sentiment. She was appointed chair of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW) in 1979. She worked successfully for the inclusion of women's rights in the Canadian Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 28), adding a single statement to the Charter indicating that men and women are equal under law. The specific wording reads: "Notwithstanding anything in the Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed to male and female persons." It was clear, Anderson said, "that the charter of rights could do good things for women or, if it was a bad charter, it could be a terrible problem for women for generations to come." With CACSW, she commissioned research into issues such as the prevalence and prevention of domestic abuse and other violence against women. Her frustration with the status quo was evident in a column published in Maclean's in 1980, where she wrote of wage inequality, domestic violence, and being ignored by politicians. From 1982 to 1984, she was the president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, where she was known as a peacemaker within the movement. For almost a decade, beginning in 1984, she was a columnist for the Toronto Star (that ended when she refused to cross a picket line when Star writers were on strike). She was named a recipient of the Governor General's Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 1991, and served as Chancellor of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1992 to 1996. In 1994, Doris Anderson was invited to be an observer in the South African election that brought Nelson Mandela to power and ended apartheid, an opportunity her son Mitchell described as "one of the greatest thrills of his mother's life." Final years Anderson was named the chair of the Ontario Press Council in 1998, and in 2001, the Doris Anderson Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Women's Studies was established at York University to recognize her contributions. She was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 2002, the last public award she received during her lifetime. Anderson's final years were marked by ill health, from heart failure in 2001 to numerous other health problems that developed after a 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