Catherine Blake Ferguson aka:  Kit Coleman

Columnist, Journalist and War Correspondent

Catherine Blake Ferguson (1864-1915), who wrote under the name Kit Coleman,  was a columnist and journalist.  In fact, 'Kit of the Mail'.  was the first female journalist to be in charge of her own section of a Canadian newspaper.  In the 1890s and early 1900s, she ran a seven-column page in the Toronto Mail, called "Woman's Kingdom," which was so outspoken that it attracted a wide following, including Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier.

She tackled anything from  political commentary and theatre criticism, to fashion  and recipes. In one of her most popular features she gave the first advice to the lovelorn.  Cynical herself about love, after her parents had married her off at 16 to an elderly Irishman.  she found herself widowed at the age of 20, so migrated from Ireland to Canada in 1884.  She first worked as a secretary then married her boss, Edward Watkins. When he died in 1889, Catherine turned to journalism to support their two children, working at Mail until 1911. Meanwhile, she married a third husband, Theobald Coleman.   Kit became the first woman in the world to be a war correspondent when in 1898 she went to Cuba to report on the Spanish-American War.  She also served as the first president of the Canadian Women's Press Club, an organization of women journalists.

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