Faith Fenton, pseudonym of Alice Matilda Freeman (1857 – 1936)

Alice Freeman was born in Bowmanville, Canada West the year after her parents, William and Mary Ann Freeman, moved from Brooklyn, New York. Her parents had emigrated from England in 1854 and found America too republican for their tastes. Around 1868, the Freemans moved to Barrie where the job opportunities were better for her father, a cabinet maker. Ten-year-old Alice was sent back to live with Reverend Thomas Reikie and his wife Margaret in Bowmanville. She was never told why she was sent away, but she had many siblings and the Reiikies had none and enough money to give her a good education. Margaret died in 1871, and fourteen-year-old Alice returned to her parents in Barrie. In 1872, she was enrolled in the Toronto normal school to start training as a teacher. She began to teach in 1875 and remained in the Toronto school system for nineteen years.¹⁾

Alice’s first published articles were for the Tory paper The Northern Advance, the first daily newspaper published outside of Toronto. In 1886, she wrote a two-part travel article and signed it with her initials. Journalism was not quite a proper profession for a lady in those days, and probably less so for a teacher. After the first ones, her articles found a regular spot in the paper on a more-or-less weekly basis, and she signed the articles as Stella. For sixteen years she wrote Stella’s Toronto Letter about religion, travel, social events, fashion, politics, literature, and social evils. Her last article for the Barrie paper was written in October 1888.²⁾

In 1887-88, Alice started writing the children’s page in the Globe, a Liberal Toronto paper’s weekend edition, The Weekly Globe and Farmer. She used the Faith Fenton pseudonym for these articles.³⁾ In 1894, she resigned her teaching position and became a full-time journalist. She interviewed some famous people including suffragette Susan B. Anthony and writer Catherine Parr Trail.⁴⁾ Before joining the Toronto Globe, she was editor in chief of the Canadian Home Journal.⁵⁾

Working for The Globe (Toronto), Fenton travelled with the Yukon Field Force and the newly formed Victorian Order of Nurses on their trip to the Yukon in 1898. The length of her skirt was an issue to the commanding officer, but the problem was solved with an extra length of material sewn to the hem. She reached Dawson in mid-September, too close to close of navigation to return south. She commented on the cold that winter, but an unreliable postal system was her biggest challenges in getting stories back to Toronto. In the spring, she decided to stay in Dawson where she was welcomed into Dawson social circle. She met Dr. John Nelson Elliot Brown, secretary to the Yukon Council and medical health officer for the territory, and they were married on 1 January 1900. In September 1901, Faith sent the first press release via the new telegraph line. The Browns left Dawson in 1905 when Dr. Brown accepted a position as superintendent of Toronto General Hospital.⁶⁾