A memorial is scheduled Saturday in Toronto for journalist John Phillips, who served 25 years as editor of the Ontario farming journal Farm and Country.
Phillips died “peacefully” Wednesday at Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga at age 88, according to his obituary.
According to Farm and Country’s successor magazine Better Farming, Phillips was the now-defunct ag journal’s editor for 25 years ending in 1992, and previously served there as a reporter and business editor.
Phillips’ stories about farm families “were very powerful,” former Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Gordon Hill was quoted as saying Friday on Better Farming’s website.
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“John was very much in the farmers’ side. He knew farmers’ problems and he was very sympathetic. He wanted to see their stories told.”
Phillips, whose wife Benita Rose died in 1999, is survived by five daughters and 12 grandchildren.
In Phillips’ honour, the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation previously named its annual award for news photography the “John Phillips Award.”
Toronto-based Farm and Country’s parent firm, Agricultural Publishing Co., entered bankruptcy in 1999 and laid off its staff, several of whom launched what’s now AgMedia Inc., the publisher of Better Farming, that same year.
Phillips’ funeral mass was scheduled for 11 a.m at Toronto’s Holy Family Church. Donations in his memory can be made to Water Ambassadors Canada to assist relief efforts in Nepal and elsewhere. — AGCanada.com Network
