Margaret Aitken Margaret Aitken Margaret Aitken (July 3, 1908 – November 19, 1980) was a Canadian author, columnist, journalist, and politician. Aitken was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick. She attended Branksome Hall in Toronto. She was the daughter of J. Mauns Aitken and her uncle was Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook. Her brother, William Aitken and his son Jonathan Aitken (her nephew) were members of the British House of Commons. She started with the "Toronto Telegram" in 1938 and was a foreign correspondent. She was noted for covering the birth of Israel as a nation and she became a strong supporter of
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook Gazette". In 1907 he founded the Montreal Engineering Company. In 1909, also under the umbrella of his Royal Securities Company, Aitken founded the Calgary Power Company Limited, now the TransAlta Corporation, and oversaw the building of the Horseshoe Falls hydro station. In 1910–1911 Aitken acquired a number of small regional cement plants in Canada, including Sandford Fleming's Western Canada Cement Co. plant at Exshaw, Alberta, and amalgamated them into Canada Cement, eventually controlling four-fifths of the cement production in Canada. Canada was booming economically at the time, and Aitken had a monopoly on the material. There were irregularities in the