Betty Cameron

Canada's first journalism graduates to get degrees.

Ellen Lennox and Betty Cameron of Swan River, Manitoba and Faith (Hutchison) Avis of Spalding, Saskatchewan were the first Carleton students awarded a Bachelor of Journalism degree. They were, in fact, the first students ever to earn journalism degrees in Canada when they received their diplomas at Carleton’s inaugural degree-granting convocation on Oct. 23, 1946. Lennox went on to a reporting job at the Ottawa Citizen before moving back to Western Canada and becoming an executive producer with Alberta’s educational television network. Betty Cameron, too, was initially employed as a Citizen reporter, later working for the BBC in London and eventually settling into a career in library science in Toronto. Avis did not pursue a full-time journalism career but did much writing in her life, including book reviews for the Kingston Whig-Standard. She led an important career as the first and long-time director of public relations for the Kingston General Hospital.

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