Peter Desbarats

Peter Hullett Desbarats, OC (July 2, 1933 – February 11, 2014) was a Canadian author, playwright and journalist. He was also the dean of journalism at the University of Western Ontario (1981–1997), a former commissioner in the Somalia Inquiry he lived in a heritage home with his actress wife Hazel in the East Woodfield Heritage Conservation District in London, Ontario. to Hullett Desbarats (1909-1963), a descendant of the printer and publisher George-Édouard Desbarats by way of his son Hullet Charles Henri Desbarats) The family lived on Connaught Avenue in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, where Peter attended Loyola High School. starting as a copy boy with the Canadian Press, and a 2002 stage play, Her Worship, about controversial London mayor Dianne Haskett. 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, as well as an active community volunteer in London.

In 2006, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.