The strange thing about a national icon is how often you don't realize she is one. It has something to do with Canadian modesty and, in Doris Anderson's case, with a level-headedness that laughed off puffery and conceit. Doris was so darn down-to-earth, it never occurred to me that, as a Chatelaine writer in the '70s, I was working for one of the key figures in Canada's feminist history.

In fact, I considered Doris to be solidly mainstream, with her house in tony Rosedale in Toronto, her lawyer husband, her Liberal party membership and her enjoyment of fashionable parties. Looking back, I'm astounded by my youthful ignorance. Doris had already, in the late '50s and '60s, carved out the most sensationally progressive editorial territory in the country. At a time when the "women's sections" of Canadian newspapers were filled with society weddings, recipes and advice on etiquette, Doris was using Chatelaine to challenge the abortion laws, spotlight the male dominance of Parliament, militate against racism and decry women's poverty. She was decades ahead of her time, and canny enough to get away with promoting a women's revolution right in the heart of Maclean Hunter's deeply conservative publishing empire.

Her generosity was amazing and often hidden. Author Sally Armstrong recalls that when she became editor of Homemakers magazine (a direct competitor) in the '80s, she phoned Doris for advice on sharpening the feminist content. Doris took Sally for lunch and advised her to go for it. "Just do it. You'll get the readers, and so long as you have the readers, no one can touch you."

Her U.S. counterparts at major women's magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping were astonished at the way Doris, in her lighthearted editorials, could mock the rigid stereotypes promoted in the ads – and still manage to keep the ad revenue rolling in.

The secret was, as she told Sally, the readers' loyalty. Canadian housewives loved Chatelaine's sturdily practical recipes and budget-wise advice. They kept right on reading even while showering the magazine with indignant letters about our feminist heresies. The tone of those letters was sparky, scolding and assertive – a tone they would never have dared use with male newspaper editors. It meant that they owned Chatelaine and they were right at home giving us hell. And Doris kept those mainstream readers firmly and respectfully in her corner. Although she never pandered to them on the important issues (and thousands of them slowly came around to feminism), she made sure to serve their practical interests with scrupulous care. If Eveleen Dollery, our glamorous and blithely upscale fashion editor, insisted on photographing a $100 silk blouse, Doris would rule her out of order. No reader of Chatelaine could afford a $100 blouse, and Doris considered it outrageous even to suggest it.

Born Hilda Doris Buck in Medicine Hat in 1921, she had a tough Alberta childhood – fatherless for most of her early years, which she spent working hard in her mother's Depression-era boarding house. Those years primed Doris with an instinctive frugality that informed our entire magazine. The supply cupboard was rigorously monitored against frivolous usage, no one had an expense account, and a woman who didn't recycle her grocery bags and sew her own slipcovers had little hope of winning the annual Ms. Chatelaine contest.