The Only Woman in the Room: The Making of a Stockbroker

By Jean Hough Davey

In the 1960s, when women were neither accepted nor encouraged to enter the world of finance, Jean Hough Davey became one of the first women in North America to be licensed as a stockbroker. Propelled by sheer wit and determination, Jean was a pioneer who rose to the highest levels of her profession, eventually becoming Vice President and Director of ScotiaMcLeod.

But while she was publicly lauded, she struggled to maintain equilibrium in her personal life, drowning in an emotionally abusive marriage to Hockey Night in Canada kingpin Ted Hough, and finally summoning up the courage to leave and find true love.

The Only Woman in the Room is Jean Hough Davey’s moving account of an exceptional life. In this candid memoir, she shares the many lessons she’s learned about how women can—and must—set themselves up for success in every area of their lives, even when the odds are not in their favour.

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Jean Hough Davey’s career in finance spanned a period of almost 50 years, the first decade of which she was in a category of one—the “only woman in the room.” As one of the first female licensed stockbrokers in North America, her remarkable ascent to the highest levels on Bay Street began in the early 1960s, the era of the three-martini lunch and the domination of the old boys’ club, a time when women were barely accepted and rarely encouraged to pursue careers in the investment industry.

Before Gloria Steinem came on the scene and well before women started to “lean in,” Jean was making her way in what was “a man’s world,” propelling herself forward with style and determination. By the time she retired in 2004, she was a Vice President and Director of ScotiaMcLeod®, a division of Scotia Capital Inc., and a member of Scotiabank, Canada’s international bank and a leading financial services provider in North America with assets of $896 billion (as at October 31, 2016 ).

Jean Hough Davey now divides her time between Toronto and the Florida Keys.

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Praise for The Only Woman in the Room:
“A gripping read, sure to inspire every woman to follow her dreams.”
—M.C. Domovitch, author of Scorpio’s Kiss and Scar Tissue

“This book is both inspirational and disheartening—the story of one woman’s fierce determination to succeed as an investment broker, in an industry dominated by male indifference. That she succeeded is admirable, but indicative that we have a way to go.”
—Tom Kierans, past president of McLeod Young Weir (later ScotiaMcLeod)

“As a lifelong business woman, I am always interested in stories about female trailblazers. The Only Woman in the Room is exactly that and so much more. Jean’s engaging memoir of how she propelled herself forward in life is so relatable for women like me and, no doubt, women of all ages. And if you love fashion as both Jean and I do, it’s even better! A really great read.” —Milli Gould LL.D. and Founder, Milli Ltd.

“The Only Woman in the Room is captivating and rewarding. Jean Davey’s memoir is a study in dignity and grit. It is an inspiring tale of a woman overcoming discrimination, proving courage and resolve can triumph.”
—Arthur Birsh, Chairman of PLAYBILL Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jean Hough Davey
• Release date: Mar 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780995940116

Jean Hough Davey

Jean Hough Davey’s career in finance spanned a period of almost 50 years, the first decade of which she was in a category of one—the “only woman in the room.” As one of the first female licensed stockbrokers in North America, her remarkable ascent to the highest levels on Bay Street began in the early 1960s, the era of the three-martini lunch and the domination of the old boys’ club, a time when women were barely accepted and rarely encouraged to pursue careers in the investment industry. Before Gloria Steinem came on the scene and well before women started to “lean in,” Jean was making her way in what was “a man’s world,” propelling herself forward with style and determination. By the time she retired in 2004, she was a Vice President and Director of ScotiaMcLeod®, a division of Scotia Capital Inc., and a member of Scotiabank, Canada’s international bank and a leading financial services provider in North America with assets of $896 billion (as at October 31, 2016 ). Jean Hough Davey now divides her time between Toronto and the Florida Keys

Book preview

The Only Woman in the Room. The Making of a Stockbroker. By Jean Hough Davey with Anne O’Hagan.title pageVarious buisness cardsThe Only Woman in the Room. The Making of a Stockbroker. By Jean Hough Davey with Anne O’Hagan.

