Secretaries, stenographers and receptionists: Celebrating administrative professionals

Just in Time local history series

The audible, repetitious clicking of typewriter keys echoes across the office one warm spring afternoon. The bespectacled young woman behind the cumbersome-looking contraption – emblazoned with the name Underwood – has just returned to her desk from a late lunch and is engaged in a fruitless battle with one particular key on the machine that just will not cooperate.

Oh well. The matter will have to wait, as the jangling cacophony of a telephone soon demands the young woman’s attention. And once the receiver has been replaced in its cradle, there will be other tasks to do: transcribing a speech, checking attendance, or making sure that vital records are kept up to date – all depending on what sort of office this young woman is employed in. She returns to the old typewriter and once more attempts to coax something out of the cantankerous key beneath her forefinger. Success! And with that, she removes a sheet of paper from the machine, files it away, and moves on to the multitude of other duties so necessary to the efficient functioning of the office.

Such a scene was familiar to those stenographers, secretaries, and receptionists who throughout our community have played a vital role in keeping a multitude of businesses and institutions operating smoothly – and each year on the last Wednesday of April, they are recognized across Canada for their tireless work through Administrative Professionals Day.

Many of these women were semi-autonomous, at least in local reportage of their careers. A Miss Stephenson – her first name goes unmentioned – was honoured by her colleagues on Jan. 23, 1904, for the contributions she had made as a stenographer and typist at the Lindsay offices of the Rathbun Lumber Co. over the preceding three years. After some brief remarks bidding her farewell, management presented Miss Stephenson with a clock and an ornament – as well as “a sum of money to help defray the expenses of her new position.” What that new position was is not known, but presumably it promised better pay than that of her role at the Rathbun Co.

Promotions within the ranks of Lindsay’s secretaries and stenographers rarely went unrecognized in the local press. “Miss Velma Tompkins, who has been stenographer and bookkeeper with Mr. A.J. Campbell, representative of the Manufacturers’ Life Insurance Company for eight years, and for the past year with Mr. Campbell and Mr. Jesse Bradford, has been promoted to the Central Ontario office at Peterboro,” noted the March 9, 1927, edition of the Lindsay Daily Post. Miss Tompkins was succeeded in A.J. Campbell’s office by Miss Marcelle Armstrong.

Generations of these administrative professionals were trained in Lindsay at Mary Baker’s Business College. Situated in the upper floors of the Baker Block on the northeast corner of Cambridge and Kent Streets, this institution was known far and wide for turning out skilled typists. By the late 1920s, its graduates were being hired as secretaries and stenographers in such diverse places as the American Consulate office, the Canadian Medical Association office, and Eaton’s mail order department (all in Toronto), as well as at local firms, such as the Lindsay Metropolitan Insurance Co. and Flavelle’s, Ltd.

Outside of the business world, secretaries were best-known for their work in churches, clinics, law offices, and schools. For many a schoolchild, the secretary was the first person they saw upon entering the building where they would spend the next eight to 10 years.

Marilyn Felhaber spent 35 years at the secretary’s desk, working at Lindsay Collegiate and Vocational Institute from 1970 though 1987, when she transferred to Ops Elementary School (subsequently rechristened as Jack Callaghan Public School in 1994). Her career spanned a technological revolution that made the work of administrative professionals much easier.

“As a secretary back then all record keeping was done manually,” Felhaber says. Other duties included issuing daily admit slips to late students, recording attendance, as well as tending to students’ needs. In a large institution like LCVI, responsibilities were divided up among the secretarial staff. “Guidance department secretaries focused on course selections as well as student registration and withdrawals, while in the basement two girls dealt with the printing needs using the Gestetner machine,” Felhaber explains. These secretaries were also responsible for the purchase of school supplies.

By the 1980s, computers had been installed where the venerable old typewriters had once clattered away. “The introduction of the computer came with a huge challenge for those whose education had focused on times tables and proper spelling,” Felhaber remembers. “We went to night school, attended in-house training sessions, and participated in any tutorials that were offered. This continued as new programs were added.” Banking was streamlined, because computers eliminated the huge ledgers once a staple of many school offices. Computers also transformed how secretaries went about purchasing and distributing supplies, printing report cards, and creating school schedules.

Technology may have changed the way secretaries carry out their responsibilities – but what hasn’t changed is the need for a warm and welcoming face in the front office. “I have met so many wonderful students, parents, and staff,” says Felhaber, looking back on a career that wrapped up in 2005. “And I am very happy to hear stories from students who are living life with careers of their own.”