Gifted broadcaster Madeleine Poulin led the way for a generation of female journalists

Madeleine Poulin was one of the best-known television journalists of her generation at Radio-Canada, the French service of the CBC. Ms. Poulin, who died on Nov. 22 at the age of 87, was Radio-Canada’s first female parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa, and the first woman to work as the network’s foreign correspondent in Paris.

Ms. Poulin was soft spoken on television but that mild-mannered persona hid a toughness, as former prime minister Pierre Trudeau discovered in a dramatic interview in May, 1987. Mr. Trudeau clashed with his interviewer at several points.