There are women throughout Canada’s history who when faced with a locked door, have looked for a key—or a battering ram. Award-winning writer Karin Wells tells the stories of women like the fierce and iconoclastic Mina Benson Hubbard, who finished the mission to map northern Labrador that had killed her explorer husband, and Vera Peters, MD, who revolutionized treatments for Hodgkins lymphoma and breast cancer. Or the painter Paraskeva Clark, child of the Bolshevik Revolution, who rattled staid Toronto when she took Norman Bethune as a lover and spoke out for art as a tool of social change. And have you heard of Charlotte Small, a Métis woman who canoed and trekked 42,000 km—more than three times further than the American explorers Lewis and Clark—and had five babies along the way?

Some were outrageous, some were unassuming, most were not polite, but they all ignored the voices that said women could not paddle a canoe, program a computer, understand the universe, or cure a disease. They lived big lives—often at great cost—and they made a difference.

Karin Wells was born in the UK, grew up in BC and now lives in south west Ontario. She is best known as a CBC radio documentary maker and is a three time recipient of the Canadian Association of Journalist documentary award. Her work has been heard on radio networks around the world and has been recognized by the United Nations. Wells worked – briefly – as a line worker in a pea factory, a school teacher and an actor. She is also a lawyer and in 2011 was inducted into the University of Ottawa’s Common Law Honour Society.

Karin Wells' profile page

"Karin Wells fills in the gaps in Canada’s history with stories of women who made a difference in this country, from artists to mathematicians, giving readers a better understanding of some of the people who helped to build Canadian society."

Winnipeg Free Press

“The book makes fascinating reading, not least of all because Wells writes so well… Like her documentaries, her book is incredibly well researched and her prose sings, bringing these mostly forgotten women to life.”

The Peterborough Examiner