Newsgirls kept fighting, but virus scored knockout
After 24 years, Leslieville boxing gym known for inclusivity is shutting its doors
“Genuine.” “A humanitarian.” “The least judgmental person I’ve ever met.”
That’s how clients describe boxing coach Savoy Howe. But the 54-year-old founder of Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club never referred to the members as clients — they are her fighters, her competitors, her girls.
And now the club is closing its doors, one of many beloved Toronto businesses shuttered thanks to the financial impact of COVID-19.
Howe founded Newsgirls 24 years ago, at first renting space out of other gyms. It was meant to be a gym for women only, said Howe who found it “challenging” to box as a woman, since men didn’t often welcome her into the space.
In 2006, she moved Newsgirls, Canada’s first female-only boxing gym, into its current location: a unit at 388 Carlaw Ave., in the east-end Leslieville neighbourhood.
The club became a haven for women, for survivors of domestic violence, the LGBTQ community, people with physical disabilities — people who might never have put on a pair of boxing gloves if it wasn’t for Howe.
At Newsgirls, everyone has a nickname, chosen on their first day based on their personalities or last names, often given to them by Howe. Names like Popcorn and Pinky and the Abdominator. Howe’s name is Kapow! “I think most people don’t know each other’s even first name, we just all have a boxing name,” Howe said.
Sandra Brunner, a Pilates instructor and end-of-life doula, was known at Newsgirls as “the Abdominator.” She said to lose the Newsgirls space is to lose a welcoming community that has provided much more than exercise to a lot of people.
“It’s a loss not just of another gym but a safe space, and a place that people can really go to find themselves,” she said.
Howe knew in June that despite all the support behind her, Newsgirls was going to have to close.
“It’s not a money-making business,” she said. “We’ve ... pretty much survived 24 years month to month, as do most boxing gyms.”
The hardest part about closing Newsgirls is knowing she may never see many of her clients again.
“The biggest loss for me is losing some of our community,” she said. “A lot of these folks would never walk into a boxing gym. So it’s a loss for me and it’s hard knowing it’s a loss for them too ... you know, it’s kind of the end of boxing for a lot of people.”
Howe moved from New Brunswick to Ontario to do two things: get a theatre degree, and “come out of the closet.”
Thirty years ago it was difficult to be out, she said. She was looking for something to help her feel safer amid the aggression she knew she would face.
A photo of a woman wearing boxing gloves struck her, and in1992 she walked into Toronto’s east-end Newsboys Boxing Club.
“I fell in love with it right away,” said Howe, who went on to participate in one of the first boxing bouts for women in Toronto in 1993. She became a coach, and in 1996 started Newsgirls, moving from club to club before settling in 1998 to Sully’s Boxing Gym in Toronto’s west end.
As much as Howe loves to box, she loves coaching too and watching it transform people, improving their physical and mental strength and building their confidence.
“A hundred per cent of the time, there is a transformation,” she said. “I get to witness it, they get to feel it.”
Women would tell Howe stories of how boxing helped them stand their ground in the outside world. It’s not about actually fighting people, says Howe. Boxing is about “knowing you have something in your back pocket.”
Though Newsgirls began as a womenonly gym, it’s since become inclusive of all genders.
After some members transitioned and Howe came to understand there are more than two genders, she started offering “everyone classes” three times a week, available to all genders.
Newsgirls also held the Shape Your Life program for 10 years, which was offered free to survivors of violence, and introduced Outside the Ring, a donation-funded program that offered classes to Indigenous people, new Canadians, people with mobility challenges, and the LGBTQ community.
Newsgirls members say when they walked into the gym tired or angry, put on their wraps and gloves and took on their boxing persona, Howe’s energy motivated them to punch their aggression away. They say she has an ability to see their potential and pushes them to realize it, while respecting their boundaries and giving them the freedom to choose what they do.
Howe “meets people at where they are,” says Michelle “Pinky” Trinh, a competitive boxer who is a nurse outside of the gym.
“The first time I met her I wasn’t sure what to think about her,” she said.
Now, “There are a lot of things that I don’t think I could have done (without her),” Trinh said. “She pushes each person to maximize their potential.”
For Subhanya “Wildfire” Sivajothy, 25, Newsgirls was unlike anything she had experienced before — though she had previously done kick-boxing. After joining the gym in 2018, she realized she’d found an incredibly respectful, “purposeful community” built around Howe and her coaching.
The recent masters of information graduate student said Howe would joke that a heavy bag is cheaper than therapy. And Sivajothy agrees. Boxing made her feel powerful, calmer, better able to regulate her emotions.
“(Boxing) completely changed the way that I carry myself,” said Sivajothy. “It definitely changed me as a person.”
Sivajothy and many of the other Newsgirls members have been in and out of the gym since June, helping Howe tear down the equipment.
The hardest thing to take down was the wall covered in photographs of her girls — her fighters.
One of Howe’s favourite pictures is of Colleen “Splatter” Dockstader “with a bloody nose and a big smile on her face.”
Removing those photographs was an emotional task. “Everybody was crying,” said Howe. But Howe takes her own advice to heart. “It’s not the end of Newsgirls,” she said. “Newsgirls has a strong foundation and a lot of community support … we will get back on our feet.”
She’s got plenty of ideas, and a few jokes — maybe she’ll start a motorcycle gang! For now she’s teaching pay-what-youcan classes in a park and looking out for whatever might come next.
“I can always find people to help out,” she said. “When you have access to a strong community there’s so much you can do.”
“Boxing is the art of not quitting.” This is Howe’s mantra, the encouragement she shouts to beleaguered fighters to motivate them for one more round of a difficult workout.
“She just pushes you to go that much further when you think you can’t go anymore,” said Dockstader. “She’s extremely motivating.”
Dockstader, a 50-year-old neuroscience professor, joined the gym six years ago during a particularly stressful time in her life. It has given her not just an outlet for her frustration but a confidence and strength she hadn’t felt before. From the first punch, she was hooked. “What I didn’t really expect was how strong I actually ended up feeling both mentally and psychologically, aside from physically,” she said.
Dockstader is a scientist to her core, and maintains no spirituality or belief in fate. But she believes this: Howe and the Newsgirls community are nowhere near done.
“Her job’s not done,” said Dockstader. “People need her.”