Margaret Atwood Praises THR’s Women in Entertainment Canada Honorees

Margaret Atwood recalls MGM’s straight-to-series order in 2016 to adapt her dystopian classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale as a Hulu series as being a touch risky.

“It was a gamble. And the gamble paid off. Anybody approaching me earlier who said we wanted to make a film about The Handmaid’s Tale, I would have said, ‘Who’s going to watch that?’” she told the second annual Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment Canada gala at the Ritz Carlton in Toronto on Thursday.

“When it came out, a certain number of people felt it was illuminating because, surely, the United States would never, ever do such things,” the acerbic Canadian author, poet and activist said as she picked up the ICON Award at the Ritz Carlton. She talked about the success in adapting her 1985 dystopian novel just as Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale has reached the climax for its sixth and final season, and a small screen treatment for her 2019 follow up novel, The Testaments, is shooting in Toronto.

Atwood was among a host of Canadian leading ladies celebrated at The Hollywood Reporter‘s second annual WIE Canada event. The all-day gathering was attended by top homegrown producers, actors, musicians and execs like Orphan Black breakout Humberly González, Toronto Film Fest chief programmer Anita Lee, AEG Presents exec Debra Rathwell and Cinespace Studios exec Magali Simard.

Emotional highpoints for the event included The Sex Lives of College Girls star Amrit Kaur, on stage to accept the Breakthrough Award, calling on her fellow Canadian women in the room, and especially decision makers, to be more feisty as they create and tell stories.

“Women have intuition. We’re not scared of the truth the way men are. We understand the human condition. We’ve dealt with oppression. We don’t take no for an answer. I want you guys to fund art that fuels our fire as women, as humanitarians and as artists” Kaur declared.

Also on hand was Shirley Halperin, co-editor-in-chief of THR, and Jeanie Pyun, deputy editorial director of THR, to introduce this year’s WIE Canada Power List spotlighting 45 trailblazers breaking through and building the future of film, TV and music north of the border.

“We are delighted to recognize the achievements of a diverse group of powerhouse women,” Halperin said as she looked over the crowded ballroom while calling many of 45 leading ladies in attendance onto the stage to rapturous cheers and applause. WIE Canada attendees were also treated to performance of “I’m Done” by singer-songwriter Rachelle Show.

And the first cohort of the WIE Canada Mentorship Program — Jessica Commanda, Aman Kaur Khangura, Julisa Marcel, Kipola Wakilongo, Olivia Weatherall and Dianne Wulf — also took to the Ritz Carlton stage alongside their instructors as they look ahead to personalized mentorship, workshops and networking to turbocharge their careers.

Another high point was Christina Jennings, founder and president of Shaftesbury, producer of the period police procedural Murdoch Mysteries and the dog-and-cop family series Hudson & Rex, receiving the Glass Ceiling Award. A child of the 1960s and the 1970s, Jennings recalled a golden age for women’s rights as a young woman.

“I saw myself as no less capable than a man, and I never believed that, outside of physical strength, I couldn’t do anything  that a man could do,” she recalled. Jennings, sister of the late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, then looked to the U.S. today where women face backlash in the workplace and the wider society amid the Donald Trump administration.

“Women’s rights are being challenged and taking away the progress we made. It’s frightening to see that diversity, equity and inclusion, those rights that we fought so strongly for, are being stripped back in the United States of America,” she called out. Also Thursday, Killers of the Flower Moon actress Tantoo Cardinal, who is of Cree and Métis heritage, picked up the Equity in Entertainment Award.

She spoke of Canada’s indigenous peoples having come through the impact of Canada’s infamous residential schools and the Sixties Scoop atrocities on the country’s indigenous people. “I came from a powerful people. Our history will you we found truths in our survival of atrocities, in the marrow of the children that survived, and touched by the spirits of those that did not,” Cardinal said as she underscored the power of healing and self-discovery through storytelling.

And legendary fashion and lifestyle journalist Jeanne Beker, receiving the IMPACT Award, touted being able to make a career in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, yet at a time when women weren’t as supportive of one another as they are today. “There was intense competition. I felt it, and I felt threatened by women,” an emotional Beker recalled.

But times changed. “To see this incredible community out here, just radiating so much light and so much support, it’s absolutely heart-swelling. Thanks to all of you for hanging on and being on this incredible journey,” Beker added.

The second annual WIE Canada summit once again brought together the Canadian industry across TV, film and music to celebrate and recognize the achievements of women driving the industry forward. The event’s return, produced once again by Access Canada, followed the successful first WIE Canada summit in 2024 attended by iconic Canadian entertainers like Lilly Singh, Nia Vardalos, Devery Jacobs, Kim Cattrall, Catherine Reitman and Jully Black.