Simma Holt was born in Vegreville, Alberta, March 27, 1922. Her father, Louis Milner, was born in Ukraine and settled in Alberta in the early 1900s. Simma Hold attended the University of Manitoba where she was inspired by John W. Dafoe to pursue a career in journalism. During her university years, she edited the Manitoban, the University of Manitoba student newspaper, and worked as a Manitoba Free Press correspondent. Upon graduation in 1944 with a B.A., she immediately began working as a teletype operator and reporter for the Canadian Press in Calgary. She joined the Vancouver Sun in 1944 where she served as general news reporter, columnist, and a night editor to train cub reporters. In 1976, she became a columnist for the Toronto Sun and, in 1986, a columnist for the Ottawa Sun and Vancouver Business. She also did freelance magazine writing for Reader's Digest, Macleans, Fair Lady in South Africa, and many other magazines. Simma Holt wrote four books: The Other Mrs. Diefenbaker (1983), Terror in the Name of God (1965), Sex and the Teen Age Revolution (1967) and The Devil's Butler (1971). In 1974, she was elected a Member of Parliament for the Vancouver Kingsway riding. She remained in government from 1975 to 1979. She served on the Justice and Legal Affairs Standing Committee, the Sub-Committee on Penitentiary Violence, and the Health and Welfare Committee. She published a series of columns and news stories which led to equality for women in law enforcement. She also published stories on abuses happening to Indian women on Vancouver streets. In 1964, she received a Woman of the Year Award in Canadian Arts and Letters for Terror in the Name of God, and, in 1985, was a Women of Distinction nominee by the YWCA in Vancouver. She was also a substitute host on leading Canadian open-line talk shows and a frequent guest on radio and television in Vancouver, Los Angeles, and New York. Holt was made a Member of the Order of Canada on November 14, 1996 and was included in the Canadian News Hall of Fame on May 4, 1996.