Obituaries

Ravish Tiwari, National Political Editor and Chief of National Bureau at The Indian Express died on 19 February 2022 at the age of 40. He had been fighting cancer since June 2020. 

Growing up in Deoria in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Ravish studied at the Indian Institute of Technology, where he got his dual B.Tech- M.Tech in metallurgy and material sciences. His passion for questions that go to the heart of politics and society made him switch to social sciences and he studied at Oxford University in 2005-2006 as a Rhodes Scholar.

In a media ecosystem where self-promotion is almost a credo, Tiwari let his stories do the talking. Some of his most recent work included flagging the shifting political wind on the farm laws to the RSS disquiet over the farm protests; revealing how the Government reached out to Congress chief whip the night before it split Jammu and Kashmir to explaining why this year’s Budget kept an arm’s length from politics. His analytical work identified crucial trends including the importance of the first-time voter in 2014 and the political economy of the national rural employment guarantee scheme.

Previously, he was associated with The Economic Times and India Today. As a political reporter, Ravish was sui generis. He treated his job as a vocation, living and breathing politics, and was seldom happier than when reporting from the ground. He had an inexhaustible appetite for work, and an unflappable temperament. A down to earth person, Ravish was generous to a fault, and the public outpouring of grief on his untimely death was an indicator of the impact that he had in his short life. A scholarship for underprivileged students has been started in Ravish’s name at his alma mater IIT Bombay.

Col. Charles Ross Wallis, (US Army, Ret.) age 93 of Folsom, California, died February 17, 2022 in California.  He was born on July 19, 1928 in Little Rock, to the late James Christopher Wallis and Edith (Teta) McCormick Wallis.  Reared and receiving his early education in Malvern, Hope, and Little Rock, he graduated from Little Rock High School in 1946.  He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from which he graduated in 1952. Charles was a Rhodes Scholar, and attended Oxford University in Oxford, England, graduating in 1955.  He served in the United States Army from 1946 until his retirement in 1982.  Charles was a college professor from 1985 until 1996 at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois.  He completed his formal education in 2010 after finishing at California Graduate School of Theology. 

He is survived by his wife, Irene C. Wallis of California; two daughters, Sue Wallis of Illinois, and Laura Groome of Texas; a son, Daniel Wallis of Oregon; and by six grandchildren, Stephanie, Kirby and Daniel Groome, and Daliah, Charles, II, and Paul Wallis; and by a great-grandchild, Kyla Pearl Groome.

Also preceding him in death were his first wife, Ruth Ann Shutz Wallis; a son, James C. Wallis, III; a granddaughter, Samantha Lynn Groome; and his sister and brother-in-law, Kaki and Tom Moore.

Written by Norm Halliwell. 

"Today, I would like to advise all of the passing of David Henry Eccles MBE who left this world on 7/12/21 at 8.40am aged 89 from a hospital bed in South Australia.

I remember David very fondly having first met up with him and his wife in England in 1988, and he took my son and I to the most westerly coast of the U.K. near the North Sea; it was bitterly cold there. We came to know him through his involvement with Dr. Ethelwynne Trewavas (later to become Dame Ethelwynne Trewavas), and Lake Malawi Cichlids in general and through the book they co-authored call “Malawi Cichlid Fishes. The classification of some Haplochromine genera. Lake Fish Movies, Herten, 334pp in 1989”.

David was a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Cape Town in Africa, and received an MBE for all his research in 1932.

I corresponded with him on many occasions on differing subjects, mainly to do with African Cichlids, and we kept in contact with each other over many years, to a point that I needed to get someone with credentials to adjudicate on a matter of utmost importance to the Australian Aquarium Industry, when the South Australian Fisheries Department was attempting to totally ban some 360 species of ornamental finfish from being kept, bred, and sold in that State.

It took the Aquarium Industry some 8.5 years to get to a point that these 360 species needed to be analysed and adjudicated as to whether these fish would cause a problem if they accidentally or otherwise appeared in any waterway of South Australia.