For my children, Nancy and Cam, and my grandchildren,

Kauna and Tomas—the people I love the most in the world—

and in memory of Bob Davey (1932–2005), the love of my life.

Copyright © 2017 by Jean Hough Davey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Jean Hough Davey

London Street Press

Toronto, Ontario

[e-mail]

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-0-9959401-0-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9959401-1-6 (ebook)

Produced by Page Two

www.pagetwostrategies.com

Cover and interior design by Peter Cocking

Front cover photos: iStock

Back cover and interior photos courtesy Jean Hough Davey

Ebook by Bright Wing Books (brightwing.ca)

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Contents

Author’s Note

Part One

1 The Early Years

2 Queenston Motors and the Path Forward

3 Jean Morrison, Stockbroker

4 Introducing Madame Chairman: A First

Part Two

5 Toronto: A Bigger Pond

6 New Life, New Love, New Challenges

7 The Austin Taylor Effect

8 Success and Suffering:My Work–Life Balance

Part Three

9 Taking a Calculated Risk

10 Finding True Love

11 The Cost of Freedom

12 Bob and Beyond

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Landmarks

Cover

Acknowledgments

Epilogue

Body Matter

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

The story you’re about to read—my story—begins in 1950 when I was a newlywed embarking on the grand adventure of adulthood. It seemed to me to be the natural place to start. I don’t diminish the importance of the forces that shaped my childhood years, but I wanted to focus on what followed: the defining experiences of my adult life, the surprising and unintended consequences of choices I made—and the intended consequences, as well. If anything, I hope my story is pure encouragement because I believe that women can—and must—set themselves up for success in life.

June 5, 1931, my birthdate: dead centre of the Great Depression. Every family we knew was affected. We were fortunate. My father, a construction foreman, managed to stay employed, even if he was mostly absent from both Hamilton and home. During the war, he worked in Halifax, Whitehorse or wherever the promise of wages led him. But we always had food on the table. My mother had my two older brothers to feed as well as me and must’ve been a master at coupon-trading. I remember breakfast: two pieces of toast and jam, a glass of milk, half a glass of orange juice and a bowl of cereal—shredded wheat or corn flakes. I would collect the cardboard cards that separated the neat rows of shredded wheat biscuits in the box. Quaker Oats Muffets cardboard was the best for patching the worn-through soles of my shoes. It had a shiny side so my foot could slide in easily. To fit just right, we would cut the pieces with a pair of scissors from my father’s workbench.

As a teenager, I loved to go to the movies at the Delta Theatre on Main Street. My friends and I could earn the price of admission—twenty-five cents—by hulling strawberries at Wagstaffe Fine Old English, the jams and jellies plant, east of town on the Niagara Peninsula. Before sunrise on Saturday morning, we’d make the twenty-minute walk to catch the bus out to the fruit belt. Sitting on long benches under an awning, we’d get to work on the boxes of berries the boys would bring from the field. Pretty girls always got the biggest ones. If I earned thirty cents for a morning’s work, I would have enough for a movie ticket and a chocolate bar, too (twice the size they are today).

My memories of childhood are happy ones; life seemed completely normal for my friends and me in spite of the era—the privations of the Depression, World War II. Like all my girlfriends, I married as soon as I could, expecting the life I aspired to as a loving wife and mother. It was only once I started to work that I began to feel different about myself and the future.

And so I begin here.

Part 1

— 1 —

The Early Years

1950–58

Imarried Ramsay Morrison on September 9 , 1950 , when I was barely nineteen. We were very much in love and excited to begin building our lives together. In those heady, happy post-war days, I thought I had everything a young woman could wish for: a kind and handsome husband, a new extended family that embraced me, a sweet little apartment, even a job. I worked at Henry Birks and Sons, Canada’s pre-eminent jeweller. It was a summer job that turned into a permanent position and I loved it—or, more precisely, I loved working. What I could not have known then—and would never have imagined—is the degree to which work would come to define my path in life.

