As Parliament Hill lowered its flag on Tuesday morning, Carleton did the same—half-mast in honour of the two university community members that died after an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed on March 10.
Pius Adesanmi, a Carleton professor and the director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS), was on the same plane as Peter DeMarsh, an alumnus of the university from 1985, when it crashed shortly after takeoff near Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. They were among 18 Canadians out of 157 passengers on board, all of who died in the crash.
In the days that followed, books of condolences for Adesanmi and DeMarsh have been set up along with telephone lines opened for members of the community shaken by the tragedy. The IAS has been closed out of respect for Adesanmi until Friday, March 15.
DeMarsh was a graduate of the master’s program in international affairs, and chaired the International Family Forestry Alliance and served as the president of the Canadian Federation of Woodlot Owners (FWO).
A Nigerian-Canadian, Adesanmi was appointed as the director for IAS in 2016, and was also cross-appointed by the department of English at Carleton. He specialized in francophone and anglophone African and Black diasporic literature, politics, and cultures.
“When you hear about plane crashes, you think the tragedy or calamity is so distant that it’s not close to you,” said Kennedy Aliu, a fourth-year African studies and sociology student, who took several classes with Adesanmi.
“It shouldn’t have to take a tragedy for people to understand the kind of man Pius was,” Aliu said. “Pius was just one of those academics that really cared.”
“I was absolutely in complete shock when I heard the news at 6:30 a.m. on Monday,” said David Coon, the provincial party leader for the Green Party of New Brunswick, who worked closely with DeMarsh in an environmental advocacy group several years ago.
“He cared about people, about rural communities and about supporting them in a way not many people did,” Coon said. “But, more than anything, Peter was a man of change. He was absolutely committed to the idea that people have to make change to advance the common good.”
Hours after the crash on Sunday, Carleton president and vice-chancellor Benoit-Antoine Bacon took to Twitter to offer condolences to the community for what had happened.
“We are all shocked and saddened that Peter DeMarsh and Pius Adesanmi, both leaders of change who contributed so much to the world, are no longer with us,” Bacon said in a press release issued earlier this week.
DeMarsh’s sister Helen posted on Facebook shortly after.
“Our circle was broken today with the sudden tragic loss of my beloved brother Peter on the Ethiopian Airlines crash this morning,” she said. “He was profoundly dear to me. I looked up to him and I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.”
“Praying for him as we remember his brilliance, devotion to humanity and the wellbeing of the planet.”
Joanna Andrew, a fourth-year bachelor of global and international studies (BGinS) student was part of Adesanmi’s class on African literature, and remembers him most for his passion.
“He wasn’t just about doing his job. As a teacher, it was more like he cared about his students, and he wanted to make sure they understood what he was trying to say,” she said. “At the Institute, we called him the father that a lot of us don’t have in school.”
Eric Thompson, the executive director of the Ontario chapter for the FWO, said DeMarsh was “the glue that held all the provinces under the federation together.”
“I just spoke with him on Friday for under an hour, and he was talking about retirement and all the trips that he’d been on,” Thompson said.
“I was jokingly asking him about his book of memoirs, and how long it took for him to recover from all these trips that he took all over the world. And he said, ‘if you ask me, it’d take me three days,’ but if you asked my wife, she’d say about three weeks.”
“Woodlot owners are not really thought of as important, living just in proximity to big cities. He cared, Peter cared, though—teaching people and politicians about why we needed help,” Thompson added.
Aliu said Adesanmi was like a second dad for him.
“He would scold you if you did something bad,” he said. “Even if you were wrong, he wanted you to be assertive in your answers. He was extremely encouraging, and he also wanted to know about your goals, your future, what are your plans.”
“The man embodied African students, the value of education or academia,” Aliu added. “You come into university looking for a professor that actually cares about you, and you’ve heard this myth in high school that professors don’t care, but Pius broke that myth.”
For Aliu and other students, Adesanmi changed the way they saw African studies.
“We always made this joke that Pius was the person that made us switch our majors, and declare our major in African studies,” Aliu said.
“He would tell you to read a poem in class, and you couldn’t just read the poem like a regular person. He wanted you to say it as a poem like you actually had life. He said, ‘Don’t read that poem like you’re hungry. Read it in the way the poem would want you to read it.’”
Bud Bird, a Canadian businessman and former mayor of Fredericton, N.B., said he worked closely with DeMarsh in the ‘80s when DeMarsh “was just a young man with an incredible energy.”
“You know, Peter and I were in frequent disagreements most of the times,” he said. “And the thing I remember most about Peter was his genuine, honest representations, and especially his capability to disagree without being disagreeable. He was always a gentleman and provided an integrity in conversations and in debates that you don’t ever find in adversarial situations.”
“Peter will long be remembered, by his peers in forestry and by the people of New Brunswick. His life’s work will be lasting.”
Femi Segun-Ige, a second-year biomedical science student from Calgary, said her parents and friends had encouraged her to take one of Adesanmi’s classes during her time at Carleton.
“When we first came to Ottawa last year, they recommended every African child—especially Nigerian children—to take one of his classes before graduating,” she said. “I found out after he passed away, when the news first came out, that my mom had been a follower of his work for several years.”
“I didn’t even know she knew him, but he had a blog on Facebook, and he talked a lot about Nigerian politics and society and the issues that we go through, and she said she loved his style of writing, and that he was always able to relate to both Africans and Nigerians.”
Rick Doucett, president of the New Brunswick Federation of Woodlot Owners, spent a lot of time with DeMarsh, restructuring the federation in recent years.
“As you start to look back, you think about how much work Peter’s done and the impact he’s had, you really realize how important to us he was,” Doucett said.
“I sincerely hope that if people didn’t get to have the opportunity to know who Peter was, through this great loss, you can finally get to know how important to us he was,” he added.
“There’s not enough Peters in the world, and you certainly don’t need to lose one.”
“I am Pius’ legacy. Most of the students in African studies are his legacy,” Aliu said. “There has to be something beyond this tragedy.”
Several community members told the Charlatan they hope to see the university honouring DeMarsh and Adesanmi’s legacies through a scholarship or memorial fund in the future.
A special service for Adesanmi has been planned to take place March 16, at 1 p.m., at the Metropolitan Bible Church in Nepean. Members of the community are invited to attend.
Portraits by Paloma Callo
