Dr. Mark Phillips was, and remains, a cherished ICSLAC and Carleton community member. Already greatly missed, he leaves behind a beloved family and esteemed career. The department extends its sincere sympathies to the Phillips and Casteel family.
We mourn the death of Mark Salber Phillips, who died peacefully in Toronto on December 30. His death ended a life devoted to teaching, historical research and writing, and a politics of social justice. Equally important to him were his wife Ruth and his daughters Sarah Casteel and Emma Phillips, whom he loved and supported in innumerable ways.
Mark was born in Durban, South Africa and spent his childhood in Cape Town. He emigrated to the United States in 1956 after his parents realized that their commitment to a racially equitable practice of medicine would not be possible under apartheid. Mark earned his B.A in history at Harvard and, with Ruth, went on to pursue graduate work at University of California, Berkeley. Mark had been active in the anti-Vietnam war movement since his undergraduate years, and when he was called up for the draft in 1968 he and Ruth decided to emigrate to Canada – driving across the border sporting a new haircut they hoped would make him look more acceptable to Canadian immigration authorities. Mark and Ruth continued their graduate work at the University of Toronto, where Mark received his PhD in 1970.
He was hired to teach history at Carleton University in 1971, with a subsequent appointment at UBC. For four decades, he mentored students, teaching them to respect texts and read them closely as expressions of unique historical periods and cultures. A historian of ideas, Mark’s teaching and work were interdisciplinary well before this approach was widely adopted, reflecting his deep love and broad knowledge of literature and art.
Mark worked initially on the Italian Renaissance. His first book, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian’s Craft (1977), examined the work of one of Italy’s most important historians. In contrast, his second book, The Memoir of Marco Parenti: A Life in Medici Florence (1987), explored the texture of the daily life of a Florentine merchant. A major shift came in the 1980s when he began to work on eighteenth-century British historiography and the Scottish Enlightenment. Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820 (2000), perhaps his most influential book, was followed a decade later by the work he regarded as his most important, On Historical Distance (2013). Beyond these monographs he also published a wide range of important scholarly articles and three co-edited volumes on concepts of tradition, historical distance, and, toward the end of his life, history painting.
Mark was the recipient of major honours including a Guggenheim fellowship, appointments as a fellow at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and three Cambridge colleges, and membership in the Royal Society of Canada. On Historical Distance won the 2014 Wallace K. Ferguson prize from the Canadian Historical Association.
In both his personal and his professional life, Mark was noted for the passion for language that inspired his elegant prose, his teaching of the craft of writing, his incurable love of puns, and his fascination with etymology. He was devoted to his kayak at Bob’s Lake and his beloved dogs, most recently Wilkie who brought him great comfort as he battled Alzheimer’s.
In addition to his wife and two daughters, Mark leaves his five grandchildren, Harry, Isaac, and Miriam Casteel and Zelda and Avie Gillespie – to each of whom he leaves a legacy of a love for language and a commitment to tikkun olam.
A memorial in his honor will take place on Saturday, February 8th, 2025 in the Palour, at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre from 1:00pm-4:00pm.
An obituary ran in The Globe and Mail, and multiple departments and societies which Mark served through his incredible career released announcements to share his passing, a reflection of his ongoing effect and impact!