When I think back, my employment at Birks was the result of my first conscious attempt at the age of sixteen to begin shaping my future. I had just finished grade twelve at Delta Collegiate, a public high school in Hamilton, the small Canadian steel town in southwestern Ontario where I grew up. During previous summer vacations I had been resourceful at making pocket money in all the usual ways, from doing chores for my mother to babysitting, but this summer would be different. It was 1947 and I was intent on finding a real job. My mother was aware of my initiative and mentioned it to her oldest sister, my aunt Emma, who offered her assistance.

I was thrilled to find out that Aunt Emma Price would help. I saw it as more than an act of kindness—it was an affirmation, a vote of confidence, which mattered a great deal to me. Aunt Emma was a dynamo. She owned an insurance company, a business she founded and managed herself. Eventually, she added a real estate brokerage. I didn’t know what was involved with these businesses, or how Aunt Emma spent her days, but I knew she was in charge. I looked up to her and admired her obvious competency. She was the only woman in my life who had a career. From my teenaged perspective, she seemed smart, confident and fierce. I’d never met another woman like her.

As promised, Aunt Emma spoke to a friend of hers at the Women’s Canadian Club, of which she was an active member. The woman was an employee of Birks and agreed to look into possible opportunities for me. Sure enough, a few weeks later, I was asked to report for work at Birks, located on the corner of King and James streets in downtown Hamilton. I don’t even recall an interview, which seems extraordinary today when I think of what my grandchildren go through to get the most basic jobs. Thanks to Aunt Emma’s friend, I was hired as a switchboard operator. I was elated—so much so that I didn’t even think of what was required (but then neither did Birks, clearly).

If you picture those telephone switchboards of the 1940s—a tangle of wires to plug and unplug, a beehive of girls to talk over—this could’ve been intimidating for a sixteen-year-old, but I don’t recall being nervous at all. Instead, I was beyond excited. While other girls my age were scooping ice cream for the summer, I would spend my days cheerily greeting callers: Henry Birks and Sons. How may I direct your call? I could barely wait to start making a weekly wage, and I was proud, too, because my mother had been a telephone operator for a brief time at Bell Canada. My hope was that by following in her footsteps, I’d make her happy.

By September, I had met Ramsay. He was one of a gang of six boys in our neighbourhood and, conveniently, my girlfriends and I numbered six, as well (we called ourselves the London Street Gang). On Saturday nights during the war, we would meet up and all go dancing at the teens canteen. Ramsay was two years older than me and apprenticing as a carpenter, while his twin brother apprenticed as a mechanic. I was young and it was early days in our courtship, but I was thoroughly smitten and quite certain we would eventually marry. I was starting to form a picture of my future with him, as young girls in love do.

Around that same time, Birks offered to give me more responsibility if I would stay on full-time into the fall, a compelling proposition. As much as I had always been a good student, I also had restless energy and my summer experience had given me a taste of the working world. I reasoned it through: My employer seems to value my initiative, and I’m being paid well. Quickly, any thought of academic pursuits, including university, slid down my priority list. Instead, I envisioned myself working to save $1,000—the amount one needed to have in hand before marrying, according to an article I read in Canadian Home Journal. That sounded like a reasonable goal, and making $20 a week, the amount I’d been offered by Birks, seemed like an ideal scenario to my teenage self. I decided to stay.

That decision, which my parents seemed not at all interested in influencing one way or the other, had various implications. Like many young women of that era, I opted out of further education. What I didn’t do was follow the pack into secretarial school to learn shorthand and typing. I figured I was already on a path forward and, lucky for me, my enthusiasm was validated by my employer. In short order, Birks promoted me from switchboard to the accounting department. So by the time I married Ramsay, I’d been working at Birks almost two years and was managing Accounts Receivable.

