This week in Prince George history, Nov. 27 to Dec. 3:
Dec. 3, 1920: One of Western Canada's pioneering female journalists, Catherine 'Kate' Simpson Hayes, arrived in Prince George with the intent of staying, The Citizen reported.
"There arrived in the city this week a well-known lady journalist in the person of Mrs. Simpson Hayes, who was for many years a special writer for the Winnipeg Free Press, and who is very well known in the newspaper offices of many other of the great papers of the great west to which she has been attached," The Citizen reported. The original Citizen report incorrectly hyphenated Simpson Hayes' name.
Simpson Hayes visited The Citizen offices where she met her old friend J.G. Quinn, who worked with her at the Regina Leader back before Saskatchewan was a province.
"Mrs. Simpson Hayes' mission here is in connection with both journalism and with colonization work, the latter having as its objective the bringing out to Western Canada of numbers of English girls who are anxious to take up life on the land, work in cities, and all sorts of enterprises suitable for their sex," The Citizen reported. "So struck is Mrs. Simpson Hayes with Prince George that, after years of western experience, she has chosen it as a contemplated location in which to settle with a lady friend. Both these ladies intend to come to live in Prince George if they can find a suitable opening for their abilities."
Simpson Hayes planned to write several articles about the potential of the region for several Canadian and English publications during her stay.
Simpson Hayes was Western Canada's first female journalist, according to records in Simon Fraser University's library. She was a journalist, author, poet, playwright, actress, song writer and founding member of the Canadian Women's Press Club. In addition to writing under her own name, she published works under the names Mary Markwell, Marka Wohl and Yukon Bill. Sadly for Prince George, Simpson Hayes obviously didn't find the position she was looking for and moved on to Victoria, where she would live for most of the rest of her life -except for a stint in Vancouver and a five-year return to Winnipeg. Here's what Simon Fraser University's records say about her:
Simpson Hayes was born Catherine Ethel Hayes in Dalhousie, New Brunswick on July 6, 1856. Her father was a lumber merchant and storekeeper who had immigrated to Canada from Ireland, her mother had been a school teacher.
Simpson Hayes (then just Hayes) got a teaching certificate from the Normal School in Fredericton, N.B. and taught briefly in Port Arthur's Landing, Ont. before moving further west to Prince Albert in the Northwest Territories in 1879. After two years she moved to Winnipeg, where she met and married Charles Simpson.
The couple had a pair of children before Simpson Hayes took the kids, left her husband and moved back to what is now Saskatchewan in 1885. She survived by working as a governess and milliner, and wrote and acted in several plays which were successfully staged.
She became the mistress of married Regina politician Nicholas Davin, who also owned the Regina Leader newspaper. Davin hired her to write for the Leader, where she also published her first poetry - which would letter be collected in her first book, Prairie Pot-Pourri in 1895.
The couple had two illegitimate children, a son who was raised by Davin after they ended their illicit relationship and a daughter who was adopted after being raised by nuns.
In 1897 Simpson Hayes was hired as the women's page editor of the Manitoba Free Press (later the Winnipeg Free Press) and moved to Winnipeg with her two children from her marriage.
As a journalist, she would also work for the Ottawa Free Press, Vancouver Province, Victoria Times Colonist, Toronto Globe, Vancouver World and magazines including Macleans, Western Home Journal and Pacific Monthly.
She continued to move around, spending time in North Dakota; Moose Jaw, Sask.; Victoria; Vancouver; and several returns to Winnipeg.
In addition she published several books including Aweema: An Indian Story of a Christmas Tryst in the Early Days, The Legend of the West, and Derby Days in the Yukon and other Poems of the Northland.
In 1904 she co-founded the Canadian Women's Press Club and served as the first secretary and second president of the organization. She was named the honorary president by the club again in 1932.
Through the club she was a contemporary of authors including Nellie McClung, Marshall Saunders, Isabel Ecclestone Mackay and Pauline Johnson.
Around 1900 she was employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway as a writer, and in 1906 was sent to England by the Canadian government to attract high-class women to move to Canada.
Between 1907 and 1914 she travelled frequently to Europe to encourage women to immigrate, and had a private audience with Pope Pius X in 1907.
Simpson Hayes spent the majority of her final years in Vancouver and Victoria, where she continued to write and publish song lyrics.
She died in Victoria in 1945 at the age of 88.
Many of her personal papers are archived in the Saskatchewan Archives in Regina.
Simpson Hayes was an interesting contradiction -an independent, self-made woman at a time when few women had the chance to be. At the same time, she could also be quiet conservative: she never divorced her husband - despite being legally separated for most of her life - because of her Catholic values, and wrote columns opposed to women's suffrage.
At any rate, it is interesting to know that this colourful character in Western Canadian journalism had a brush with Prince George, no matter how brief.
To explore 100 years of local history yourself, visit the Prince George Citizen archives online at: pgc.cc/PGCarchive. The Prince George Citizen online archives are maintained by the Prince George Public Library.
