Gail Mary Scott in late Summer 2017. Ms. Scott died of lung cancer on Nov. 26 at the age of 82.Jesse Colin Jackson/Supplied
One 1972 news story called Gail Scott “CTV’s lady on the Hill” and gushed that she was the “first regular woman correspondent [covering the Canadian Parliament] for a national television network.”
In fact, Ms. Scott had reported for the CBC in Ottawa since graduating with a journalism degree in 1966. She filed stories for radio and occasionally for television throughout the late 1960s; by 1969, she was a CBC assignment editor for both French and English television.
But she was still asked, as she made the switch from the CBC to CTV in the early ‘70s, if she thought federal officials and politicians were ready to be interviewed by a female journalist. “Generally, yes,” Ms. Scott replied. “There’s still the odd member of Parliament who might call me ‘my dear’ or something like that. But, on the whole, I’ve been accepted.”
It was a diplomatic response from a lifelong stickler for etiquette. In fact, Ms. Scott battled sexism throughout her journalistic career and blazed the trail for female reporters in an industry that was, when she entered it, largely a private club for men.
Ms. Scott took it in stride because she was determined to succeed, first as a bilingual reporter on Parliament Hill and then as the highly respected host of CTV’s W5 and Canada AM. That was followed by years in which she taught younger journalists her trade and made important decisions about the Canadian broadcast industry.
Gail Mary Scott died of lung cancer on Nov. 26 at the age of 82.
Gail Scott on a fly-fishing trip in New Brunswick in the early 1980s.Courtesy of family
Steve Paikin, the Canadian journalist and TV show host, remembers watching Canada AM as a boy because his mother was a fan.
“I saw an example of what would have been one of the very few women succeeding in current affairs television, meaning I grew up in a world where the default position was, well, of course men and women host these shows together. It’s not a male bastion,” Mr. Paikin says. “I’m not sure kids who were a few years older than me grew up thinking the same thing. But Gail’s excellence made that my reality.”
Gail Scott was born in Ottawa on June 25, 1943, into a loving and staunchly Catholic family. She was the elder of two daughters of Dorothy (née Daly) and Claude J. Scott.
“Her father, in particular, was determined that his two girls should be able to succeed just like men in life. He encouraged them to be the best they could be,” says Graham Scott, Ms. Scott’s husband of 52 years.
In writing about her life, Ms. Scott’s daughters, Gillian and Genevieve, say their mother recalled an idyllic childhood of winters spent skating on the Rideau Canal and summers at the family cottage on Constance Bay on the Ottawa River. Her early interest in broadcasting was sparked by listening to Maggie Muggins, a CBC show for children, on the family’s mahogany radio.
As a young woman, Ms. Scott completed a BA at Carleton University and then, in 1964, spent a year studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, an experience that left her fluently bilingual. She returned to Ottawa to do her journalism degree, won the university’s Medal for Journalism award, and then took the job with the CBC.
Sue Davidson, who attended journalism school at the same time, says she admired Ms. Scott’s brain. “I always thought she was one of the smartest people in our class,” says Ms. Davidson who, along with Ms. Scott, was one of just a handful of women in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in the late 1960s. “We were women who had grown up in the days of more education for women and more intellectual freedom. … We were groundbreakers in our field.”
Although Ms. Scott mostly worked in radio in her early years, there were times she was required to appear on television. One of those occasions was during the October Crisis of 1970, when she reported in both English and French.
In the spring of 1972, Graham Scott was a lawyer working as the executive assistant for Conservative leader Robert Stanfield when he noticed Ms. Scott sitting in the seats of Parliament reserved for reporters. He inquired about her name and marital status, then arranged an introduction. Graham Scott and Gail Scott were married six months later.
Gail Scott reported for the CBC in Ottawa since graduating with a journalism degree in 1966.ERIK CHRISTENSEN/The Globe and Mail
As a reporter, Ms. Scott demanded truth and balance in her work. Her husband recalls that few things would make her angrier than an editor deciding what a news story would say before she had actually done the reporting. She had a quick wit, a reassuringly calm composure, and a deep, throaty voice that lent an air of gravitas to her newscasts.