In retrospect, without that job, marriage really wouldn’t have been a possibility. Ramsay’s carpenter’s wages wouldn’t have been enough, and neither of our families was in a position to support us financially. But because I stayed on at Birks, I saved that $1,000. Even better, we were able to begin married life in style. From day one, I served dinner to my new husband on Royal Doulton fine bone china that I’d had been able to buy with my Birks employees’ discount and the added bonus of the post-war tax exemption that Birks offered. I’d also started collecting sterling silver flatware and crystal glasses, and we didn’t save it for special occasions. This was not what I had been accustomed to growing up, but it was certainly what I aspired to for my future. I wouldn’t look back.

We moved into our first marital home—actually a small apartment carved out of the third floor of a large house on Myrtle Street—the day after our wedding. It had a bedroom with a peaked ceiling following the roofline and wallpaper that I fell in love with: violets on a white background. There was a small hallway that led to the living room, a tiny bathroom and the kitchen, which was originally a clothes closet (anyone taller than me couldn’t stand up in it, and I was 5’5"). From the living room, we looked out on the second-floor rooftop of a wing of the house.

Our furniture was modest, a collection of hand-me-downs from our families: a bedroom suite, a chesterfield and a mahogany dining room table and chairs to seat four people, where we ate all our meals. I recall our landlady, Sally Lax, stopping in early one weekend morning. I had not yet cleared the table of our breakfast dishes. "That’s your everyday china? she exclaimed, pointing at my precious Royal Doulton, the Chatsworth pattern in yellow and green. I was thrilled she had noticed, although I did my best to not let it show. Yes, it is, I replied nonchalantly. It makes my food taste better." My answer was honest; I really did believe that.

In 1952, I gave birth to our son, Cameron. As planned, I resigned from my position at Birks—by that time, credit manager at the age of twenty-one—to stay home and immerse myself in the life of a housewife, true to the 1950s domestic ideal. As much as I liked my job and thrived in the workplace, I was equally excited about assuming my new role as a mother. With the addition of the baby, our cozy little apartment was a little cramped, but we didn’t mind. Even though we were down to one income, Ramsay could support us without it being too much of a stretch. What was a stretch was carrying the baby buggy up three flights of stairs.

Once I became pregnant with our second child a year later, we really did have to move. Through a family connection, we were able to get a wonderfully spacious three-bedroom townhouse on two floors in a new ten-unit complex on King Street East. The rent was $54 a month. To put this in perspective, I think Ramsay was making about $60 a week at the time. It was just right, budget-wise. There were families with children around the same age as ours living close by, and we were just a block away from Viscount Montgomery School. I was deliriously happy.

Ramsay worked for Cooper Construction at the time. He was a finish carpenter, meaning he did fine carpentry, railings and floors and the like—an important distinction since it meant that most of his work was indoors and not affected by weather. (In Canada, construction work has to stop if the temperature drops below a certain temperature.) One day, Ramsay came home and in his post-work patter mentioned that his good friend Harold Keighley had been promoted to superintendent and he, in turn, had been offered Keighley’s job as foreman. This was great news, of course. I was already picturing my husband with a new air of authority and a bump up in pay, too. I had every expectation that he would jump at the opportunity, but, instead, he had declined the offer. The extra fifteen cents an hour wasn’t worth the added responsibility, he told me. I was stunned. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment, knowing full well that that extra fifteen cents would’ve brought me closer to the next raise (and the next). He either didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand. It was the first real hint of the many differences between us in terms of outlook, expectations and, most notably, ambition.

Cameron was three and our new baby, Nancy, was just one year old when Ramsay was laid off the first time. It was 1955, unemployment was at 10 percent and he had no immediate prospects. My father, who worked for Prack and Prack, an architecture firm, offered to get Ramsay carpentry work on one of the projects he oversaw. They were rebuilding the historic Hamilton Courthouse on Main Street. Ramsay accepted but didn’t last more than a few weeks before he quit: he felt he was being a traitor to his union. I thought there was more to it than that. He was insecure about his skills and worried that he might disappoint his father-in-law. What was shattering for me was his lack of initiative: he barely looked for other means to support his family. Just a few years into motherhood, my hands were full and married life was unfolding in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The reality was plain: we were short on cash and we needed money to feed the