Kit Coleman - Early Life

Early Life

Kit Coleman was born Catherine Ferguson at Castle Blakeney in May 1864 near Galway, Ireland. Her father was a middle-class farmer. Her parents invested in a solid education for Catherine, at Loretto Abbey in Rathfarnham and a finishing school in Belgium. As an adult, she recalled her parents influencing her love of creative activities; her father had given her his love of books, and her mother, who was blind, taught her an appreciation of music and to also how to play several instruments. The strongest influence on her intellectual life came from her uncle Thomas Nicholas Burke, a Dominican priest and a renowned liberal and orator, who taught her religious and social tolerance, an attitude that was reflected in her journalism as an adult. At sixteen, under her adopted name Kathleen Blake, her parents married her off to a much older man, Thomas Willis, who was a wealthy landowner. She was widowed at 20. The marriage had not been a happy one, and she was disinherited by her husband's family. She emigrated to Canada as a young widow in 1884. In Canada, she worked as a secretary until she married her boss, Edward Watkins. She lived in Toronto and Winnipeg, where she bore two children (Thady and Patricia) by her second husband.

In 1889, following the death of Watkins, or more probably, their divorce, Coleman first turned to cleaning houses to support herself and her two children, then began writing articles for local magazines, mainly Toronto's Saturday Night.