On July 4, 1961, Vancouver Sun consumer columnist Penny Wise lost a fundraising bet to sports columnist Dick Beddoes, resulting in a three-day swap of their writing beats. The competition aimed to raise funds to send aid workers to Ghana.
Fundraising Competition and the Bet
Penny Wise, whose real name was Evelyn Caldwell, initially led in fundraising. However, Beddoes secured victory through a midnight handshake between men and the delivery of a plain brown envelope from someone who believed a male should win, according to historical accounts of the era.
As the loser, Caldwell had to write Beddoes' sports column for three days, while Beddoes agreed to cover her shopping column. While Beddoes mulled over produce at the local grocery store, Caldwell visited the B.C. Lions' training camp in Courtenay, where she humorously wrote that the players wore "panty-girdles, two-way stretch and falsies."
Evelyn Caldwell: A Pioneer in a Man's World
Caldwell was a fierce competitor in a male-dominated newsroom. Women journalists at the time were often consigned to covering "soft news" such as fashion, food, and household management. Caldwell, however, used her platform to advocate for consumers.
In the 1930s, as a cub reporter at the Vancouver News-Herald making $7.50 a week, she chased city editor Jack Scott into the men's washroom after he neglected to put her byline on a front-page story. She dragged a chair, climbed over the cubicle door, and dumped a pot of glue on his head, earning her byline.
The Penny Wise Persona
When granted a consumer affairs column with The Vancouver Sun in 1945, her editor insisted she adopt the persona of a practical mom: Penny Wise. "He told me, 'We're going to call you Penny Wise.' I didn't know what the devil he was talking about," she recalled.
The cutesy name stuck, but Wise made the most of her platform. "When I started to write about shopping, I was nice to everybody. Then I decided that was useless. I began to look for what was wrong in stores, how customers were being cheated. And that's the way I did it until the day I died."
Consumer Advocacy and International Reporting
Between advising readers on bargains, Caldwell formed a consumer advocacy group that fought for change in Ottawa. She led a successful campaign to get margarine—then a highly regulated product—back on tables in British Columbia.
Caldwell also found clever ways to land better assignments by pitching editors on free trips that would take her closer to international conflict zones. She covered the Berlin Airlift in the late 1940s and spent six weeks on the Korean frontlines, where she quipped that she "prayed fervently for a set of bulletproof undies."
