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University of Victoria Convocation Address
Remarks by Edith Iglauer on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at University Centre Farquhar Auditorium in Victoria upon receiving her honorary doctorate:
I can hardly believe this great honour is happening to me! I started writing when I was a small girl, and I still write because I can't stop writing. I sold my first articles to my home town newspapers in Cleveland, Ohio and to the first women's page at The Christian Science Monitor while I was attending the School of Journalism at Columbia University in 1939. I continued to write for the afternoon Cleveland News for many years. Its editor, Nat Howard, was a beginning writer's dream; critical, witty, and part teacher. He liked to say he gave me my start, and we remained friends as long as he lived.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of good teaching at an early age. My parents were determined that I attend university and switched me in high school to a college preparatory institution, Hathaway Brown School for Girls. I missed the boys, but I had two great teachers; Anna Blake in Latin, who revealed the magic music of Virgil's poetry; and our otherwise formidable head mistress, Millicent Raymond, gave a thrilling course in creative writing and English literature. The day before graduation she called me into her office, and said "Never stop writing."; I hear her every time I start a new writing project.
My Mother was a constant reader, with excellent taste, a rollicking sense of humour and enthusiasm for any adventure my Father suggested. We spent almost every weekend at a small cabin by the Chagrin River outside Cleveland, which gave me a lifelong preference for country living. From the time I could walk or sit on a horse I hiked and rode with my Dad. I loved his free spirit, insatiable curiosity and passion for the environment.
Right after Pearl Harbour in World War II I went to work in Washington, D.C. in the radio news room of the Office of War Information. We relayed news from the free world and from Nazi-occupied countries to their inhabitants, who listened to our broadcasts at their peril. I was in charge of the Scandinavian and religious desks. At my suggestion we added coverage of Eleanor Roosevelt's weekly press conference in the White House. As the newest and youngest reporter there, I kept my mouth shut, learned a lot and loved being part of her intimate circle of reporters. In 1945, I reluctantly left them to go overseas on assignment for The Cleveland News. I had married The New Yorker writer, Philip Hamburger, in Washington in 1942, and he was now the magazine's war correspondent in the Mediterranean Theatre. I joined him in Rome and we went to what was then Yugoslavia. We came home with our troops on the Queen Mary. The shocking destruction from bombing I witnessed everywhere, especially in London, made me a confirmed peace marcher.
Back in New York, the United Nations was evolving, and I attended those earliest UN proceedings for Harper's magazine. My first son, Jay, was born while I was writing about the planning for the UN's New York headquarters.
I began working at the point in my life when most married women almost automatically made the choice that husband and children came first. Any career was sandwiched in between their needs and demands, so I set my alarm and got up at 4:00 to write. That gave me three hours alone, and after my children were dispatched to school I continued working until they came home about three. In the evenings I accompanied my husband, whose social and professional life centered around The New Yorker. For a year and a half right after Jay was born Phil was its music critic. Every night we went to a different musical event, sometimes two, and I slept through the most beautiful concerts and operas imaginable. We also entertained frequently, with me as hostess, cook, and kitchenmaid. It never occurred to me to have it any other way, but the first money I earned from writing went for an automatic dishwasher.
We were living in a third-floor walkup railroad apartment, which is a strip of small rooms one behind the other. When I became pregnant, Harold Ross, the revered founder of The New Yorker, called his friend and our landlord, Vincent Astor, and got us a bigger apartment. The New Yorker always has demanded writing at its best, and I was so in awe of Mr. Ross. His vision of humour was embedded in the magazine; the late William Shawn, who succeeded him, focused on social issues; and the present editor, David Remnick, a superb writer himself, brilliantly covers the terrifying politics and people of our time.
When Bill Shawn became editor, he urged me to write for him. My younger son, Richie, was ten when I started turning in notes for the Talk of the Town section. I always have had my own ideas, and I began writing long fact pieces under my own name. My two published pieces on air pollution in New York and the Clean Air Act in England, inspired a politician to push a law through New York's City Council forcing the local giant power company, Consolidated Edison, to burn a lighter, less polluting oil.
