Fellowship being created to honour memory of Toronto Star national affairs columnist Jim Travers

Families, friends, colleagues and admirers have banded together to create a fellowship in memory of Jim Travers, the Toronto Star columnist, according to a posting on J-Source.ca. He died suddenly March 3 from complications after surgery and his unexpected death (and their admiration for his writing and journalism) galvanized people to create the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship. It will give an annual award of $25,000 to cover travel, reporting and research expenses as well as a stipend. 

Travers was a Southam News correspondent in Africa and the Middle East, general manager of the Southam news service, editor of the Ottawa Citizen, executive managing editor of the Toronto Star and for the past decade the Star's national affairs columnist. 

A seven-member steering committee  has set its sights on raising $500,000 that would endow the award in perpetuity; the first award will be made in 2012 and will be administered by Carleton University through its school of journalism and communication in the faculty of public affairs.

Details about donations to the fellowship and about the award can be found here.