Jean Peddie was born on August 29, 1903 in Russell, Manitoba to Mr. and Mrs. John Peddie. After completing teacher training at the normal school in Yorkton, Saskatchewan in 1922, she taught briefly in rural Saskatchewan before moving to Brandon, Manitoba to attend normal school there. Upon completion of her training in 1925, she taught at Alexandra School in Brandon and Brittannia School in Winnipeg. Jean Peddie married Gerald Doidge on July 28, 1926. They had a son, Bill, born around 1931.

In the 1930s, Jean Doidge worked as a reporter for the Port Arthur News Chronicle in Port Arthur, Ontario. In 1942, she became editor of the Daily Graphic in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, the only woman editor of a daily newspaper in Canada at the time. Doidge left Portage la Prairie on January 2, 1947 to accept a position with the Saskatchewan Department of Natural Resources in Regina. She worked as an information writer until October 1948, shen she was transferred to Prince Albert, where she continued to work as an information writer and was the presenter of Northern News, a radio programme on CKBI Radio. Her daily broadcasts at 5:45 pm earned her the title of "Voice of the North".

Doidge married her second husband, Charles Swenson, in 1960 and retired from the department later that year. She then moved to Edmonton, Alberta, where she worked as a reporter for the Edmonton Journal before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia to work for the Ministry of Forests. Jean Swenson died on November 20, 2002 and was buried in Portage la Prairie.