In 1961 a hankering for adventure gave me confidence to ride into Arctic Quebec on a dogsled without a clue as to where I was going, to describe the historic meeting of the first Inuit to form their own economic co-operative. Their traditional nomadic life was no longer viable. They were desperate enough, with guidance from dedicated Canadian officials, especially the late Donald Snowden, to unite, found a new settlement and experiment.
It was my introduction to Canada, the first of many trips North. I always say that I came to Canada from the top down. I was totally smitten by the Canadian Arctic. I realize now how unconsciously I entered into what was then viewed as a man's world. Being the only woman on those trips seemed perfectly natural and gave me treasured friends forever.
I never intended to live almost half my long life in Canada. I've had such a good time, and made relationships with wonderful people, especially my publisher, Howard White, of Harbour Publishing, my husband, Franklin White, and Geist magazine's Mary Schendlinger, my other great editor besides The New Yorker's Bill Shawn.
When I was twelve, our school librarian gave me a copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina by way of introduction to the great Russian novelists. From then on I wanted to write fiction, but events in the real world have been so compelling that they defy imagination. True happenings cry out for that special treatment we call creative non-fiction. I was amazed when the National War College of the United States government annually requested permission for about ten years to reproduce my article about Canada for its faculty and students that appeared in the July, 1973 issue of The Atlantic Monthly entitled "Canadians: The Strangers Next Door";.
I like to think that my writing will continue to contribute to mutual understanding between Canada and the United States. Most young and even middle-aged Canadians know almost nothing about the balance of power between the American Presidency, its Supreme Court and its Congress, the sacred foundation for good government in the United States. They vaguely recognize the name of the great American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but don't know what Roosevelt's New Deal was about, or how it lifted the nation out of the Depression to become the stable symbol of a working democracy. We need the universities and creative journalism to provide historical perspective, so we never repeat the horrifying mistakes of the odious Bush administrations.
I think of creative journalism as making true stories readable. The still small voice of truth is what I hear when I am writing.
The recognition I have received from this fine University is one of the greatest experiences of my life and I am deeply moved. Thank you.
I can hardly believe this great honour is happening to me! I started writing when I was a small girl, and I still write because I can't stop writing. I sold my first articles to my home town newspapers in Cleveland, Ohio and to the first women's page at The Christian Science Monitor while I was attending the School of Journalism at Columbia University in 1939. I continued to write for the afternoon Cleveland News for many years. Its editor, Nat Howard, was a beginning writer's dream; critical, witty, and part teacher. He liked to say he gave me my start, and we remained friends as long as he lived.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of good teaching at an early age. My parents were determined that I attend university and switched me in high school to a college preparatory institution, Hathaway Brown School for Girls. I missed the boys, but I had two great teachers; Anna Blake in Latin, who revealed the magic music of Virgil's poetry; and our otherwise formidable head mistress, Millicent Raymond, gave a thrilling course in creative writing and English literature. The day before graduation she called me into her office, and said "Never stop writing."; I hear her every time I start a new writing project.
My Mother was a constant reader, with excellent taste, a rollicking sense of humour and enthusiasm for any adventure my Father suggested. We spent almost every weekend at a small cabin by the Chagrin River outside Cleveland, which gave me a lifelong preference for country living. From the time I could walk or sit on a horse I hiked and rode with my Dad. I loved his free spirit, insatiable curiosity and passion for the environment.
Right after Pearl Harbour in World War II I went to work in Washington, D.C. in the radio news room of the Office of War Information. We relayed news from the free world and from Nazi-occupied countries to their inhabitants, who listened to our broadcasts at their peril. I was in charge of the Scandinavian and religious desks. At my suggestion we added coverage of Eleanor Roosevelt's weekly press conference in the White House. As the newest and youngest reporter there, I kept my mouth shut, learned a lot and loved being part of her intimate circle of reporters. In 1945, I reluctantly left them to go overseas on assignment for The Cleveland News. I had married The New Yorker writer, Philip Hamburger, in Washington in 1942, and he was now the magazine's war correspondent in the Mediterranean Theatre. I joined him in Rome and we went to what was then Yugoslavia. We came home with our troops on the Queen Mary. The shocking destruction from bombing I witnessed everywhere, especially in London, made me a confirmed peace marcher.
