Gladys Arnold

Early Life and Education

Gladys Arnold was born in Macoun, Saskatchewan, to Albert and Florida May Arnold. Her father was an employee of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the family moved often among the three Prairie provinces, rarely settling for long in any one place.

Arnold’s father died when she was only nine years old, and her mother left her with relatives and friends while she moved east to train as a nurse. Arnold moved between homes for the next eight years but continued her education and a love of books and writing developed. She received a teaching certificate in 1925 and taught for two years in a rural Saskatchewan school. She also undertook business studies in Winnipeg, Manitoba, graduating in 1928.

Journalism Career in Canada and Europe

In 1930, through a tip from a friend, she learned of a job opening at the Regina-based Leader-Post newspaper. Arnold was initially hired as a secretary but became a reporter in six months. In January 1934, she became editor of the women’s page and was given her own column. Female journalists were often limited to the women’s page section, but Arnold also wrote about social problems and political issues in her column, “It’s a Secret, But…”.

During the Depression, Arnold became interested in international developments, including socialism, communism and fascism. In August 1935, at the age of 30, she decided to travel to Europe. After submitting some freelance pieces to the Canadian Press (CP) office in London, Arnold was hired as CP’s full-time Paris correspondent in 1936. She also reported from Belgium, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Switzerland and Italy, and from the Spanish border during that country’s civil war (1936–39). (See also Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.) Arnold visited her family in Canada in August 1939 but returned to France as soon as the Second World War was declared in September.

War Correspondent in the Second World War

When Gladys Arnold arrived in Paris in late October 1939, she was the only accredited Canadian reporter in France. She soon witnessed scores of refugees coming through Paris from Belgium and the Netherlands. “What will remain forever in my memory,” she later recalled, “was the slow, uneven, shuffling of feet and the awful silence.”

On 12 June 1940, with the Nazis advancing on Paris, Arnold left the city with friends headed for Bordeaux. Her memoir, One Women’s War: A Canadian Reporter with the Free French (1987) describes the millions of refugees forced to evacuate the city towards safety and escape on waiting ships at Bordeaux. By 14 June, the Nazis had arrived in Paris, parading down the Champs-Élysées.

It took Arnold five days to reach Bordeaux, which had swelled in population from 300,000 to two million people. While waiting to board a ship, Arnold and her fellow travellers learned that the French government had capitulated on 25 June 1940. She later recalled that although people were angry,

I never heard a defeatist word among the ordinary people in all those five days. It was an experience that changed the course of my life. Whatever was happening in France, the people were not defeated. In the people the true French spirit lived. Betrayed, misinformed, they were victims of the real defeatists, their trusted military and political leaders. But they were never afraid or defeated in spirit.

Once back in England, Arnold continued to report on the war for her Canadian readers. As the only French-speaking journalist in the CP London Press Office, she interviewed General Charles de Gaulle, who had established his headquarters in London and whom she had identified “as the future head of the French government.” General de Gaulle told her, “France has lost the battle! But France has not lost the war!” He also recommended she contact Elisabeth de Miribel, who had been sent to Canada to promote the Free French Movement.

Return to Canada

In August 1940, Gladys Arnold returned to Canada on a ship filled with hundreds of British children. During the war, thousands were evacuated to Canada through the Children’s Overseas Reception Board or by private means. Arnold reported from the ship about the children’s trip. Upon their arrival, she recalled,

The first glimpse of land brought whoops of excitement. Sailing into Halifax harbour, we saw hundreds of people awaiting the ship. City organizations and individuals were ready. Picking up their hand luggage, the children trooped off, some still weeping but the majority staring around with bright eyes, exuding curiosity. Watching them go, I asked myself how long it would be before, if ever, they would see their parents and their homeland again.

The Free French Information Service

In Canada, Gladys Arnold worked with CP providing coast-to-coast talks to various organizations. Many wanted to know why France had fallen to the Nazis. As advised earlier by General Charles de Gaulle, Arnold contacted Elisabeth de Miribel and soon quit her role with CP. She began work on 1 October 1941 for the Free French Information Service (FFIS) based in Montreal.

Free French committees had been established in cities across Canada and Arnold worked tirelessly for the duration of the war, meeting members of those committees and raising awareness and support for de Gaulle and the Free French. Arnold learned through the Halifax committee, for example, that several French naval crews were serving with Canadians on convoy duty out of that city and St. John’s, Newfoundland.

By 25 August 1944, Allied armies had entered Paris. In October, Arnold was invited back to France to report on conditions and the needs of the civilian population. She arrived in Paris in late January 1945. Her first view was seeing “High above the Eiffel Tower the Tricolour fluttered free against the pale sky. The sight of it brought a lump to my throat.”

Arnold also visited the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the Gau Baden-Alsace region, the only concentration camp established by Nazis in the territory of pre-war France. There, one of her friends, Frank Pickersgill, had died, along with over 22,000 others. It was liberated in November 1944. In Paris, Arnold also witnessed the return of concentration camp survivors: “the memory of those cringing, hanging heads still fills me with helpless rage,” she later wrote. (See also Canada and the Holocaust.)

Arnold returned to Canada in the spring of 1945 on a troop ship — this time, her travelling companions included hundreds of war brides, as well as two female French resistance fighters whom she would accompany on a speaking tour from Ottawa to Victoria. When they stepped off the train in Ottawa on 7 May 1945, a day before the armistice, Arnold recalled thinking,

We knew of the heavy price we had paid…I was aware that, even though the end had come to another war in Europe, the ideas lived on and we could be challenged again to gather all our individual inner strengths, intelligence and determination in defence of our free and democratic society, our moral and spiritual values, the kind of civilized world we strive for.

Postwar Years

After the war, Gladys Arnold became head of the information service for the French embassy in Ottawa. She retired in 1971. In 1987, Arnold published her memoir, One Women’s War: A Canadian Reporter with the Free French (1987). Before her death, filmmakers Lori Kuffner and Barb Campbell documented Arnold’s story, Eyewitness to War: The Gladys Arnold Story (2002), recalling her memories prior to the Second World War, and her travels through Europe, impressions of Germany and Hitler’s rise to power, as well as Mussolini in Italy.

Gladys Arnold died on 29 September 2002.

Honours and Awards

• Honorary Brigadier, French Free Forces (1940)
• Legion of Honour, France (1971)
• Doctor of Laws, University of Regina (1988)