Margaret Avison was born April 23, 1918 in Galt, Ontario. She was raised in Regina and Calgary. She earned her degree from the University of Toronto, 1936 to 1940 and her M.A. from 1963 to 1965. She spent 8 months in Chicago on a Guggenheim Scholarship and two years' teaching at Scarborough College, University of Toronto from 1967 to 1968. She worked for eight months from 1973 to 1974 at the University of Western Ontario as Writer-in-Residence. Avison has won several leading awards; two of her books have won the Governor General's Award and her book Concrete and Wild Carrot won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003. Margaret Avison died in August 2007 in Toronto.