Back in New York, the United Nations was evolving, and I attended those earliest UN proceedings for Harper's magazine. My first son, Jay, was born while I was writing about the planning for the UN's New York headquarters.
I began working at the point in my life when most married women almost automatically made the choice that husband and children came first. Any career was sandwiched in between their needs and demands, so I set my alarm and got up at 4:00 to write. That gave me three hours alone, and after my children were dispatched to school I continued working until they came home about three. In the evenings I accompanied my husband, whose social and professional life centered around The New Yorker. For a year and a half right after Jay was born Phil was its music critic. Every night we went to a different musical event, sometimes two, and I slept through the most beautiful concerts and operas imaginable. We also entertained frequently, with me as hostess, cook, and kitchenmaid. It never occurred to me to have it any other way, but the first money I earned from writing went for an automatic dishwasher.
We were living in a third-floor walkup railroad apartment, which is a strip of small rooms one behind the other. When I became pregnant, Harold Ross, the revered founder of The New Yorker, called his friend and our landlord, Vincent Astor, and got us a bigger apartment. The New Yorker always has demanded writing at its best, and I was so in awe of Mr. Ross. His vision of humour was embedded in the magazine; the late William Shawn, who succeeded him, focused on social issues; and the present editor, David Remnick, a superb writer himself, brilliantly covers the terrifying politics and people of our time.
When Bill Shawn became editor, he urged me to write for him. My younger son, Richie, was ten when I started turning in notes for the Talk of the Town section. I always have had my own ideas, and I began writing long fact pieces under my own name. My two published pieces on air pollution in New York and the Clean Air Act in England, inspired a politician to push a law through New York's City Council forcing the local giant power company, Consolidated Edison, to burn a lighter, less polluting oil.
In 1961 a hankering for adventure gave me confidence to ride into Arctic Quebec on a dogsled without a clue as to where I was going, to describe the historic meeting of the first Inuit to form their own economic co-operative. Their traditional nomadic life was no longer viable. They were desperate enough, with guidance from dedicated Canadian officials, especially the late Donald Snowden, to unite, found a new settlement and experiment.
It was my introduction to Canada, the first of many trips North. I always say that I came to Canada from the top down. I was totally smitten by the Canadian Arctic. I realize now how unconsciously I entered into what was then viewed as a man's world. Being the only woman on those trips seemed perfectly natural and gave me treasured friends forever.
I never intended to live almost half my long life in Canada. I've had such a good time, and made relationships with wonderful people, especially my publisher, Howard White, of Harbour Publishing, my husband, Franklin White, and Geist magazine's Mary Schendlinger, my other great editor besides The New Yorker's Bill Shawn.
When I was twelve, our school librarian gave me a copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina by way of introduction to the great Russian novelists. From then on I wanted to write fiction, but events in the real world have been so compelling that they defy imagination. True happenings cry out for that special treatment we call creative non-fiction. I was amazed when the National War College of the United States government annually requested permission for about ten years to reproduce my article about Canada for its faculty and students that appeared in the July, 1973 issue of The Atlantic Monthly entitled "Canadians: The Strangers Next Door";.
I like to think that my writing will continue to contribute to mutual understanding between Canada and the United States. Most young and even middle-aged Canadians know almost nothing about the balance of power between the American Presidency, its Supreme Court and its Congress, the sacred foundation for good government in the United States. They vaguely recognize the name of the great American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but don't know what Roosevelt's New Deal was about, or how it lifted the nation out of the Depression to become the stable symbol of a working democracy. We need the universities and creative journalism to provide historical perspective, so we never repeat the horrifying mistakes of the odious Bush administrations.
I think of creative journalism as making true stories readable. The still small voice of truth is what I hear when I am writing.
The recognition I have received from this fine University is one of the greatest experiences of my life and I am deeply moved. Thank you.
Submitted on January 1, 2007 in By David.
