Heather Mallick - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Heather Mallick is a controversial Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

-based columnist, author and lecturer. She writes a twice weekly column for the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...

, an occasional column for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

's website, and a monthly column for The Guardian's
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

website. She teaches courses on politics and writing at the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

School of Continuing Studies and lectures on Human Rights and Canadian nationalism. Until recently she also wrote a monthly column for Chatelaine
Chatelaine (magazine)
Chatelaine is an English-language Canadian magazine of women's lifestyles. Both Chatelaine and its French-language version, Châtelaine, are published monthly by Rogers Media, Inc., a division of Rogers Communications, Inc...

magazine.

Life and career

Mallick was born in Norway House, Manitoba

Norway House, Manitoba

- Treaty and York Boat Days :Held annually each summer, the York Boat events serve as the main attraction.-External links:* * * *...

and raised in the northern Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

town of Kapuskasing and in other remote communities where her father worked as a physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

. Mallick attended the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

where she received a bachelor's

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

and Master of Arts

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

degrees in English Literature. She also earned a bachelor's degree in Journalism from Ryerson University

Ryerson University

Ryerson University is a public research university located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its urban campus is adjacent to Yonge-Dundas Square located at the busiest intersection in Downtown Toronto. The majority of its buildings are in the blocks northeast of the square in Toronto's Garden...

.

After graduation, she was employed at the Canadian financial daily newspaper Financial Post
Financial Post
The Financial Post was an English Canadian business newspaper, which published from 1907 to 1998. In 1998, the publication was folded into the new National Post, although the name Financial Post has been retained as the banner for that paper's business section and also lives on in the Post’s...

where she first worked as a copy editor and later became a news editor.

She first came to public notice in Canada during the 1990s as the book review editor and writer for the Sunday edition of the Toronto Sun
Toronto Sun
The Toronto Sun is an English-language daily tabloid newspaper published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is known for its daily Sunshine Girl feature and for what it sees as a populist conservative editorial stance.-History:...

, where she won two Canadian Newspaper Association

Canadian Newspaper Association

The Canadian Newspaper Association is the national organization of daily newspapers in Canada, founded in 1996. It is a non-profit trade association and lobby organization, which represents more than 100 Canadian English and French newspapers...

National Newspaper Awards for critical writing in 1994 and feature writing in 1996. Mallick later wrote for The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

where her left-of-centre political opinion column "As If" was a regular part of the paper's Saturday edition until December 2005. She also wrote major and minor pieces for the newspaper on lifestyle and other issues. Stylistically, Mallick has been compared to writers such as the American commentators Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Bridgid Dowd is a Washington D.C.-based columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, she worked for Time magazine and the Washington Star, where she covered news as well as sports and wrote feature articles...

and Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins

Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins was an American newspaper columnist, populist, political commentator, humorist and author.-Early life and education:Ivins was born in Monterey, California, and raised in Houston, Texas...

and the British commentator Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill is an English writer and journalist. Beginning as a writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She is a self-declared "militant feminist". She has several times been involved in legal action...

. She joined the Toronto Star in August 2010.

Mallick's first book, Pearls in Vinegar, was published in September, 2004 in Canada. She published a collection of new essays for Knopf Canada in April, 2007 entitled Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life.

Mallick is married to Stephen Petherbridge, a senior British/Canadian journalist.

In October 2007, Mallick gave the 2nd annual Mel Hurtig

Mel Hurtig

Mel Hurtig, is a Canadian publisher, author, political activist and former political candidate.He was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He is the former president of the Edmonton Art Gallery.-Businessman and Publisher:...

Lecture on the Future of Canada, at the University of Alberta

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

Controversies

In 2008, after [Sarah Palin]] was selected as the U.S. Republican party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

's Vice-Presidential

Vice President of the United States

The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...

candidate, Mallick, among other things, labelled Palin as "white trash" and an "Alaskan hillbilly" and likened her to a "toned-down ... porn actress" in a column for the CBC

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

.
The column aroused fierce criticism.
Jonathan Kay

Jonathan Kay

Jonathan Hillel Kay is Comment Pages Editor for the Toronto-based Canadian daily newspaper National Post, a columnist for the Post op-ed page, a blogger for the Post web site, a book author and editor, and a public speaker. He is also a regular contributor to Commentary Magazine and the New York...

, writing in the National Post
National Post
The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...

, accused Mallick of "childish vulgarity" and "hypocrisy" and said that her writing "is haunted by hateful hang-ups about Americans, country-dwellers and the political right. Some of her obsessions are downright weird — such as her prurient insistence that male conservatives embrace bad policy because they are impotent and horny."
An investigation by the CBC ombudsman found that "many of her most savage assertions lack a basis in fact",
and that her aspersions on the sexual inadequacy of Republican men "would easily be seen as, at best, puerile" if "applied to any other group". The publisher of CBC news, John Cruickshank, apologized for publishing Mallick's column, which he called "viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan".

On July 28, 2011, the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...

published a column by Mallick entitled "What to do when a monster likes your work". A British journalist mentioned in the column, Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She began her career on the left of the political spectrum, writing for such publications as The Guardian and New Statesman. In the 1990s she moved to the right, and she now writes for the Daily Mail newspaper, covering political and social...

, promptly commenced legal action. The Star printed an apology, stating in part, "The column made reference to Ms. Phillips’ writings in an entirely misleading and inappropriate manner."
The paper also removed column from their website, and settled with Phillips for full legal costs, plus a donation to a charity of her choice in lieu of damages.

Works

Pearls in Vinegar: The Pillow Book of Heather Mallick (2004) ISBN 978-0-670-04462-8. This is a collection of her short essays on many different subjects, personal, social and political, as a modern version of the 10th Century Japanese Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shonagon
Sei Shōnagon , was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Pillow Book .-Name:...

.
Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life (2007) ISBN 978-0-676-97840-7.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.