a daughter, Amy. The marriage ended in 1994. Career McQuaig first worked as a journalist while a student at University of Toronto, initially writing and then co-editing, The Varsity, a year in each role. In 1974 she was hired as a full-time reporter by The Globe and Mail newspaper. In 1977 she became a story producer for CBC Radio's As It Happens. In 1979 she went to Tehran to freelance for the CBC, The Globe and Mail and Maclean's magazine, covering the aftermath of the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah. In 1981 she joined Maclean's as a senior writer, and in 1982 took a leave of absence to cover the 1982 Lebanon War from Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank. In 1983 McQuaig wrote a two-part piece for Maclean's with its then-assistant business editor Ian Austen investigating whether Canadian financier Conrad Black had tried to inappropriately influence the Attorney General of Ontario to stop an investigation into his attempted takeover of Ohio-based Hanna Mining Company. Years later, Black described McQuaig in his Toronto Sun column as a "weedy and not very bright leftist reporter" who writes "sophomoric, soporiferous left-wing books", and told host Peter Gzowski on CBC Radio that McQuaig deserved to be "horsewhipped". Later McQuaig was retained as a freelance columnist for Black's National Post newspaper. In 1984, McQuaig returned to the Globe as a political reporter, where she first came to national prominence in 1989 for uncovering the Patti Starr affair, in which former Ontario Place CEO Patti Starr was found to have illegally used charitable funds to make political donations, and for which McQuaig was awarded a Centre for Investigative Journalism Award and a National Newspaper Award. In 1991, she was awarded an Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy to study the social welfare systems in Europe and North America. This resulted in the Atkinson Foundation publishing, in 1992, a 51-page special report by McQuaig called Canada's Social Programs: Under Attack. Since 1992 McQuaig has written an op-ed column in the Toronto Star and has supported herself through a combination of freelance writing, speaking engagements and royalties from her books. Federal politics On 6 August 2013, McQuaig announced that she would seek the nomination of the New Democratic Party to run in the pending Toronto Centre by-election. On 15 September she won the nomination on the first ballot. The election to replace Bob Rae was won by