Carol Armit’s life was guided by her big imagination, dreams and heart.
Born April 19, 1943, Armit grew up in the tiny community of McCreary, southeast of Dauphin. The eldest of Irene and Jack Little’s six kids, she loved and admired her feisty, beautiful mom and hardworking father, the latter of whom was both McCreary’s pharmacist and mayor.
McCreary would always be home, but Armit was destined for bigger things.
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Carol Armit, seen here in Clear Lake in 2016, was a Canadian journalist, mother and wife. She died in May at the age of
“Carol, she was an actress,” recalls lifelong friend Sandy Bissoon. “She was very dramatic, even when she was little, but not precocious … she just had that flair.”
Bissoon recalls the two of them playing “house,” with Armit insisting anything, even rocks, could double as a playhouse. “It was just a pile of bloody rocks,” Bissoon says with a laugh.
Armit was always drawn to the untraditional roles.
“I took care of dolls and cooked,” Bissoon said. “She was the dad. She went off to work and she would swing that briefcase beside her.”
As a teen, Armit set about achieving her acting dreams, winning a scholarship to the prestigious Banff School of Fine Arts. From there, she went on to graduate with a bachelor of arts degree from United College, now the University of Winnipeg. Then it was off to the big city — the really, really big city.
Armit moved to New York City in 1960 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. As the story goes, she hadn’t known she had to audition to be accepted but somehow talked her way in anyway.
“That was Mom’s charm,” her kids said in her eulogy. “Never invited but somehow always welcomed. A true free spirit.”
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Carol Armit on a horse in McCreary Manitoba in 1955.
Together with her first husband, Terry Partridge of Winnipeg, Armit then moved on to another big city, London, England, where she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and danced in the radical Dance Theatre Commune.
The couple made their way back to Canada and Armit pivoted, setting her sights on journalism.
She graduated from Carleton University’s journalism program and secured a job reporting on hard news at the Ottawa Citizen. This wasn’t easy for a woman in the 1970s — she had to fight for the stories men usually got, rather than those that ran on the “women’s page.”
When she returned to Manitoba, she got hired for her “dream job” as a reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press, covering the legislature, courts and education.
After a few years at the paper, she pivoted again, securing a host role with CJOB’s Evening Action Line. She was by all accounts a star, though sexist critics tried to dull her shine.
“The station received calls from listeners who demanded to know why she wasn’t home raising a family and why she was taking the bread from the mouths of children whose fathers needed the job more than she did,” read a 1977 Free Press article about Armit’s new gig. She was in her 30s, divorced and had no kids — things the article also mentioned.
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Carol Armit dancing with Ernest Berk’s Dance Commune Theatre in London, England in 1970.
But Armit took everything in stride.
“If you don’t progress, you’ll decay,” was one of her favourite sayings.
She broke another glass ceiling for women when, in 1984, she became the first woman president of the Winnipeg Press Club. Just 14 years earlier, the nearly 100-year-old club didn’t even let women in.
“She didn’t suffer fools lightly but she also had a very good sense of humour,” said Dwight MacAulay, the last president of the club, which shuttered last year.
MacAulay descibed Armit as “a real pro” at her radio job and someone with “a very strong streak of compassion for the underdog.”
Both her kids would agree. Irene and Eric Armit have memories of their mom offering help or work to people who were in dire straights, including, at least once, a friend of Eric’s who was in trouble with the law. She loved to boost people’s confidence, serving as everyone’s cheerleader.
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Carol Armit interviewed Eric Wells in 1979.
Armit had friends from all walks of life and as her reputation as a skilled radio host grew, she became a household name, if not a Winnipeg celebrity. Her son, Eric, remembers the raucus parties thrown by Armit and his dad, her second husband, Jim Armit, also a journalist at CJOB.
“There were just all these people around,” Eric said. He loved being a kid amid the chaos, running around the house and getting attention from the adults.
He remembers both his mom and dad as having a magnetic pull over their guests, with photos from that time showing groups of partiers encircling one or both of them as they regaled them with stories.
The one consistent in her varied and, for the times, unconventional life: horses. Her family had race horses in McCreary and some of her kids’ first memories were at the horse race track. If you liked horses, Armit most certainly liked you.
Eventually, the family moved to Regina, Sask. In 1987, Armit founded Newswatch Canada, a media monitoring company still in operation. It wasn’t until a few years ago, at the age of 78, that Carol finally retired. She and her partner, Terry Loftus, moved to Killarney.
Daughter Irene remembers her mom as a “larger than life” career woman throughout her childhood. So it came as a surprise when Armit’s maternal side blossomed when she became a grandma to Irene’s now-three-year-old daughter, Livia.
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Carol Armit with her children, Irene and Eric, at Clear Lake in 2016.
“They were best friends,” Irene said through tears.
Armit would visit Irene and her family in Montreal every two to three months after Livia was born. The little girl dubbed her “Nana” or “Ananas” — pineapple in French. The two would play on the floor with silly toys Armit would buy, like a lava lamp and a minature piano. Irene says it was like they existed in their own little nana-granddaughter world.
During Armit’s last visit to Montreal, she knew she was sick and the trip had to be cut short. But she got to meet Irene’s newborn baby, Nolan.
“She called him ‘my baby,’” Irene said. “She’d say, ‘Where’s my baby?’ and sit there with him.”
After a short battle with cancer, Armit died on May 8, 2024. She was 81.
Armit always left her longtime CJOB listeners with the same signoff.
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Carol Armit with her two grandchildren, Nolan and Livia.
So for one last time:
“That’s it for my time. Thank you for yours.”
katrina.clarke@freepress.mb.ca
Katrina Clarke
Investigative reporter
Katrina Clarke is an investigative reporter at the Winnipeg Free Press. Katrina holds a bachelor’s degree in politics from Queen’s University and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. She has worked at newspapers across Canada, including the National Post and the Toronto Star. She joined the Free Press in 2022. Read more about Katrina.
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