SEJ mourns the passing of Peter Desbarats on Tuesday, February 11, 2014 at the age of 80. Peter was a member of SEJ's advisory board, [2] served two years as an SEJ Awards for Reporting on the Environment [3] judge, and moderated a panel on energy, "Tales From the Oilpatch: From Canada to the Midwest," [4] in October 2009 at SEJ's 19th Annual Conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

Canadian journalist Peter Desbarats, a Loyola College graduate and former professor and dean of the University of Western Ontario's Graduate School of Journalism, served for over 56 years in various positions with print publications and television productions including, but not limited to, The (Montreal) Gazette, Reuters, The Winnipeg Tribune, The Montreal Star, Parallel Magazine, "Hourglass" nightly public affairs show, CBC-TV, Toronto Star, Global Television (Ottawa bureau chief), Royal Commission on Newspapers, Global CanWest Fellow at UWO's Faculty of Information & Media Studies, London Magazine, Media Critic (Eye on the Media), the Financial Post, London Free Press, The Globe and Mail, CanWest Global, Maclean Hunter Chair of Communications Ethics at Ryerson Polytechnic University, and the Canadian Journalism Foundation. Desbarats was author and/or editor of several books, films, publications and plays; a freelance contributor to numerous magazines; and recipient of an Actra Award for Best News Broadcaster.

• Peter's obituary. [5]
• "Peter Desbarats: A media man of the Mad Men era," [6] Globe and Mail, February 15, 2014, by Fred Langan.