Kathleen Coleman

Kathleen Coleman, journalist, war correspondent (born Catherine Ferguson on 20 February 1856 in Castleblakeney, Ireland; died 16 May 1915 in Hamilton, Ontario).

"Kit of the Mail" was the first woman journalist in Canada to be in charge of her own section of a Canadian newspaper. In the 1880s and 1890s she ran a seven-column page called "Woman's Kingdom" in the Toronto Mail. The page was so outspoken that it attracted a wide following, including Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. Coleman tackled anything that interested her, including political commentary, theatre criticism, fashion notes and recipes.

One of her most popular features was "Advice to the Lovelorn." Coleman was cynical about love, for her parents had married her off to an elderly Irishman when she was 16. Widowed at 20, she immigrated to Canada in 1884 and worked as a secretary. After separating from her second husband (who was an alcoholic and probably a bigamist as well), she turned to journalism to support her two children. She worked for the Mail until 1911. The name Coleman comes from her third husband, Theobald Coleman.

Coleman was one of the first women in the world to become an accredited war correspondent when, in 1898, she went to Cuba to report on the Spanish-American War. After 1911, she sold "Kit's Column" to dozens of newspapers across the country.