To cut a long story short, David was supplied by me with the year round climatic conditions of every waterway in South Australia, together with a list of the 360 species in question, in order to come up with the facts of any incursion into the environment there and was employed by the Aquarium Industry to determine and adjudicate as to how these 360 species of fish would be received into the environment in S.A., if they suddenly appeared there, and after several weeks work David came back with a pile of 500mm high paperwork of these 360 species and eventually this was supplied to the S.A. Fisheries Department, that FLOORED them in its detail, that enabled some 341 species from the list of 360, be allowed to be kept, bred, and sold in that State.

If it were not for David Eccles, I really do not know what would have happened, as I felt this was going to be the “thin edge of the wedge” as I felt there were other Australian States looking at this case in S.A., (which incidentally there were), and I for one did not want this to occur in New South Wales.

I will be eternally grateful for all the detailed work that David Eccles supplied to resolve this issue on behalf of the Aquarium Industry. The respect I have for him is enormous, it really is."

We are saddened by the news of Aveek's passing. Aveek came to Oxford in 1989 and studied English.

Sir Max Bingham QC was educated in New South Wales and Tasmania, and at the age of 18 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy and served as an able seaman at shore stations until 1946.

He was selected as the 1950 Tasmanian Rhodes Scholar and received a Bachelor of Civil Law at Lincoln College, Oxford. He later returned to Hobart in 1953, where he practised alongside Reg Wright, to whom he was articled at the University of Tasmania.

Bingham entered the Tasmanian Parliament when he was elected as a member for Denison at the 1969 state election on 10 May. On 26 May, he was made a minister in Angus Bethune's cabinet, becoming Attorney-General and Minister Administering the Police Department and the Licensing Act. On 4 May 1972, he was elected leader of the Liberal Party in Tasmania.

He contested two elections as opposition leader (1976 and 1979), but stood down in 1979 and was later appointed as Deputy Premier and Attorney-General in Gray's cabinet (as well as Minister for Education, Industrial Relations, and Police and Emergency Services).

After his time in the Tasmanian Parliament, Bingham joined the National Crime Authority, a federal law enforcement body focussing on organised crime. A distinguished lawyer and politician, Bingham was a corruption fighter on the national stage and was knighted for Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of his "service to the law, crime prevention, parliament and the community" in 1988. 

The Rhodes Trust is deeply grateful that Sir Max remembered the Trust in his Will.

Born in Summerside, Norman Webster grew up in the Eastern Townships and went to Bishop’s University in Lennoxville. In his last year at Bishop’s, Norman won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University to study philosophy, politics and economics. While studying at Oxford, Norman met his future wife Patterson en route to France.

Norman began working at the Globe as a reporter in 1965 and reported from Quebec City, China, Ontario and England. He became editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail from 1983 to 1989. He is perhaps most famous for his reporting on China during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as one of the few Western reporters in China at the time.

After leaving the Globe and Mail, Norman became editor-in-chief of the Montreal Gazette from 1989 to 1993 and continued to write a regular column for the newspaper after stepping down from that role.

After leaving his job as editor of the Gazette, Norman ran the R. Howard Webster Foundation, which gives grants to non-profit corporations.

Norman died in November 2021 from complications of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 80.

Norman leaves his wife, Patterson; children, David, Andrew, Derek, Gillian and Hilary; 11 grandchildren; sister, Maggie; and many nieces and nephews.

Wilf was born in Wagenitz, Germany shortly after WW2. As a toddler his mother bravely risked carrying him over 'no-man's land' when his parents escaped East Germany for a safer life. The family settled in east Vancouver.

Wilf excelled in athletics and academics. As a 20-yr old high jumper, he was Simon Fraser University's first Olympian. Later, he became SFU's first Rhodes Scholar, achieving a master's degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford.

He returned to Canada and built a career as a respected change agent and leader. Career highlights include founding the Premier's Sport Awards Program with fellow Olympian Harry Jerome, leadership roles with many national sport organizations, producing a TV series, and coaching high jump. Wilf finished his career as SFU's Athletic Director where he left a legacy of new facilities. Wilf sought to contribute to his community through sport and he challenged most people in leadership roles to think in untraditional ways.

Giacomo “James” Gobbo was born in Carlton, Victoria, in 1931.

