The hottest women not on TV

When Creative Artists Agency makes the rounds in Hollywood, pitching the screenwriting talent of Tassie Cameron, they like to market the Toronto native as “the girl who writes like a guy.”

But rather than take offence at a comment some might construe as sexist, Cameron finds the whole thing highly amusing. “Hey, I like guys,” cracks the 38-year-old. “I listen to men. And if you look at what I've done, certainly a lot of it is very male-centric cop stuff,” says Cameron, whose TV credits include Would Be Kings, The Robber Bride and The Eleventh Hour. “I guess when I write, I channel my inner Hunter Thompson and go to town.”

So it's fitting, then, that Cameron, daughter of journalist and author Stevie Cameron, is now in charge of the six-person team, four of whom are women, scripting the first 12 episodes of the psychologically charged elite-cop series, Flashpoint, set to air on CTV and CBS this summer. “Here I am on Flashpoint, a brawny testosterone show, says Cameron, “and I feel right at home.”

In the last 10 years, female screenwriters in Canada have made huge strides, muscling their way onto TV screens, leaving an indelible stamp on comedy, drama, and action series across network schedules. In fact, while women used to be a distinct minority in writing rooms, their numbers are now on par with men, who typically used to be hired to write action and comedy, while women were relegated to handle emotional and romantic scenes that required that “female touch.”

Cameron's script for The Robber Bride joins an impressive list of 33 others – 15 of which were written or co-written by women – short-listed as finalists for Monday night's Canadian Screenwriting Awards in Toronto. Cameron says gender divisions, for the most part, have disappeared, and that women are being snapped up to work on the most high-profile, demanding projects in the country.

Tracey Forbes, another Toronto writer, whose credits include the cult hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as Falcon Beach and ReGenesis, agrees that she's seen a marked difference in the “makeup of the writers' rooms I've been part of. “On my first couple of shows, I was the only female writer in the room,” she says. “Buffy was the first show in which I wasn't the token woman. But if there are more of us now, it's just a sign of the times. To work in a story room, you've got to be confident enough to throw out your good ideas and your bad ones,” adds Forbes, who is also part of Cameron's team on Flashpoint. “These days, girls are raised to be more assertive. Good writers – regardless of their sex – can write anything. Women can write kick-ass action. And men can write a heart-wrenching breakup scene.”

But while women writers are making their mark in part by conquering territory once claimed almost exclusively by men, it hasn't hurt, either, that Canadian networks are hungry for female viewers, especially those 25 and older, a coveted demographic for advertisers. Last year, at the launch of CBC Television's winter schedule, Kirstine Layfield, executive director of programming, made no secret of the fact that the public broadcaster was looking for new shows aimed specifically at a younger female viewership. “We're trying to be more inclusive,” Layfield said. “This is our opportunity to include women more aggressively into the mix. Women are huge followers of drama.”

This past week, CBC announced two new big-budget pickups: The Session, about a 32-year-old woman able to revisit the mistakes of her past; and The Wild Roses, the story of a Calgary-based family of women fighting for what they see as rightfully theirs. The latter was created by Cameron, her sister Amy, and Miranda de Pencier. “Because viewership is skewing more female, the shows being brought to the screen are in reaction to the viewership,” says Daegan Fryklind, another finalist at Monday night's awards show, for her work on CTV's Robson Arms. “So if these are strong female leads, then they need strong females in the room to write the material they need,” adds the 38-year-old, who also was part of the team on CBC's recently cancelled drama jPod. “But I've never felt anyone only hired me because I'm a woman. I bring myself to the table, ovaries and all, so what?”

Semi Chellas, one of Canada's most sought-after TV writers (The Eleventh Hour, Who Named the Knife, Of Murder and Memory) splits her time between projects here and in the United States. She says the industry has come a long way from the day a decade ago that she, along with pal and fellow screenwriter Karen Walton (The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, Queer as Folk, Ginger Snaps), attended a party hosted by a broadcaster at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“We were both in our 20s, in our little black dresses, in a sea of men,” recalls the 38-year-old Chellas, laughing. “It felt strange, but there was no one else in the room like us. That's utterly changed now. I know so many women running shows, writing television and movies. There are a huge number of exciting women's voices out there. Now if it were only the same for female directors.” The reason for the shift, she adds, is simple: “Our industry is maturing. When I came out of the Canadian Film Centre, there weren't a lot of people making a living as screenwriters. But opportunities have started to expand, for everyone.”

Walton, 42, splits her time between Toronto and Montreal. She got into writing after entering a 1993 CBC Radio drama contest, and shocked the hell out of herself by winning. “Television has a longer, and more diverse, history of writing. But even the craft of feature-film screenwriting – as a profession in both French and English – is growing, it seems, every year,” says Walton, who is co-writing her first French-Canadian feature film with Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.)

Esta Spalding, who was a premed student and poet before her career as a screenwriter, says she owes her change in profession to Chris Haddock, the creator of Da Vinci's Inquest and Intelligence. “I was a poet for a number of years, and I moved out to Vancouver with my husband, who was doing his PhD,” says Spalding. “I couldn't find a teaching job, so I applied as a secretarial assistant to Chris. He wouldn't hire me as his secretary because I didn't have secretarial experience.” Haddock had, however, read her poetry. “He was in development for Da Vinci's and he invited me to sit in on the writers' meeting,” recalls Spalding. “He hired me as a story editor for the first season after convincing the CBC that a poet who had spent a great deal of time in morgues and autopsies would be an asset to the story team,” recalls Spalding, 40, who worked three seasons on the show.

“I feel that there's a lot of work for screenwriters. I've never felt – and maybe I've been insulated – I was being hired because I was female,” says Spalding, who worked on The Eleventh Hour (with Chellas) and Would Be Kings (which she co-wrote with Cameron), and is part of the Flashpoint team. “I guess it's the good work of our mothers opening up doors in every sector of the professional world.”

Gemini Award-winner Anne Marie La Traverse, co-producer, with Bill Mustos, of Flashpoint, says the composition of their predominantly female writing squad was something of a fluke. “It was not part of an overall plan or design,” she notes. “Instead, it came about through a series of instinctive choices that we made in reaction to how these particular writers responded creatively to the material.”

On the opposite end of town from the Flashpoint headquarters, Vera Santamaria is part of the eight-person team, three of whom are women, working on CBC-TV's Little Mosque on the Prairie. “I see more women, but it's still a male-dominated sector,” says Santamaria, 29, who cut her TV teeth writing on Degrassi: The Next Generation. “But there is real value in having different viewpoints in the room. The guys in our group say this is the largest number of women they've ever worked with in a comedy room. We bring a different sensibility, which is not a matter of being male or female. What's funny isn't a matter of your sex.”

As far as Forbes is concerned, the people who end up getting hired are, first and foremost, just great writers. “You also have to look for people you think you will like and respect, because you're stuck with them day in, day out,” she says. “Chemistry in a room is critical. Writers of any gender need to be comfortable throwing