Hind, Cora Ella
Pioneering Woman Journalist ~ 1861-1942
Cora, as she was known, was born in Toronto in 1861. When Cora was two, her mother died and she came to Artemesia Township, Grey County to her grandmother’s farm and soon after, her father died of cholera. Aunt Alice assumed the raising of Cora and her two brothers. She was home schooled on the farm, and later went to Flesherton Public School. She moved to Orillia to live with her uncle and attend High School. At 21, she moved to Winnipeg, rented a typewriter and learned to type. With her farming knowledge and a sympathetic ear, she made many connections and became the first public stenographer in the west and an agricultural reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. She toured farms and made crop estimates with extreme accuracy and was known as an authority on livestock breeding, food production, and marketing. She reported for trade conventions, farm journals, and was an advocate for the Hudson’s Bay Company, garnering respect from farmers, newspapermen, and agriculturalists. The Winnipeg Free Press made her Commercial and Agricultural Editor and sent her on a world tour of agricultural areas, and she became known internationally as Canada’s authority on prairie farming. In addition to her reputation as a first class journalist, she made contributions to charities such as the Red Cross and the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement through diligent community service. She associated with Nellie McClung, promoting the Women’s Institutes of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Ella Cora Hind was a founding member of the Manitoba Equal Franchise Club and the Political Equality League. She campaigned for granting the right to vote to women. The University of Manitoba bestowed upon her an honorary LL.D. She became a charter member of the Canadian Women’s Press Club. The Winnipeg Free Press established the Hind Memorial Scholarship at the University of Manitoba for the Science of Home Economics Faculty. Ella Cora Hind was an active journalist and committed feminist until her death at the age of 81 in 1942.
Additional information: Library and Archives Canada website: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/women/002026-205-e.html.
Dorothy Vick, From Quill to Ballpoint, RBW Graphics, Owen Sound, 1988.
Back to Luminaries Main Page...
