Phyllis Ross

Canadian economist, civil servant, and university leader

Phyllis Marie Gregory Ross, (1903–April 18, 1988) was a Canadian economist, and civil servant who was the first female chancellor of the University of British Columbia and in the Commonwealth of Nations. She was also the mother of the 17th Prime Minister of Canada, John Turner.

Though elsewhere listed as Phyllis Gregory, born in Rossland, British Columbia, in 1903, the 1911 census of the Dominion of Canada, shows her as Phillis [sic] Marie Gregory born in British Columbia in June 1894 [sic] aged 6 (meaning that 1894 is probably a census taker's error for 1904). Her parents were mining company hoist operator, James William 'Jimmy' Gregory (February 22, 1867 – August 15, 1949, Vancouver), of Stellarton, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, of Irish extraction, and his wife Mary Margaret Macdonald (December 18, 1872 – May 10, 1958, Vancouver), of Mulgrave, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, daughter of a wealthy shipowning sea captain, of Scottish Catholic origins. They arrived in British Columbia in 1896 from their native Nova Scotia, with their elder children, Marcella and Gladys (later Mrs Michael Gillespie). Phyllis's brother, Howard James Gregory's birth is recorded at Rossland in 1898, though her own does not appear in British Columbia's on line birth indexes for the period.

She received a Bachelor's degree in economics and political science with first class honours from the University of British Columbia in 1925. She also studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Marburg. She married journalist Leonard Hugh Turner in London, England, in 1928. They had three children, one of whom, Michael, died in infancy. Her husband died of malaria complicated by goitre when she was 29. Shortly after becoming a widow in Great Depression era London, England in 1932, impoverished circumstances necessitated her return to Canada. She settled first with her parents in Rossland, and eventually she managed to obtain a position in Ottawa as an economist in the Public Service of Canada. Her education, gifts, and application caused her to rise to hitherto unreached heights for a woman of her generation among the overwhelmingly male mandarin establishment of Ottawa. Her combination of brains and elegance turned the head of bachelor Canadian prime minister, R. B. Bennett, later to become Viscount Bennett, who courted her during her widowhood. But she stayed single. In Ottawa, she served at the Canadian Tariff Board, the Dominion Trade and Industry Commission, and the Wartime Prices and Trade Board. She was also a Dame of St John of Jerusalem and, as a Roman Catholic laywoman, also a Dame of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Ross was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She died in her sleep on Saltspring Island in 1988.