The last few years of reading The Western Producer must have been tough sledding for Bob Phillips.
In his last column for the newspaper when he retired almost 20 years ago, he quoted legendary New York publisher Horace Greeley as writing: “The purpose of a newspaper is to print the largest practical amount of important truth, truth which tends to make mankind wiser and happier.”
Lately, the news of farm income woes and sector crisis may make readers wiser but surely not happier.
On May 6, R.H.D. Phillips died unexpectedly in Saskatoon at age 84.
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He was a member of the Order of Canada, a recipient of a Centennial Medal from Saskatchewan in 2005, an army veteran, journalist and long-time director of research for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
Phillips became publisher of The Western Producer in 1973 and over his 13 years, transformed the technology, staff and mandate of the newspaper to make it modern and national.
“He was a doer,” former Producer editor Keith Dryden, who met Phillips 52 years ago at the Regina Leader Post, said in a May 8 interview. “He was a builder. I think he was an over-builder, actually, and probably at the Producer put together a team that was bigger than was necessary for our resources. But it got results and that’s how he should be measured.”
Sandy Phillips said his father had a career measured in equal 13-year stretches after his service in the Second World War – time as a journalist in Saskatchewan and Europe, time as research director for Sask Pool and time as publisher of The Western Producer.
“But beyond his career he had a love of family, a very strong attachment to his church and a rich array of experiences and friends,” he said. “He was very proud of what he did in journalism and at the Producer.”
In 2002 when he was awarded an Order of Canada, Phillips was cited for his contribution to “the economic, cultural and social fabric of Saskatchewan.”
But in an interview at the time, his reporter roots showed and he wanted to talk about how, during his leadership years at the Producer, the paper began to cover international and national issues that affected farm readers. He oversaw the beginning of a national bureau system and international travel.
He remembered a decision in 1974 to send Dryden to a world food summit in Rome. It was unprecedented.
“I said that world food issues are very much part of what we should be covering,” he said. “Now the Producer wouldn’t think of not being at an event like that.”
There will be a memorial service for Phillips in Saskatoon June 17 at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church.
