Recent photos
Raven Wolfe and Patrick Meikle
Particpants in panel discussion
Melba Lent Woelflé
In 1972 the Media Club was renamed the Media Club of Canada to include
all media, not just the press.. The Media Club of Ottawa is a branch
of the Media Club of Canada just as it had been a branch of the Canadian
Women's Press Club.
In 2004, the Media Club of Ottawa hosted the club’s
Centennial celebrations and members attended from across the
country.Today, the Media Club of Ottawa is the only remaining branch.
Building
on the tradition and values inherited from the CWPC, the club offers
monthly meetings with guest speakers discussing media-related topics;
conducts workshops also on media-related topics; maintains a website;
produces a monthly newsletter; and offers an opportunity to network and
make valuable connections. Membership includes professional authors,
journalists, students, and aspiring writers. It is the oldest
continuous press club in the world.
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The Canadian Women’s Press Club (CWPC), now the Media Club of
Canada, was founded in June 1904, on a train carrying 16 Canadian women
journalists who reported on the St. Louis World Fair for their
newspaper or magazine.
That year Margaret “Miggsy” Graham, an Ottawa reporter,
watched newspaper men, but not women, get free trips to St. Louis to
cover the World Exposition for their newspapers. She travelled to
Montreal and asked then Canadian Pacific Railway publicist, Colonel
George Ham, to provide women reporters with free passes too. Ham said
he would if she could find 12 paid women journalists. Miggsy found 16
and Ham provided female and male journalists free press passes for the
first time.
Kit Coleman became the club’s first president, Col. Ham
honorary president.
Founding
members were:
Margaret
“Miggsy” Graham
journalist, Ottawa Free Press;
Kate Simpson Hayes,
journalist, Manitoba Free Press
writing under the pen name “Mary Markwell”;
Gertrude Balmer Watt
Women’s
page editor and columnist writing under pen name
“Peggy”, Woodstock
Sentinel Review;
Grace Denison
from
Toronto, feature writer, Saturday
Night
magazine;
Marie Beaupré
journalist,
Montreal’s La Presse
using the pen name Helen
Dumont”;
Madelaine Gleason
journalist, La Patrie;
Alice Asselin
journalist, Le Nationalist;
Katherine Hughes
Ottawa
journalist;
Anna Plouffle
Ottawa
journalist;
Alana Gerin-Lajoie
Ottawa
journalist;
Mary Adelaide Dawson
journalist, Toronto Telegram
(later became
Mrs. C.H. Snider);
Annette Valois
journalist;
Kathleen
“Kit” Coleman,
“Women’s
Kingdom” columnist for Toronto’s Mail and Empire,
the only Canadian woman to cover World’s Fair in Chicago, and
the world’s first accredited woman war correspondent;
Robertine Barry
publisher, Montreal’s Le
Journal de Françoise;
Cecile
Laberge
cub
reporter, Ottawa
Free Press;
Irene Curie Love
a
student freelancer, London Advertiser,
who later joined the Montreal
Star and used the
pen name Margaret Currie.
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Recent Photos
Flora McDonald
Olive Dickason and Marg Virany
Tony and Rosleen Dickson
The club presents four annual bursaries to college and
university students in the Ottawa area who excel in journalism or
communications. The Margaret Graham Award was presented first in 1976.
It was formally established in 1977 to be given to a top journalism
student from Carleton University and Algonquin College. The first
awards were presented in January 1978. In 1992 the program expanded,
including a student from the University of Ottawa’s
Communications Department.
The Melba Lent Woelflé Journalism Bursary, established in
2004 in memory of a long time member, has been given annually to a top
journalism student in the print journalism program at Algonquin College
since 2008. The funds are managed by the Community Foundation of Ottawa.
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