Doris Anderson

Doris Anderson

Doris Hilda Anderson, CC (November 10, 1921 – March 2, 2007) was a Canadian author, journalist and women's rights activist.

She was born in Calgary, Alberta as Hilda Doris Buck. She attended Crescent Heights High School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1945. She married lawyer David Anderson in 1957.

From 1957 to 1977, Anderson was editor of Chatelaine. She was a member of the Trilateral Commission, along with American neoconservatives, in the 1970s, and in 1974 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She was promoted to Companion in 2002.

In the 1978 by-election for the Toronto riding of Eglinton, she ran unsuccessfully for the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal. She was then appointed chair of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women in 1979. She worked for the inclusion of women's rights in the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 28). From 1982 to 1984, she was the president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

From 1984 to 1993, Anderson was a columnist for the Toronto Star. She was chancellor of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1992 to 1996. In 1998, she served as chair of the Ontario Press Council.

Anderson's final years were marked by ill health, from heart failure in 2001 to numerous other health problems that developed after her 2006 visit to Costa Rica. In February 2007 she was admitted to St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where she died on March 2 at age 85 from pulmonary fibrosis