Victoria Hayward (journalist)

Victoria Hayward was born in 1876 in Bermuda.^[2] At the age of 16, Hayward left Bermuda and moved to New York to teach math at a private boys' school. About ten years later, she returned to Bermuda and pursued journalism.^[3]

Hayward's writings were widely published in Canadian magazines and often focused on Canadian culture, though she was not Canadian.^[2] Hayward and photographer Edith Watson spent three summers in the late 1910s and early 1920s living with the Doukhobors in Saskatchewan and British Columbia.^[4] The two recorded Doukhobor life and presented it to the public first in their 1919 Fort Wayne Journal Gazette article "Doukhobor Farms Supply All Needs" and later in Romantic Canada.^[5][6]

In 1922, Hayward published the travel book Romantic Canada. The book was based on her recent travels across southern Canada, though it focuses largely on Canada's maritime provinces.^[7] In Romantic Canada, she described Canada's culture, both in terms of ethnicities and architecture, as a "mosaic".^[8] Hayward is credited with coining the phrase "Canadian mosaic".^[9] Romantic Canada was illustrated and contained photography by Watson.

Hayward met photographer Edith Watson in Bermuda in 1911. The two would later live in Connecticut when not travelling.^[2][4] Though both were officially closeted, their surviving letters indicate they were romantically involved.^[3][10] Hayward left Connecticut after Watson's death in 1943, relocating to a cottage in Cape Cod, where she died in 1956.^[4]

• Romantic Canada (1922)