FROM MISS WORLD TO CANADIAN DIPLOMAT

From Miss World to Canadian diplomat

Jennifer Hosten in Ottawa to launch memoirs of her adventurous life
Bruce Deachman, The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, October 05, 2008

When Jennifer Hosten moved to the Ottawa area from the Caribbean in the winter of 1973, her arrival turned a lot of heads.

Never mind that she was from the spice island of Grenada and a bit of exotica herself for her neighbours in Osgoode, where she and her first husband, David Craig, initially settled. But she had also been crowned Miss World just over two years earlier, having won a contentious pageant in London's Royal Albert Hall that featured two Miss South Africa entrants (one black, one white), an onstage protest by angry feminists throwing flour and firecrackers and heckling host Bob Hope, and allegations that Miss Sweden, the odds-on favourite heading in but third-place finisher coming out, deserved to win.

Miss Africa South Pearl Jansen (and first runner-up to Jennifer)

The point was exacerbated by the fact that the judging panel included, along with country singer Glenn Campbell, author Joan Collins and others, Grenadian prime minister Eric Gairy, who commented, "The last time Miss United Kingdom was voted Miss World, there were five British judges on the panel, so why all the fuss now?"

We're pretty sure Glen Campbell wore black-tie for the final night, but we couldn't resist this treasure chest of a shot...

Miss Switzerland, meanwhile, was quoted as saying of the then-22-year-old Hosten, "I have nothing against coloured girls, but how Miss Grenada could win, I don't know.""I didn't know about the controversy until the final night," Hosten recalled in a telephone interview this week from Grenada. "I didn't even know the prime minister of Grenada was going to be a judge. I had no clue!"

Yet Hosten, who was a airline flight attendant in 1970 when a passenger -- Miss Guyana -- suggested she enter the Miss Grenada contest, was, and remains, a staunch defender of beauty pageants as ultimately empowering for women. Her fame as Miss World no doubt played in Gairy's decision to recommend her in 1978 for a posting at the United Nations in New York -- a position she declined -- and another soon after, which she accepted, as Grenada's High Commissioner to Canada. MORE