My friend Kay Steward, who has died aged 102, must have been one of the Guardian’s oldest and most assiduous readers. As one of the paper’s correspondents I first came into contact with her when she sent me a slightly waspish card about an egregious misprint in one of my articles about 25 years ago. After I wrote back we maintained a long-lasting correspondence and friendship.
A former journalist herself, Kay had a keen interest in, and insight into, the job, which she had eventually given up to look after her family.
Born in Lincoln, she moved to Toronto in Canada in 1920 at the age of two with her parents, Francis Cannon, who worked for a company making adding machines, and Katharine (nee Grant), a housewife. She went to school in the city at Havergal College, and obtained a first class degree in English language and literature from the University of Toronto before beginning a spell of teaching at her old school and then in Ottawa.
There, after the second world war, she joined the staff of the Canadian Geographical magazine as a feature writer (1947-51). As a result she travelled widely in Europe, in particular writing articles from France and Italy, and in 1951 she moved back to the UK, where she covered the coronation of Elizabeth II for Canadian Geographical and its British equivalent. She also, briefly, had a job writing jokes for Christmas crackers.
In 1953 Kay married a doctor, James Steward, who became one of the first specialist paediatric oncologists in the UK, at the Christie hospital in Manchester. After their marriage she left journalism to raise their young family, but later taught English at Saint Ambrose College in Hale, Cheshire, for several years before working as a librarian. She also did much unassuming voluntary work around Hale.
James was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in his 40s, and he died in 1975 at the age of 57. Kay is survived by their two sons, Will and John, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Her last letter to me – which came in the post a day or so after I learned of her death – mentioned that she was looking forward to meeting the latest of her two great-grandchildren, who were both born in the past few months.
