MARK SALBER PHILLIPS

December 15, 1946 – December 30, 2024 We mourn the death of Mark Salber Phillips, who died peacefully in Toronto on December 30th. His death ended a life devoted to teaching, historical research and writing, and a politics of social justice. Mark was born in 1946 in Durban, South Africa, and moved with his family to the United States in 1956 after apartheid made his parents' commitment to the racially equitable practice of medicine impossible. He earned his B.A in history at Harvard and went on to pursue graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. An anti-Vietnam war activist, Mark immigrated to Canada in 1968 when he was called up for the draft - sporting a new haircut to boost his chances with immigration officials at the border. He continued his graduate work at the University of Toronto and received his PhD in 1974. Mark began teaching history at Carleton University in 1971 and mentored students there and at UBC for four decades. A historian of ideas, he impressed on his students the interdisciplinary methods, respect for historical texts, and methods of close reading that characterized his own writing on Italian Renaissance and British Enlightenment historiography. His influential books and articles include Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820 (2000), and On Historical Distance (2013), which won the 2014 Wallace K. Ferguson prize from the Canadian Historical Association. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and held fellowships and visiting professorships at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, Yale University, the University of Chicago, the Australian National University, and three Cambridge colleges. Throughout his life, Mark took great pleasure in kayaks, puns, and dogs - most recently, Wilkie, who brought him great comfort as he battled Alzheimer's. He leaves his wife, Ruth; his daughters, Sarah Casteel and Emma Phillips; and his grandchildren, Harry, Isaac, Miriam, Zelda and Avie.