Margaret “Miggsy” Graham was born at Upper Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia. At age 16 she attended Normal School at Truro, Nova Scotia. She taught school for a years and during that time advocated for women teachers through the provincial Teachers’ Association. In 1893 Graham moved to Trinidad as a missionary but was unable to complete her term there because of a horseback riding accident. After returning home to convalesce she visited her journalist brother in New York. By 1897 she had become a journalist at the Halifax Herald. Seven years later she was in Ottawa as a correspondent for the Herald, covering Ottawa society. While working briefly in Montreal for the Montreal Star in 1904, Graham was the inspiration behind the Canadian Pacific Railway’s giving 16 women journalists the same free passage it offered male journalists to travel to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, commonly called the St. Louis World Fair. During that trip the women founded the Canadian Women’s Press Club. In 1905 Graham married Albert Horton, a well-known editor of Hansard and they lived in Ottawa until her death at Montreal in 1924. The awards in her name were funded originally by their daughter, Mrs. Lois Grant