Ewart 'Fats' Walters has died
Published:Friday | July 28, 2023 | 12:02 AMLester Hinds/Gleaner Writer -
Noted journalist, author and diplomat, Ewart 'Fats' Walters, has died.
His death in Ottawa, Canada, was announced by his daughter-in-law, Sue Walters. No cause of death had been given up to last night.
Walters had a stellar journalism career in Jamaica.
He began his career as a journalist with the Public Opinion newspaper and went on to work with The Daily Gleaner before becoming the founding editor of The Daily News in Jamaica.
Walters headed The Daily News for several years before migrating to Canada where he worked with the Jamaican High Commission in Ottawa. After leaving the high commission, he founded The Spectrum, a Black newspaper in Ottawa.
For nearly 30 years, from 1984 to 2013, Walters was the editor and publisher of The Spectrum. During that time, Walters played a central role in covering and connecting Black communities throughout the Ottawa-Gatineau region. The Spectrum was known as a robust and reliable advocate for the interests of Black-Canadians in the capital, including Vincent Gardner, an unarmed Jamaican-Canadian man who was shot by an Ottawa police officer in August 1991, and died six weeks later in hospital. The Spectrum would lead the coverage of the Gardner case in the city, and the controversies that ensued from it.
Walters received two degrees in journalism from Carleton University. In the mid-1960s, he served as the editor-in-chief of The Carleton, the student newspaper on campus at the time. He was the first Black editor in the paper’s history.
In addition to his extensive journalism and diplomatic careers, Walters served as a federal public servant with the Canadian Interntional Development Agency.