Born in Melbourne to Italian parents, he was the first person from a non-English speaking background to ever be appointed a state governorship. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, he received a Rhodes Scholarship and left Oxford with a BA and an MA.

Sir James' continued contribution to the law, multicultural affairs and hospitals was recognised in 1993 when he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. 

Sir James served as the 25th governor of Victoria from 1997 until 2000, under premiers Jeff Kennett and Steve Bracks. He was appointed to Victoria’s Supreme Court in 1978 and was knighted in 1982 for his services to the community.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, said:

“Sir James was rightly proud of his rich Italian heritage and of the multicultural nation he served. In so many ways Sir James was the father of modern multiculturalism in Australia, which stands as one of his most significant legacies."

Ronald Storrs McCall died peacefully in Lachute, Quebec, surrounded by his family, at the age of 91. He is lovingly remembered by his wife, Ann (née Griffin), his children, Mengo, Kai (Sepideh), Sophie (David) and his grandchildren Kalliopé, Anoushak, Timoléon, Maya, Skye and Scarlet.

Storrs was a deeply curious person with a lifelong love of learning. He brought big ideas to all he did as a philosopher, teacher, farmer and fun-loving family man. He loved sports and was a true all-rounder in golf, hockey, rowing, tennis, squash and skiing. Together with Ann, he hosted many memorable dinner parties. He loved head-scratching riddles, valued conversation and challenged his guests intellectually in friendly and generous ways. He was committed to many causes, from promoting education in Uganda and Southern Sudan in the 1960s, resisting land expropriation at Mirabel in the 1970s, promoting a bilingual and multicultural Quebec in the 1980s, proposing a Great Books program at McGill University in the 1990s and supporting the Nature Conservancy of Canada in the 2000s. His warm, positive and hopeful vision of life was shaped by values of fairness and generosity.

Always a top student, Storrs became a Rhodes scholar in 1953 and earned his D.Phil in 1964 at Oxford University. With interests in philosophy and math, physics and literature, art and politics, he was a true Renaissance man, bridging academic disciplines. His life's work as a philosopher culminated in his landmark book, A Model of the Universe (Oxford 1994). Beginning with a straightforward explanation of time flow using a branched tree model, the book applies advanced theories of quantum mechanics and math to shed light on enduring philosophical questions.

Storrs had a legendary style of lecturing, captivating generations of students with his accessible delivery, his humour and his brightly patterned, wide ties. He believed everyone benefited from studying the great thinkers in the Western canon, and his Introduction to Philosophy class was taken by thousands of undergraduates who went on to pursue careers in many different fields. From 1965 to 1971, he and others worked to establish the study of philosophy at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. He also taught at the University of Pittsburgh before returning with his young family to McGill. He had a long-standing presence at McGill, with over fifty years of teaching, beginning in his early twenties. He was a daily attendee at the Faculty Club where he joined fellow academics in lively discussions over lunch. He gave generously to McGill, establishing the Professor Storrs McCall Fellowship for Graduate Students in Philosophy in 2019.

North River Farm was Storrs's true home, and a gathering place for his immediate and extended family. His interests at the farm included agriculture as well as a deep commitment to nature and conservation. Storrs's father first established the farm, and it grew further with the dedicated contributions of Bill Brass, his son Ian Brass, and Clifton Berry. Their expertise in agriculture produced top quality Jersey and Aberdeen Angus herds, maple syrup, and crops. A decade ago, wishing to preserve the natural beauty and biodiversity of the farm in perpetuity, Storrs signed a document of protection with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

All of his accomplishments would not have had meaning without Storrs's beloved wife and companion, Ann. They met in 1962 in the philosophy classroom at McGill. Waiting until after her graduation, they married and set off on a life of adventure; enjoying a happy and harmonious marriage of fifty-seven years. Their compatibility extended in everything they did. They enjoyed combining work and pleasure, whether it was singing together in a choir or taking sabbaticals in Australia. In later years, Storrs was lovingly cared for by Ann, who always encouraged him to stay active and connected to his family. For Storrs, his enduring love for his family always came first and was the source of his greatest happiness.