Journalist, suffragette.
Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1886, daughter of Robert and Annie Lipsett, she was educated at public schools of Toronto and Manitoba, the New York Grammar School, graduating in 1900, and the New York Normal College, from 1900 to 1903.
She came to reside in Winnipeg in 1904 and for the next thirteen years was employed by the Winnipeg Telegram as a reporter and editor of the paper’s “Sunshine” department. From 1909 to 1910 she served as secretary of the Winnipeg Women’s Press Club, and in 1910 a Director of the Anti-Tuberculosis Society. On 6 June 1911 she married Winnipeg businessman Robert Curtis Skinner (?-?). The following year, together with a number of well-educated and middle-class Winnipeg men and women (including Cora Hind of the Free Press, Nellie McClung, Amelia Yeomans, Francis Beynon, Lillian Beynon, Winona and Lynn Flett, Fred Dixon and George Chipman) she joined the Political Equality League.
In 1918 she left the Telegram and together with her younger brother, Robert Lipsett, started Lipsett-Skinner Press News Bureau, “Specialists in Publicity Campaigns.” Also in 1918 she became the first married woman to qualify for a law degree from the University of Manitoba. In 1919 her marriage ended and she returned to working for the Telegram. During the June 1920 provincial election campaign she ran unsuccessfully as a Conservative party candidate. Following her defeat she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia and was employed by the Vancouver Sun for five years. During this time she was the paper’s Ottawa correspondent and became the first woman to be given membership in Parliamentary Press Gallery. From 1926 until her death in January 1935, she worked for the Montreal Star.
See also:
Women Who Made The News by Marjory Lang, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 1999, page 266.
Who’s Who in Western Canada: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women of Western Canada, Volume 1, edited by C. W. Parker, Vancouver: Canadian Press Association, 1911.
Marriage registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
1906 Canada census, Automated Genealogy.
A Cloak For Something Far Deeper: The Press Coverage of the Winnipeg General Strike by Michael Dupuis, unpublished manuscript.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 24 March 2022
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