Jeannine Locke with The CBC’s Fred Davis.
Jeannine Locke, pioneer journalist and award-winning CBC writer/producer, perceived the 1950s as an opportune era to penetrate the male-dominated world of journalism. Feisty, opinionated and educated, she progressed rapidly from small-town reporter in Saskatchewan to first female general reporter at the Toronto Star.
She was eventually promoted to Star bureau chief in London, England; her proudest professional achievement was an interview with former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Not only was she a die-hard Liberal, but it was a coup because Mr. Trudeau was at the height of his powers and she was a woman when there were not a lot of them in the business, never mind any who had access to an interview with the charismatic PM.
Later, as a documentary writer/producer for CBC television, she added an interview with Prince Charles to a list of career highlights, along with a 1987 ACTRA award for the romantic drama Chautauqua Girl.
Fittingly, this take-charge woman dictated her obituary, in which she referred to herself as "talented and spirited," a year before her death in Toronto on Feb. 26 at the age of 87. "I think she wrote it because she was a woman who liked to be in control, who liked things done in specific ways, and by writing it herself she accomplished both," says her nephew, Kim Locke. "Even though I'm executor of my aunt's estate, I'm still just following orders." Mr. Locke said she left pages and pages of notes for him, such as who to talk to when it came to selling her house.
Jeannine Locke and her twin brother, Robert, were born on April 16, 1925, in Indian Head, Sask. Their father, Shirley, was a dentist, their mother, Christena, a homemaker who held strong Liberal views and who believed in speaking up.
While still in high school, Jeannine became a correspondent for the Prince Albert Daily Herald. This early experience motivated her to get an M.A. in English from the University of Saskatchewan, from which she graduated in 1949. Her byline began appearing in editorials for the Star-Phoenix and the Ottawa Citizen.
She then took on a staff position at Chatelaine magazine, a move she didn't particularly relish. "I wanted to be a writer. I didn't want to be a writer for women's magazines, but that's about all that was going at the time," she said.
Ms. Locke recalled the 1950s as a halcyon time when people were carefree. She told her friend, actor/writer/director Karen Hines: "Everything was promising. Everybody had faith in the future."
In those days Ms. Locke was making $80 a week at Chatelaine and shopping at Holt Renfrew. "Toronto was a small community. If you went to the theatre, at the interval you knew most of the people there." In those days, the city was busy shaking off its provincialism. Ms. Locke said in one of the interviews, largely for posterity, that Ms. Hines conducted with her: "It was a time when things were happening … the Massey Commission, the Canada Council, the Crest Theatre … everything was burgeoning. The '50s were pre-pill, but people nevertheless made love. It was a wonderful time to be alive."
By the end of her favourite decade, Ms. Locke was in her perfect milieu, reporting for the Toronto Star. Torstar chair and former editor John Honderich says of Ms. Locke, "She had Star blue tattooed right onto her. She always believed firmly in the paper and what it was doing."
In 1960, Ms. Locke was living in London as the Star's first female bureau chief. When her adored mother arrived for a visit, the two jetted off to Palma, Majorca. In a postcard to a friend Ms. Locke wrote, "Why do peeps work when there is Spain instead? What Canada needs is a good ten-cent brandy."
Ms. Locke referred to herself and pals of that era as "smart alecks" who did their best to emulate witty writers of the famed Algonquin Round Table in New York. "We were always showing off to each other. If there was a house rule it was simply 'do not be boring.' It was not allowed."
While Ms. Locke appreciated bohemianism in friends, she was less enamoured of the burgeoning hippie movement of the 1960s, which she regarded as clichéd. The peace-and-love decade, however, was a watershed in her reportage. In 1961, as the Berlin Wall went up, she sneaked into East Berlin to report on the city before it closed to the Western world.
In the same year, she covered the Jerusalem trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Attending a British parliamentary debate about entrance into the European Economic Union, Ms. Locke was amused to report a rare appearance by Winston Churchill, dozing in his wheelchair.
By 1964, Ms. Locke was back in Toronto. During that year she married Peter Reilly, eight years her junior. He too was a journalist and one of the original hosts of the current affairs program the fifth estate. When Mr. Reilly's career took him to New York in 1967 as the CBC's United Nations correspondent, Ms. Locke accompanied him while continuing to pen features for Star Weekly. Both were dedicated to their careers. The marriage didn't last, but the two remained friends until Mr. Reilly died of heart failure in 1977.
Ms. Locke joined the CBC in 1969 and made the move to television. Her journalistic skills proved invaluable within their newly formed documentary unit. For the next 10 years she produced many documentaries, including The Family Prince, for which she interviewed Prince Charles.
In 1979, she switched to drama, delighted to be in charge of writing, producing her own scripts and selecting a talented team. She was both highly organized and fiscally responsible. In 1987 she received her ACTRA for Chautauqua Girl as the best television program of the year. The drama, set in a travelling tent show in 1920s rural Alberta, continued to sell internationally for the next 20 years.
John Kennedy, then head of television drama at CBC, recalls Ms. Locke as an intelligent, forceful individual with exceedingly deep Canadian roots that nourished every show she produced: "She was a no baloney person. She was great."
Ms. Locke retired in 1990. But she departed by resigning in what she called a "fit of integrity" over CBC's growing commercialization and the import of U.S. programs.
A woman of passion and engagement throughout her working life, Ms. Locke was no different in retirement. She threw herself into causes, volunteering and referring to herself as "an aroused citizen." She effectively led a coalition against the construction of two high-rise towers on Yonge Street, Toronto's central north-south artery. They would have impinged on Ramsden Park, a favourite green space near her home. The park will soon accommodate a memorial bench in her name.
Ms. Locke loved the Blue Jays baseball team, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Liberals, the supermarket in Maple Leaf Gardens, and walks around her cherished city.
Physically active to the end, she did, however, lament that personal computers and the Internet arrived too late for her to become comfortable with them. But she fretted that people were relying on technology to the detriment of the art of conversation. Journalism, she felt, was also suffering the disease of "sound bites" and instant information that might or might not be correct.
"Jeannine was of an era that a well-written, well-researched story, maybe not quite timely, but one that got all the facts and got them right, was what journalism was all about," Kim Locke said.
A journalist to the end, in her 87th year it pleased Ms. Locke greatly that she could still command the ear of John Honderich. He said, "She was constantly in contact. There were issues and various things she would call about and when she called I listened carefully."