When I was “committing journalism” (a phrase my newswriting professor Peter Bakogeorge bequeathed upon me) at the Valley’s longest running newspaper The Invermere Valley Echo, I had various beats to cover. But the ones which gave me the most joy and fulfillment were the ones that made me feel I had made a difference in my community.

I won several awards, but the one that vied for most meaningful with the Solicitor General’s Award was the Ma Murray Gold Award from the BC-Yukon Community Newspaper Association for Community Service for a series on mental health services in the Columbia Valley.

Who was Ma Murray and why did it matter so much to me?

Macleans wrote this about Margaret “Ma” Murray in 1966:

The fact is that Ma Murray is more than just “a brave pioneer citizen” of BC: she’s a freeswinging maverick, an individual in a province that prides itself in being full of individuals. Indeed, Ma Murray is almost an institution, a symbol of the blood-and-guts Victorianism of British Columbia’s lusty yesterdays. There are few women better known in the province — in Canada even — and when she was younger (she’s going on seventy-nine now) she was both well loved and soundly hated from the stuffy salons of Victoria up to the beer bars of Stewart on the Alaska border. Now that she’s old, most everyone loves her — but still they fear to end up on the wrong end of her salty tongue or be the target in one of those wildly ungrammatical, windmill attacks she calls editorials in the weekly newspaper she publishes and edits with singular gusto.

The fact that I would be anywhere close to the orbit of this incredible, tough, straight-shooting woman thrilled (and still thrills) me to no end.

I am still chuffed.