.

She began her relationship with Chatelaine in the advertising department in 1951, and, through intense determination, quickly received promotion to the editorial staff. After five years under editor John Clare, Doris took the reins as managing editor for what became the most studied and controversial period of the periodical. Under her direction, Chatelaine developed a feminist approach, publishing articles about sexuality and women’s rights. The magazine would quickly exceeded the circulation of any other Canadian monthly, despite the formidable competition of U.S. publications.