In the early days of her medical reporting career, in the late 1950s, Joan Hollobon was sent to interview a prominent physician at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. The doctor was reluctant but felt obligated because the hospital was launching a fundraising campaign.
The long-time reporter also helped usher in an era when medical stories became a mainstay of daily journalism, driven by an explosion of scientific advances and burgeoning public interest. The haughty surgeon would become one of her biggest fans. Ms. Hollobon was also made an officer of the Order of Canada at age 99, with the commendation stating she embodied “scientific journalism excellence” and played a leading role in combatting sexist stereotypes about women in the profession.
Ms. Hollobon’s career as The Globe and Mail’s medical reporter spanned from 1959 to 1985, and when she retired, the Canadian Medical Association awarded her its Medal of Honour, calling her 'one of medicine’s greatest allies.'Shortly after her mother’s death from bone cancer in 1948, Ms. Hollobon travelled to Canada, working briefly at Reader’s Digest in Montreal before returning home. She struggled to find work as journalist in a profession that was very much a boys’ club.
For three years, she was a general assignment reporter, often writing for the women’s pages. When The Globe’s medical reporter took an education leave in 1959, she stepped in temporarily – and remained on the beat for a quarter century. If Ms. Hollobon was able to hang on to that chair, and excel as a woman on the medical beat, it was in no small part because she was as intimidating as she was driven, with the bark and blunt delivery of a sergeant-major.
Mr. Visser-deVries met Ms. Hollobon when he was hired as the executive director of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association in 1991. In 1967, Ms. Hollobon checked herself into the maximum security unit of the Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Penetanguishene, Ont., where she lived around-the-clock for four days because she wanted to witness psychiatric treatment first-hand. The four-part series she wrote, “Behind the Bars on Ward G” was chilling and award-winning. Ms. Hollobon would say later that it was the assignment that left the most lasting impact on her life.
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