Margo Timmins

Margo Timmins is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She is the lead vocalist of the alternative country and folk rock band Cowboy Junkies. Her brothers Michael Timmins and Peter Timmins are the band's lead guitarist and drummer.

Margo Timmins was born and spent most of her childhood in Montreal, one of six children of Barbara and John Timmins. Timmins' mother was "a very honest person, and very confident in who she was and her emotions and her place in the world. And I think if she gave anything, that's what she gave us: the sense that you do what you do, and not to worry about it too much. A confidence. Not a confidence that we're necessarily right, but even if we're wrong, well, too bad".

Timmins' father, who worked in aviation sales and marketing, was a jazz lover who passed this on to his daughter.

Timmins went through her brother Michael's record collection. Influences were: Highway 61 Revisited (1965); Blonde on Blonde (1966); Nashville Skyline (1969), by Bob Dylan;Nebraska (1982) by Bruce Springsteen; Harvest (1972) by Neil Young; Townes Van Zandt's Flyin' Shoes (1978).^{[citation needed]}

In 1977, the Timmins family moved from Montreal to Toronto. They lived in the west of Etobicoke. Timmins went to Richview Collegiate Institute.^{[citation needed]}

After graduating from high school, Timmins and her brother Michael explored the punk music scene in Toronto on Queen Street West. When Michael started his first band, the Hunger Project, she would hang out with the band, take the tickets, and carry the equipment.

Timmins earned money by doing clerical work for her father and performing chores around the house.

In her mid-20s, Timmins studied social work at university. In an interview with People she said, "As a kid I was always mistaken for a boy. I didn't get long hair until my early 20s. That's when I discovered hair was important."