Sally Wishart Armstrong

Background

Armstrong was born in 1943, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the daughter of William Saddler and Mary Alma Wishart.

Education

Armstrong received a Bachelor of Education degree from McGill University in 1966 and a Master of Science degree from the University of Toronto in 2001.

Career

After spending more than a decade as editor-in-chief of Homemaker's magazine, Armstrong has become an editor-at-large for Chatelaine and a UNICEF special representative to Afghanistan. Known as an advocate for women's rights, she began documenting the desperate situation of Afghan women well before the United States waged war in that country and the Taliban's repressive laws regarding women became widely known. Armstrong has authored two books, Mila, a biography of Mila Mulroney that was penned while her husband, Brian Mulroney, was prime minister of Canada, and Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan. She has also produced several video documentaries on the subject of human rights for women.

Armstrong's biography of Mila Mulroney details the life of the former first lady of Canada, who is the daughter of once-impoverished Yugoslav immigrants. She was a college student when she met and married Mulroney, a pursuit that she gave up to devote time to their children and his career in the Conservative party. Two reviewers had criticism for both Mila and her biographer. In his review of Mila for Books in Canada, Michael Coren questioned whether Mulroney merited a biography of any kind. He said that "the book's writing is crisp if not inspired" and objected, "There are only the most innocuous of criticisms in evidence here, emollient reservations that drown in a sea of flattery and fawning." Quill & Quire's Sandra Martin called the book "not so much a biography as an extended magazine profile" and was uncomfortable with Mila's assertions that her husband and his career came first, even over the care of her children.

When Armstrong wrote Veiled Threat, she presented a subject that she had been researching since 1997. The journalist first went to Afghanistan to find Dr. Sima Samar, a woman who was defying Taliban law by secretly providing women with access to education and medical care. The resulting book includes the accounts of Afghan women, who describe how they were shrouded in burkas and barred from being in public places without a male escort and tell of the violence with which they were punished for any transgressions. It also gives a historical, political, and theological background to the establishment of these misogynist policies. Armstrong concludes that the women of Afghanistan still have an incredibly difficult path to liberation and that they will have the most critical role in effecting change.

In 1998, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2000, she won the Amnesty International Media Award for her article "Honour’s Victims" in Chatelaine magazine. She won again in 2002, for her article "Speaking their peace" in Chatelaine magazine and again in 2011 for her article "These Little Girls are Setting out to Change the World" in Chatelaine.

Achievements

• Armstrong is best known for her contribution as a human rights activist. She is a member of a UN group consisting of 20 Palestinian women, 20 Israeli women, and 12 women of other nationalities working to help to bring peace to the Middle E. In 1996 she was awarded the Women of Distinction Award in Communications by the YWCA of Toronto.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Uprising: A New Age Is Dawning for Every Mother's Daughter

    (From Africa to Asia to the Americas, women are the key to...)

    2013
  • The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor

    (Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 17...)

    2007

Connections

On August 19, 1967, Armstrong was married to Ross Armstrong. The couple has three children: Heather, Peter, and Anna. Peter Armstrong is a CBC News journalist.

Father:

William Saddler

Mother:

Mary Alma Wishart

Spouse:

Ross Armstrong

Son:

Peter Armstrong

Armstrong is currently the economics reporter for CBC News, and was the host of the business news series On the Money (cancelled June 28, 2018) on CBC News Network.

Daughter:

Heather Armstrong

Daughter:

Anna Armstrong

References

• Contemporary Authors Volume 221
  2004