She visited Montreal on her return to North America in the early 1970s before settling in Toronto, where she met her future husband Brian Bender, whom she married in 1974.
[2] Family also inspired her to write Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs, which was based on a time when Gilman's daughter and a friend went into 'business' making and selling mice bookmarks.
[1] Gilman reported that she grew to love the books she spent time working on, and missed them once they were finished and had been sent off to be published.
She cheered herself up by inserting subtexts or references to older works in newer stories; for instance, a tiny copy of The Balloon Tree can be seen on the table in an illustration in Jillian Jiggs.
[7] Phoebe Gilman died of leukemia in a Toronto hospital at age 62, two years after recovering from breast cancer.