Rebel Daughter: A Autobiography

Margaret Conrad is the Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair of Women’s Studies
at Mount Saint Vincent University, and the editor of Intimate Relations:
Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800.

When Doris Anderson took over the editorship of Chatelaine in 1957, the
published autobiographies of Canadian women could be counted on the
fingers of one hand. Now they fill several bookshelves, while the
critical literature on women’s life writing is a fast-growing
industry. Rebel Daughter is a welcome addition to the field, not because
it stretches the boundaries of the autobiographical genre in any major
way, but because it offers Anderson’s steely-eyed perspective on what,
by any measure, is a pioneering life.

Born in Alberta in 1921, Anderson was raised in a highly unconventional
female-headed family. Her father, an angry man with Communist leanings
(to whom she obviously owes much of her spunk), appeared on the scene
when she was eight years old. After a stint at teaching school, she
switched to journalism, which led to a string of accomplishments: editor
of Chatelaine, chair of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of
Women, president of the National Action Committee, and widely acclaimed
author. While these would be achievements enough for most women,
Anderson wanted more. She maintains that her gender and her feminism
prevented her from becoming editor of Maclean’s (she had a better
track record than Peter Gzowski, who got the nod), from forging a
successful career in formal politics, and from sustaining a
marriage—in short, from having it all.

Like many women, Anderson became more radical as she got older. She is
still convinced, at the age of 75, that the world is doomed unless women
have more input into the way it is run.

Written in the hard-hitting style for which Anderson is justly famous,
Rebel Daughter is often a page-turner. The chapters on family life, the
old (and young) boys’ network at Maclean Hunter, and the
constitutional battles waged against Lloyd Axworthy not only make
riveting reading but also add important insights into the times in which
she lived. Concluding with a sharp critique of the increasingly
mean-spirited politics of the 1990s, Anderson leaves the impression that
she still has something to offer a country that fully values only half
of its citizens.