Her work has received multiple awards, most recently an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta.
[2] Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario before working as a weekly newspaper reporter in central British Columbia.
She is past-president of both the Writers' Guild of Alberta and the League of Canadian Poets,[4][5] as well as former chair of the Edmonton Arts Council.
[6] In 2005, she was appointed to a two-year term as the first poet laureate for the City of Edmonton, and then went on to receive the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2017.
[7] During her tenure as poet laureate, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006.