Sally Armstrong

1943-

Sally (Wishart) Armstrong is a multiple-award-winning human rights activist, journalist, documentary filmmaker, teacher, editor, and author who currently resides in Ontario but spends part of every year in Bathurst, New Brunswick. Armstrong has deep roots in Tabusintac, NB. She can trace her roots back the protagonist in her book, The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor.  Charlotte Taylor is frequently called "the mother of Tabusintac." Armstrong was born in 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, and received her Bachelor of Education from McGill University in 1966 and years later completed a Master’s thesis at the University of Toronto entitled “Missing in Access: A Feminist Critique of International Documents that Pertain to the Human Right of Adolescent Girls to Access Health Services and Their Impact on Young Women in Afghanistan and in Canada” (2001). As a high school physical education teacher, Armstrong was involved in the inception of what would later become the magazine Canadian Living. In 1988, she became the editor-in-chief of Homemakers magazine, a position she held until 1999. She is currently a contributing editor for both Maclean’s magazine and Chatelaine. In addition to innumerable articles and public lectures, she has published four books to date: Mila (biography of Mila Mulroney, 1992), Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan (nonfiction, 2002), The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor (fiction, 2007), and Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan’s Women (nonfiction, 2008). Armstrong has twice been awarded Amnesty International’s Media Award, once in 2000 and again in 2002. She has produced and hosted several award-winning documentaries for CBC, including They Fell from the Sky (2001) and The Daughters of Afghanistan (2003). In 2000 she received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Royal Roads, and in 2002, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from McGill University. In 2004 she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University, and in 2007 she received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Guelph and a Doctor of the University degree from the University of Ottawa. In 1998 Armstrong became a Member of the Order of Canada, an award which is bestowed in recognition of a nominee’s lifetime of work dedicated to the community, and in 2008 she received the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Bathurst