Growing up in Winnipeg's Russian Jewish immigrant community, Miriam Waddington early on experienced a mixture of European traditions and Canadian life. After she earned degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Pennsylvania, she became a social worker in Montreal. During this period she published poetry that expressed her anger over social conditions. In 1960, Waddington left social work and earned an M.A. in English. She taught at York University from 1964 until her retirement, in 1983. Waddington's poetry and short fiction are informed by her being both a Jew and a woman. Although her work conveys a sense of loss and a feeling of displacement, the despair "is always… mitigated, for she retains threads of traditions that still anchor her, memories that keep her company, and an ironic sense of humor," according to An Anthology of Canadian Literature.