Katherine Hughes
Founding Member of the Canadian Women's Press
Club
The
Media Club of Ottawa has partnered with tthe Uiversity of Ottawa. This
profile, written by a student of the
university, is part of a project to gather information about the
sixteen founding members of the Canadian Women's Press Club.
by Martina Gannon
‘Katherine Hughes's life was replete with irony’. These
were the words of Padraig O’ Siadhail, a close acquaintance of
Katherine Hughes, who was both fascinated and puzzled by this enigmatic
woman.
Katherine Angelina Hughes was not a woman who was easily traced from
within history. Despite her keenness for writing biographies and making
her own voice resonate worldwide on a range of pertinent issues, Hughes
was notoriously skilled at concealing herself. The issues she committed
herself to were usually of a political and religious nature pertaining
to Canada (her native homeland) and more especially to Ireland, the
country to which she controversially appeared to switch her allegiance
later in life.
The importance of Katherine’s courageous actions and the way she
made her voice resound across countries on behalf of the struggling
cannot be overlooked in the repressive context of her time. In the
early 1900s in North America women had pitiful rights and entitlements
in comparison to men. This was particularly evident in the inequality
that was rife between women and men in the workplace, in particular
within the world of journalism where Katherine sought to initiate
changes and self-appoint advocacy for various political and minority
causes.
Early
Life and education
Katherine Angelina Hughes
was born on
20 November 1876 in County Line (Emerald Junction) Prince Edward
Island. In a family of nine she was the second youngest of a Catholic
lower middle class Irish family. Her parents were John Wellington
Hughes, a merchant and Annie Laurie O’Brien. She was educated in
Charlottestown at Notre Dame Convent and at Prince of Wales College.
She graduated from this college in 1892 with a first-class
teacher’s
license. It is also thought that she accompanied her family when they
moved to Ottawa in 1890
.
|
.
Early work and achievements
Her desire to record the lives of altruistic activists and then join
them herself was perhaps at least partially derived from her devout
Catholic upbringing. In 1906 she published her first book. She also
moved to Edmonton to work as a journalist for the Edmonton Bulletin
where she principally reported on Alberta legislature. In May 1908 she
became first provincial archivist of Alberta. Katherine's biography
entitled: Father Lacombe was also recognized as a notable historical
biography included in an appraisal of Canadian Literature in the annual
conference of the American Library Association in September 1934.
Involvement with the
Canadian Women’s Press Club
It was likely Hughes’s skilful writing and reputation as a writer
that secured her a much-coveted position within the Canadian
Women’s Press Club (CWPC). Hughes was aboard the momentous, first
of its kind train journey organized by Kit Coleman for fourteen female
journalists to the world fair in St. Louis, Missouri in June 1904.
During this journey the women formed a genuine, professional
camaraderie strongly out of their agreement of a need of improved
women’s rights. At the pinnacle of this agreement they began to
initiate plans for forming the CWPC. Along with the other
journalists Hughes played a part in making history and grounding the
foundation of women’s rights for journalists of the future
through the creation of the CWPC. Throughout her time in Edmonton she
remained involved in the CWPC and actively contributed to the work and
organisation in the Edmonton branch of the CWPC. In the journal of
journalism history Katherine Hughes was identified by as being voted
best biographer of 1911 in the United States (as noted by Linda Kay)
and Canada and later became Alberta’s first provincial archivist.
Fight
for Irish Rights
The presence of the Irish in certain parts of Canada around
Katherine’s
time was immense as was the movement of support for Ireland’s
fight for
independence against British rule. From a statistical point of view in
1901 there were 114 842 people of Irish origins, both Catholics and
Protestants, which constituted about 7% of the Québec population
in
total (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca). Many Canadians at the time were
lending their support to the Irish battle. However none could have
predicted how immense Katherine’s response to it would be.
|
Hughes was steadily making her way up in the office of the agent
general of Alberta and after a promotion in September 1913 in London
she began a whole new form of promotion. During her time in England she
made acquaintances with the likes of Padraic O’ Conaire the most
important Irish language writer of the early twentieth century as well
as other Irish nationalists and cultural and political Irish activists.
O’ Conaire became a fond friend of Katherine’s and they
even penned a play together although it never came to be published.
During this time she became deeply affected by the Irish struggle for
independence and began her own promotion on behalf of the Irish in
support of their battle for independence from Britain.
Her first visit to Ireland took place in the summer of 1914. It was
during that summer that she spent a week at the cultural festival of
the Gaelic League in Killarney. On her return to Ireland she even set
about learning Irish calling herself: Caitlín Ní Aodha.
After the war Hughes played an immense role in Ireland’s fight
for independence from England. She actively mobilized Irish immigrants
in both Australia and Canada presenting provocative lectures to rouse
their Irish patriotism to show solidarity with the Irish fighting for
independence from the British.
It was amongst this immersion in Irish culture and politics that
Katherine appeared to morph from a Canadian civil servant to a staunch
supporter of Irish independence and Irish culture. Within an online
journal entitled Collectanea
Hibernica provided by an archivist at
University College Dubin (UCD) there are records from the early 1920s
entitled the Calendar of Irlande.
These records include details of how
French government officials sent French ministers and French agents to
Ireland in the early 1920s to provide weekly reports to France about
the situation in Ireland during this time of civil unrest. In one such
record the Minister for the Interior to Briand, Paris, 12 January
recounts details of the preparations for the congress of the Irish Race
to be held in Paris in 1922. He recalled that the ‘chief
organisers’ behind the Congress were a Mr S. T. O'Kelly and Miss
Catherine Hughes, who the minister recognized as: ‘representing
the more republican element of Irish nationalism’. The overall
aim of this French consul appeared to serve as a type of surveillance
whereby the French government expressed their sympathy for Ireland's
cause but simultaneously kept vigilance on Irish supporters such as
Katherine to offset any threat from them particularly during their time
in France.
(Continued)
|
