Acts Like a Lady, Works Like a Dog

In 1951, Doris McCubbin, a fiction writer and aspiring journalist, took an entry-level advertising promotion job at Chatelaine. Within six years she was named editor-in-chief, and as Doris Anderson (her married name), she would become one of the most successful and significant editors in Canadian media. During her tenure, which lasted into the 1970s, she transformed a polite ladies journal into a fiery feminist newsmagazine, running stories on abortion, wage inequality, racism, domestic violence, immigration, birth control, and political representation. It was revolutionary—as a point of comparison, Ms. magazine wouldn’t be launched in the U.S. until 1972—and not just editorially. When Anderson became editor, circulation stood at 480,000; by the late 1960s, she had increased it to 1.8 million. In the kind of compliment that women no longer have to receive with gritted-teeth smiles (even if its spirit endures in subtler ways), Floyd Chalmers, president of...