Peter Hullett Desbarats, OC (July 2, 1933 – February 11, 2014) was a Canadian author, playwright and journalist.
[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.
[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.