Christie Marie Blatchford (May 20, 1951 – February 12, 2020) was a Canadian newspaper columnist, journalist and broadcaster. She published four non-fiction books. Blatchford was Canada's first female sports columnist, reporting on sports between 1975 and 1977. In her 48-year career she worked for all four Toronto-based newspapers, winning the 1999 National Newspaper Award for column writing. She was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 2019. Her book Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army also won the 2008 Governor General's Literary Award in Non-fiction. Early years and family Blatchford was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, the daughter of Kathleen and Ross Blatchford. Her father, who was in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, managed a hockey arena in Noranda. When Blatchford was in grade 11, the family moved to Toronto when her father became manager of the North Toronto Memorial Arena. She attended North Toronto Collegiate Institute, graduating in 1970. She then studied journalism at Ryerson University, and worked for the student paper The Ryersonian. Her nephew is sports reporter Andy Blatchford. Blatchford had a number of journalists in her family. Her grandfather, Andy Lytle was a sports writer and editor for the Vancouver Sun in the 1920s and again in the 1950s and a sports editor at the Toronto Daily Star in the 1930s and 1940s. Her uncle, Tommy Lytle, was a Toronto Star editor until his retirement in 1974. Career Blatchford began working part-time for The Globe and Mail in 1972, while still studying journalism at Ryerson where she graduated at the top of her class. She was hired full-time by the Globe in 1973, working as a general assignment reporter and then as a sports columnist at the paper from 1975 until 1977; she was billed as Canada's first female sports columnist and was at the time one of only six female sports reporters in North America. In fact her first column "focused on Bobby Hull’s refusal to play in a World Hockey Association game". In it, she said: "It's the only game in the world we play as good as anyone else. But if we aren't careful, the people who make the decisions are going to take the guts and hardness out of hockey and they will do it because they think it is what we want." Displeased when a Globe column