The Matriarchitects: The Creation and Maintenance of the British Imperial Simulacrum in the Journalism of Helen Gregory MacGill, Madge Macbeth, and Kathleen Blake Coleman

This thesis examines the lives and work of three early Canadian women journalists, Helen Gregory MacGill, Madge Macbeth, and Kathleen Blake “Kit” Coleman. The argument expands on the work of Sara Mills in Discourses of Difference (1991), using a similar Foucauldian approach to determine constraints on the production and reception of the three women’s writings; additionally, Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum theory is used to determine the effects produced by those writings. The analysis focuses on articles the three journalists wrote about nations beyond the control of the British empire – Japan, Spain, and Cuba respectively – using an interdisciplinary approach. By situating the three journalists within the Canadian context of British high imperialism, and then assessing their articles as travel writing rather than journalism, the impact of their work emerges: through their journalism work, MacGill, Macbeth, and Coleman contributed to the creation and maintenance of a simulacrum of the British empire.