Rhea Clyman: the Canadian Bourgeois Troublemaker

Outrageous History!

Rhea Clyman, born in Poland and raised in Canada, jostled her way into becoming an foreign correspondent for the Toronto Evening Telegram in the 1920s. One of the few women journalists during that era, she managed to land an assignment to cover newly the emerging Communist U.S.S.R. Her epic trips to Siberia and other parts of the famine ravaged country, changed her view of the Communist concept and landed her in hot water with Soviet government officials, and soon after, on a one way ticket out of the country. Not to be deterred, Clyman made her way to cover the Nazi regime in Germany. Her groundbreaking journalism remained mainly unknown until Jars Balan, director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, stumbled upon some of Clyman's articles during his research. Balan describes his search for the facts behind this exceptional young woman.