Storer, Effie Laurie (1867-1948)

Effie Laurie Storer.

Saskatchewan Archives Board S-B105

Effie Laurie Storer was the first female journalist in the North-West Territories. She was born in 1867 in Windsor, Ontario, to Patrick and Mary Eliza Laurie. Her father started the first territorial newspaper, the Saskatchewan Herald, in Battleford in 1878 (Saskatchewan being the district name); her newspaper career began there in 1882, probably because her father lacked the money for male apprentices. In 1885, during the North-West Resistance, she met Constable John Henry “Harry” Storer, whom she married in 1889; they had no children. They farmed near Stinking Lake until Harry’s death at Vimy Ridge in 1917.

Storer then returned to work as a professional journalist, presumably out of financial necessity. She worked for the Saskatchewan Herald, the Moose Jaw Times, and the Regina Leader, serving as women’s page editor for both the Herald and the Times. In 1936 she returned to Battleford to help care for her ill brother, Richard, and to help run the family newspaper. After Richard’s death the Saskatchewan Herald folded, and Storer retired from journalism. She moved to British Columbia, and in her remaining years she worked on her memoirs, which were never published. She died in 1948.

Dana Turgeon