author
Kate Simpson Hayes
1856–1945
A pioneering voice in early Western Canadian journalism, this writer built a wide-ranging career as a poet, playwright, author, and legislative librarian. Her life moved from New Brunswick to the Prairies and the Yukon, and that sense of place runs through much of her work.
1 Audiobook
Derby Day in the Yukon, and Other Poems of the "Northland"
by Kate Simpson Hayes
About the author
Born in Dalhousie, New Brunswick, on July 6, 1856, Kate Simpson Hayes became one of the earliest women journalists in Western Canada. She also worked as a teacher, milliner, and later as the first librarian for the Legislature of the Northwest Territories, showing the same practical energy that shaped her writing life.
She wrote under several pen names, including Mary Markwell, Elaine, Marka Wohl, and Yukon Bill, and published poetry, journalism, fiction, and plays. Hayes was also a founding member of the Canadian Women’s Press Club, and her career helped open space for other women writers and reporters in Canada.
Her writing is closely tied to the places where she lived and worked, especially the Prairies and the North. She died on January 15, 1945, in British Columbia, leaving behind a body of work that reflects both frontier experience and the determination of a writer making her own way.