UVic prof caught up in 2012 health firings remembered as 'force of nature' Health Minister Adrian Dix called UVic professor Rebecca Warburton a ‘remarkable, determined, generous person who stuck to her position and stuck to her belief in the evidence’ Cindy E. Harnett May 19, 2024 5:10 AM Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message Rebecca Warburton with son Dave in the early 1990s. FAMILY PHOTO Listen to this article 00:06:37 Rebecca Warburton worked as everything from a CIA analyst contributing to then-U.
S. president Jimmy Carter’s daily briefings to a researcher and University of Victoria professor, but it was the infamous 2012 Health Ministry firings that put her in the headlines. Health Minister Adrian Dix, who advocated on behalf of the fired researchers at first in Opposition and later in government, said the general advice in such controversies is to move on, but that wasn’t Warburton’s style.
“She was absolutely a force of nature,” Dix said of Warburton, who died suddenly at age 70 on March 13 after complications involving a ruptured appendix. “This was a remarkable, determined, generous person who stuck to her position and stuck to her belief in the evidence.” Warburton, who earned a master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics, worked for several B.
C. government ministries, and won a tenure-track position in UVic’s School of Public Administration three years after earning her PhD.
