Note to Self: Surprising Impact of Celebrity Name-Dropping

Sometimes the positive impact of a published commentary can be both immediate and unexpected.

Last Friday The Globe and Mail published an op ed I wrote about a fabulous new initiative to write the history of the second wave of the Canadian women’s movement. The piece referred to three internationally famous people not ordinarily mentioned in the same breath.

Within hours of publication, one of three had read the commentary, visited the Feminist History Society’s website and purchased a membership subscription to the Society’s first book. (Note to self: quote intelligent celebrities more often!) You can read the op ed yourself to discover who I mentioned and to guess which one responded!

The FHS site experienced a significant increase in traffic as a result of the article, which at one point during the day of publication was among the top 10 most viewed and most frequently emailed articles in that day’s paper.