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For nearly thirty years (1984-2013) Ewart Walters was the editor and publisher of The Spectrum, Ottawa’s Black Community newspaper. 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 (BJ & MJ) from Carleton University. In the mid 1960s he served as the editor-in-chief of The Carleton, the student newspaper on campus in the mid 1960s. He was the first Black editor in the paper’s history. Prior to coming to Canada Walters wrote for the Jamaican Gleaner, the biggest newspaper in Jamaica, and also the Jamaica Daily News. In addition to his extensive journalistic career, Walters served as both a diplomat for the Jamaican government and as a federal public servant with Canadian Interntional Development Agency. ( CIDA)

On February 15th as part of the School of Journalism's and Communications' Black History Month lecture series, Ewart Walters will deliver a talk entitled “My Journey,” in which he will tell the story of his remarkable 6-decade long career in journalism that began in the early 1960s in Jamaica and continued into the 2010s in Canada. He will also highlight the critical stories, particularly on race-related issues, that the Spectrum championed.