Remembering former Crosstalk editor Art Babych

Retired Crosstalk editor Art Babych passed away on July 13, 2025 at the age of 83.

Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Babych began his career as a broadcast journalist. He started out at a radio station in Weyburn, Sask., and went on to work at radio and television stations in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon.

Later in his career, he switched to print media, first writing for The Prairie Messenger, a Benedictine Catholic newspaper in Muenster, Sask. In 1992, he became the first Parliament Hill correspondent for the Canadian Catholic News, a news-sharing co-operative run by seven large Catholic newspapers in Canada. He was the first religion reporter to be accredited by the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.

Before his retirement in 2015, he was the editor of Crosstalk for 10 years, working with Bishop Peter Coffin and Bishop John Chapman as publishers during those years. During that time, he won numerous awards as a writer, editor and photographer from the Canadian Church Press as well as the Associated Church Press in the U.S. He also helped the Anglican Journal cover several General Synods.

An excellent photographer, Babych continued to pursue photography as a freelancer, and his family wrote in a memorial that it was his passion.

The current Crosstalk editor is grateful for his kind advice and generousity sharing his excellent photos with the newspaper in recent years.

He is mourned by his wife Marilyn, son Darren, daughter Crystal (Greg Lilbourne), and stepson Michael Emond (Hanady Rahme & Gabe), as well as his grandson and many nieces and nephews.

A former journalist himself, Bishop Bruce Myers of the Anglican Diocese of Quebec shared this memory and prayer: “Before Art and I crossed paths in churchland as diocesan editors, we’d already worked alongside each other as parliamentary correspondents in Ottawa in the mid 90s, grinding out copy each day a few desks from each other in what was known as the Hot Room in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill. He was a great colleague and gifted journalist in both contexts. Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.”