Beryl Plumptre, chair, Food Prices Review Board, addresses the crowd during Farm and Home Week.

Bio/Historical Note: Born in 1908 in Melbourne, Australia, Beryl Alyce Plumptre (nee Rouch) graduated from the Presbyterian Ladies College there. Shortly after launching her career with the Bank of New South Wales, she won a scholarship to Cambridge University where she pursued graduate studies in economics with John Maynard Keynes. Unfazed by the fact that women in the professions were still uncommon, Plumptre established her own credentials as an economist, working with agencies such as the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, the Tariff Board and the Royal Commission on Coastal Trading. She also became a fearsome consumer advocate, serving as national president of the Consumers Association of Canada from 1961 to 1966. Plumptre played a determining role in the establishment of a new federal department responsible for consumer affairs – an effective but short-lived voice for Canadian consumers that subsequent governments soon muffled by burying it deep within the bureaucracy. She also spoke up for consumer interest as a member of the now-defunct Economic Council of Canada. In 1973 Plumptre was appointed to head the Food Prices Review Board, where she insisted that she would report not to the government, but directly to the people of Canada. This appointment was followed by another as vice-chair of the Anti-Inflation Board, from which she resigned in 1977. Plumptre died in Ottawa in 2008 at age 99.