Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

HIND, CORA (1861-1942)

Cora Hind

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Ella Cora Hind was a pioneer in breaking gender barriers and a lifelong advocate for women's rights. She was appointed by J. W. Dafoe as agricultural editor of the Manitoba Free Press (later Winnipeg Free Press) in 1901, twenty years after she was first refused work there on gender grounds.

Hind was born in Toronto on September 18, 1861. Orphaned in early childhood, she and her two older brothers grew up on their grandfather's mixed farm near Orillia, Ontario. As her grandfather's favorite, Hind learned about agriculture firsthand. Cora was raised by her Aunt Alice, who moved to Winnipeg with Cora in 1882. They lived together until Alice's death in 1908. During Cora's first three decades in Winnipeg, Alice was truly her partner, bringing in an income as a dressmaker, managing Hind's business in her absence, and doing research for Cora's freelance articles.

Cora trained herself to use the new office innovation, the typewriter, and became a clerk for a firm of influential lawyers. In 1893 she set up her own office, acting as public secretary to, among others, a number of farming organizations. Her big break came in 1898 when she traveled west to report for banking and business interests on the effects of a late crop. Her distinguished career in journalism culminated in a tour around the world (1935. 37) to report on farming, published as Seeing for Myself (1937). Her accurate estimates of crop yields were legendary on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.

Hind was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Manitoba in 1935. When she died in Winnipeg on October 6, 1942, trading at the Winnipeg Grain Exchange was halted for two minutes in her honor.

See also MEDIA: Winnipeg Free Press .

Janice Dickin University of Calgary

Hacker, Carlotta. E. Cora Hind. Don Mills ON: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1979.

Haig, Kenneth M. Brave Harvest: The Life Story of E. Cora Hind. Toronto: Thomas Allen Ltd., 1945.

Hind, E. Cora. Seeing for Myself: Agricultural Conditions around the World. Toronto: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1937.