SoloJourno

Gladys Arnold in Paris, 1938
University of Regina Archives

When World War II broke out, Gladys Arnold (1905–2002) was the lone journalist in France. In 1935, she’d left her job at the Regina Leader-Post where she’d started as an editorial assistant in 1930, but had soon started writing editorials and feature articles. She lived in Paris and covered the start of the war up until 1940 when the Germans occupied the city in June of 1940.

According to The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan:

She found herself in Paris, where she intended to study the modern age philosophies of socialism, communism, and fascism. Arnold began submitting freelance pieces to the Canadian Press and was soon hired as their Paris correspondent. In the next four years she reported from France and Germany on the Spanish civil war, the Austrian Anschluss with Germany, and the Munich agreement regarding Czechoslovakia.

Via Ryerson Review of Journalism:

Gladys Arnold was an eyewitness to history, sending home reports on the Nazis’ rise, meeting de Gaulle, working for the Free French and earning a modest reputation as a trailblazer in Canadian journalism.

It was mid-October 1939 when Gladys Arnold sailed aboard the luxury liner the Washington, on her way back to France. There was a strange atmosphere on the ship. The truth hung low over the almost 300 passengers’ heads; they were sailing into the unknown. Watching land fade into open sea, Arnold wondered whether she would ever see Canada again. Lights onboard the ship blazed into the darkness.
Although there was an underlying feeling of dread among the passengers, they filled their time watching movies, eating grand dinners and spending evenings in the lounge, where they had long chats about Canada, books and music—everything except the war. Decades later, in her memoir One Woman’s War: A Canadian Reporter with the Free French, Arnold would recall, “[M]y crossing of the Atlantic was full of foreboding. The unreality of that trip still troubles me.”

Arnold, Paris correspondent for The Canadian Press since 1936, was on the Washington because she “wanted to see firsthand the conflict between fascism and democracy.” Gillis Purcell, her CP editor, tried to warn her off—“We can’t be responsible for you if you go back”—but later Arnold would explain that she couldn’t imagine not going. Purcell raised her salary from $15 to $20 per week and wished her bonne chance.

Read Kate Grainger’s full article.