Peter Desbarats
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| Born | (1933-07-02)July 2, 1933 |
| Died | February 11, 2014(2014-02-11) (aged 80) |
| Occupation(s) | journalist, writer |
| Known for | Global News anchor, Toronto Star columnist |
Peter Hullett Desbarats, OC (July 2, 1933 – February 11, 2014) was a Canadian author, playwright and journalist.[1] He was also the dean of journalism at the University of Western Ontario (1981–1997),[1][2] a former commissioner in the Somalia Inquiry[1][2] and a former Maclean-Hunter chair of Communications Ethics at Ryerson UniversityinToronto, Ontario.
Until his death from Alzheimer's disease,[3] he lived in a heritage home with his actress wife Hazel in the East Woodfield Heritage Conservation District in London, Ontario.[3]
Peter Desbarats was born in 1933 to Hullett Desbarats (a descendant of the printer and publisher George-Édouard Desbarats)[2] and Margaret Rettie.[4] The family lived on Connaught Avenue in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, where Peter attended Loyola High School.[2]
Before he was appointed dean of UWO's journalism school, which he successfully fought to save in the 1990s when UWO wanted to discontinue the program,[2] he worked as a print and television journalist for 30 years,[5] starting as a copy boy with the Canadian Press,[2] Canada's national news co-operative, in his home town of Montreal.[3]
Desbarats worked in London's Fleet Street for Reuters news agency,[2][3] as a political reporter and foreign correspondent for the Montreal Star[5] and as national affairs columnist for the Toronto Star.[1] In the 1960s and early 1970s he hosted the supper-hour news and current affairs show on Montreal television station CBMT,[3] and in the 1970s was co-anchor and Ottawa Bureau Chief for the Global Television Network,[1] winning the 1977 ACTRA Award for best news broadcaster.
Desbarats wrote 13 books, including René: A Canadian in Search of Country, a best-selling biography of René Lévesque;[1][2] Somalia Cover-Up: A Commissioner's Journal, a book about his stint on the Somalia Inquiry;,[2] and Guide to Canadian News Media, a standard journalism text;[5] as well as several children's books[6] and a 2002 stage play, Her Worship, about controversial London mayor Dianne Haskett.[3] With the cartoonist Aislin, he co-wrote one of the first books of comics history in Canada, The Hecklers: A History of Canadian Political Cartooning and a Cartoonists' History of Canada. He was later a contributor to The Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and The London Free Press,[3] as well as an active community volunteer in London.[3]
In 2006, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.[1][2]
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