This feels like the dawn of a brutal new world when I thought we were on the cusp of full equality at last. Instead of a strong, smart, compassionate woman at the helm, America has elected a sociopath. The American response to the worst refugee crisis since World War Two is defined by hatred. The spectacle is eerily and historically familiar—a charismatic celebrity on stage, reducing all complexity and nuance to over-simplified sound bites. Rabid nativism and misogyny dominates intellectualism and basic human decency. The ones to pay will be all of the Others—the scapegoats, the targets of this monstrous dumbing down of all things to one, terrible reality—American democracy now trembles on a knife edge.

I’m lucky. That’s all. I was lucky in December when some faculty members at the History Department at York met to decide which SSHRC proposals they would ship down the line, to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Someone liked mine. Maybe two someones. I thank them, whoever they are. Then I got lucky again, when even more anonymous someones from different York faculties found my proposal worthy. What constitutes worthiness, in this case, is more luck, plus a dash of sex appeal. My proposal isn’t safe sexy. It’s more American Horror Story sexy. I study a virus that wiped out between 50 to 100 million people, most of them, over the course of about four months. You would have to be in a coma or studying for comps not to notice the appalling viruses that have been all over the news for the past year or so. I also benefit from a great news hook – the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic is coming up. That’s it. That’s why my proposal was sent on to Ottawa, while the majority of those of my equally hard-working and talented fellow grad students in the department of History at York, were not. And now, my odds of securing a SSHRC are about 50/50. So, not great. And, if I get lucky again in the spring, and do secure a SSHRC, I will have reached the pinnacle of what most full-time grad students can ever hope for: $20,000 a year for three years. This is how much we value scholarship in Canada.

Women writers in Canada make 55 cents to every dollar that male writers earn. That is the buried lead in the  latest survey figures from the Writers’ Union of Canada. And no one is talking about it

We are talking about the troubling figures that don’t really surprise any of us who have been scrabbling to pay bills  as writers over the past 15 years: Canadian writers earn 27 per cent less today than they did in 1998, and must work almost twice as hard to get it. The average writer’s income is $12,789 – or, $36,000 below the national average. In 1998, I was in my second and final year of journalism school. For most of my career since, I have hustled as a freelance writer and editor. I’ve done well, by industry standards. I even have several National Magazine Awards to my name. I had long-form feature articles (remember them?) published in many Canadian consumer magazines. And yet my 15-plus year career has been on a steady downward economic trajectory. If I were to publish a book tomorrow, for my trouble, I would make 55% less than a man doing the same damned thing.

This statistic, and evidently, the fact that there is a difference at all between what men and women make as writers, surprised Kate Taylor. In Friday’s Globe and Mail she said: “The Canadian survey also revealed a surprising gender gap: For every dollar reported by male authors, female authors were only reporting 55 cents. It’s a shocking difference in a field in which women are as prominent as men, in a country with a literary tradition in which the first names that spring to mind are female, including those of Margaret Laurence and Marian Engel, the pair who founded TWUC.”

Fifty-five percent. Is this 1955? Am I the only one who is enraged by this? Why are women writers so undervalued, and why is everyone so surprised that we are? In this post Ghomeshi Canada, are people really shocked that hipster dudes can also be misogynists? If these statistics are right, then our industry is far more sexist than others. The latest statistics for the gender wage gap in Ontario is 74 cents to the male dollar.The United States even looks like a feminist haven, comparatively. There, on average, women make 77 cents to the male dollar. In 1987, the year that pay equity legislation was passed, the gender wage gap in Ontario was 36%, meaning that women earned 64 cents to the male dollar. And that’s still nine cents more than the gender wage gap that exists today in Canadian writing.

So perhaps it is not surprising that I was never able to make a living solely on writing and editing. I didn’t realize my gender made it more than doubly difficult to do so. I have always been honest with my students. “If your freelance,” I tell them, “make sure you also get some corporate writing work.” (Also a difficult task, but that’s the subject of another blog). Now I will also say this. “If you are a writer and you are a woman, and you publish a book, you will make 55% less than your male counterparts in this country.”

I remember the advice of a dear friend,  a man who taught me more about great journalism than anyone else I know. Years ago, he also told me that writers don’t ask for more money and they should. I took his advice. I always brought up money and was never shy to ask for more. I often didn’t get it, but at least, I thought, I put it out there. I’m a good writer, and an experienced one. I naively believed in the old adage “you get what you pay for.” A few years ago, an editor contacted me. I did not pitch the story, keep in mind—she reached out to me. This editor had read a piece I had done for another magazine and wanted me to do something similar. Great, I said. And then I asked about money. The amount was so low, so insulting, I actually laughed. She had approached me, I pointed out. She wanted me based on my writing, but also based on my expertise in a particular area. If anything, I would expect a little more than my usual rate. There was a brief silence. A curt goodbye. I never heard from her or her publication again. I now wonder if my name had been Ken and not Kate, would she have hung up quite so quickly?

And why, I also wonder, after reading the smattering of coverage in various news outlets that picked up on this appalling story about the sad state of Canadian writing, was the gender wage gap the last point anyone made?

Not that it surprises me.

My Uncle Jim loved cars. In this snap, taken not long before he died in 1979, he poses in the crown jewel of his collection – the Cord. On the back of this picture he wrote “the three thoroughbreds. sp sp?” My mother was an English teacher from England, which doubtless gave him grammatical pause. My cousin Peter is behind the wheel of the convertible, and while no one is in the Benz, and you can’t tell it from this pic, I can assure you that the license plate reads “FN 999.”

As in “fucking near 1000.” I’m certain that Jim did not run that one by my mother at the time. FN 999 entered the family lexicon of questionable acronyms, meaning anything overly expensive that any reasonable person would be a fool to buy. As in: “How much did that cost you?” — “FN 999.” You get the idea. So, it is with some pride and great fondness for my supportive family, the ghost of Uncle Jim included, that I announce the completion of stage one of my journey through gradual school. I have dubbed my Major Research Project FN 29,999. As in fucking near 30,000. Words, that is. I’d actually put a higher financial price tag on this sucker in terms of the blood, stress and tears it caused. The actual working title, as much as I’d love to just call it FN 29,999, is Breaking the News by Following the Rules. You’ll have to click on the PDF to read the sub-head to know what it’s all about. I don’t expect anyone to actually read the whole damned thing, my English teacher mother from England included. But if you do, I hope at least that you won’t be bored. Many thanks to my advisor, Prof. Michiel Horn, and Prof. Marlene Shore, the only two people who were forced to read it to the bitter 98-page end. At least, I’m pretty sure they did.

In the two weeks since completing the first thing I ever wrote to include a table of contents, Kim graciously gave me the best vacation I could have asked for. We spent one fabulous week at a rented cottage where the wildlife was fantastic. We have Mel to thank for the various sightings, because she made us get out of the canoe on a few adventures.  I discovered, for example,  that bears do, in fact, shit in the woods. After the cottage interlude, we nipped up to St. Catharines to visit my Aunt Rene (Jim’s widow) and take in the sights at Niagara on the Lake. I even got a visit in with my sister and nieces at Canada’s Wonderland. And on Saturday, we topped it all off with The Master Bash when we brought together a few new friends from gradual school with other friends, and celebrated our collective accomplishment. Here’s Graeme and his girlfriend Kate, basking in the glow of his Masters in History, after a long, arduous 11-month slog. Good on you Graeme! It was a great party. And yes, there were sparklers. Even better, there were burning school-house fireworks, another Kim brainstorm. In fact, it’s all thanks to Kim. So thanks love — I couldn’t have done it without you. Now, on to round two.