Margo Oliver, one of Canada's best magazine food editors, dead at 87

Margo Oliver, a "glamorous" magazine food writer and author of seven best-selling cookbooks, has died in Ottawa at the age of 87. Her death notice was published in the Globe and Mail.(Her married name was Margaret Morgan.) 

She was the food editor for Weekend magazine and its successor Today from 1959 to 1982, during which time it was estimated she produced more than 9,600 kitchen-tested recipes for many millions of readers. (Today's niche magazine readers cannot really fathom how influential those weekend magazines were, reaching the majority of Canadian homes as supplements to major daily newspapers across the country.) Shown is one of her retirement projects, published in 1989.

Oliver worked for General Mills before getting into magazines; they wanted her as the first "Canadian Betty Crocker" and she toured the country for four years doing food demonstrations.

Although she was reputed never to have had a cooking failure, there was one memorable mishap when she was just learning to microwave:

Margo had on of the very first microwave ovens in her Betty Crocker Canada kitchens, and was just learning to operate it. A tour group came through, and on one of her very first demonstrations, she proudly showed off this space-age appliance by cooking eggs. Margo admitted that the group was still picking bits of cooked egg and shells out of their little pillbox hats when they left.

This is from is a thorough and interesting biography of Oliver on the website of Ontario Home Economics in Business, which inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 1993.