By 1972, CTV had taken notice of Ms. Scott’s work. “At the time, CTV had no one in their press gallery who was a woman,” Mr. Scott says. “I think they were feeling some heat on that.” So Ms. Scott switched networks. Then, in addition to her reporting, she started to fill in as anchor for Canada AM when the regular host was away.
Richard Mackie, a Parliamentary reporter for the Toronto Telegram who went on to write for The Globe and Mail, says Parliament Hill was still “very much a man’s game” in the early ‘70s. But Ms. Scott, “was a very vivacious, very inquisitive, very self-possessed and self-assured person,” Mr. Mackie says. “I don’t think she realized that she was being a groundbreaker for women. She set out to be herself and to accomplish things that she wanted to accomplish.”
Susan Reisler, who was a journalist for United Press International in those years, says: “We didn’t pay attention to the sexism because we had enough confidence in ourselves, and we just did what we had to do to keep moving ahead.”
In 1975, the Scotts moved to Toronto after Ms. Scott accepted a job as producer and host of W5, the network’s investigative news program. Then, in 1978, she became the full-time co-host of Canada AM. Her daughters say she “loved having breakfast with Canada,” even if the fame sometimes made her uncomfortable.
She was a very private person, Gillian Scott says. “When we’d be out grocery shopping or something, people would often come over and say ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ And she’d be very shy and not want to get into it. She wasn’t a big self-promoter.”
Ms. Scott excelled as host of Canada AM. But, in 1982, CTV told her she was being moved to the network’s bureau in Beijing. It was a transfer that did not work for a woman with two young daughters and a husband who had a rewarding career in Toronto. Ms. Scott left full-time journalism.
She was quickly contacted by Joan Donaldson, the creator of CBC’s Newsworld, who was then head of the school of broadcast journalism at what is now Toronto Metropolitan University. Ms. Scott was hired to teach future generations of journalists and became director of the broadcast-journalism school when Ms. Donaldson was injured by a cyclist. Ms. Scott also served for a time in the office of the university president as the executive co-ordinator of community relations, before returning to teaching, where she stayed until 1993.
From 1986 to 1998, she was a board member and then a commissioner with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), making decisions about the future of the broadcast industry in Canada.
“She always talked about Canadian content,” Gillian Scott says. “She was very passionate about Canadian artists and independent Canadian broadcasting, and how important it was to have arts that were funded in Canada.”
Ms. Scott spent three years in the early ‘90s as president of the Michener Awards Foundation, honouring the best of Canadian journalism. From 1998 to 2008, she was a member of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in Ontario. And she spent two years on the board of the Canadian Television Fund.
Throughout her younger years, Ms. Scott was a committed Catholic. “Her religious beliefs were very deep,” Mr. Scott says.
But, by the early ‘90s, Ms. Scott had become disaffected with the Catholic Church. She was upset about the refusal to allow women to become priests. She was angry over the handling of the sexual-abuse scandals. And she strongly disagreed with the church’s stance against same-sex marriage. She started attending an Anglican church that was near her home in Toronto. One day she convinced Mr. Scott to go to a service with her, saying she had a surprise for him. “When we got there, she was being confirmed as an Anglican,” he says. “Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather.”
Not long after, she began a four-year master’s degree in theology at Trinity College, which is part of the University of Toronto.
Ms. Scott was quiet about her accomplishments. She did, however, talk about sexism, “what it looked like and how to identify it, and that it wasn’t acceptable,” Gillian Scott says. “She was an incredibly strong woman, and just extremely determined that she wanted to blaze her own trail. She taught us from when we were young that women can be anything, and women should be anything.”
In addition to her husband and two daughters, Ms. Scott leaves her sister, Constance Corbett; and her two grandsons, Jarvis Scott and George Scott-Seraganian.
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