Just before 2 a.m. on April 5, 2026, Renaud De Plaen sent a message that anthropologists and friends of Joachim Voss would hear clearly. It was a haiku remembrance of Joachim: an explorer with deep roots in relationships, in the earth, in a vision of abundant beauty and justice:
Joachim has just left us for his final trip. He is now an ancestor who will care for us.
Cheng Xu’s memorial of Joachim for the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies synthesizes beautifully what Joachim built in scholarship, frontline development work, international leadership, and decades of engagement with Indigenous communities in the northern Cordillera of the Philippines: “he believed that meaningful knowledge had to be grounded in relationships, in lived experience, and in careful attention to the social worlds through which people understood land, livelihood, conflict, and change. His work…was animated by a profound respect for local communities and by a conviction that sustainable development could only be pursued in ways that were attentive to history, dignity, and human complexity.”
In his years at IDRC, at CIAT, and after “retirement” as he continued active engagement with the Board of Seed Change, Joachim demonstrated this clear-eyed, humane, generous excellence, rigour, and purpose, right up to the last week of his life. I met Joachim in 1990 at IDRC, through his wife Dr Villia Jefremovas who was working with the Health and the Community Programme I joined then as a programme officer. In the 36 years of friendship since, I had many opportunities to see Joachim in action – in Ottawa, in Cali, in Sagada, in Cantley.
A fierce feminist in the workplace, Joachim sought out, hired and promoted bright and collegial women. He started a daycare at CIAT. He examined and challenged barriers placed by gender norms and kept up with new thinking in how to subvert patriarchy – including taking university courses in gender analysis and action into his 70s. He believed in women’s knowledge as real scientific knowledge, not just peasant knowledge – all his research was with women farmers.
His extensive and continuously updated knowledge, critical mind, and relentless determination to make progressive change happen were usually manifested through charm and an apparently easy-going nature. Those of us who knew him weren’t fooled – nothing casual or easy-going about this person’s vision, and an ego strong enough and tempered by enough generosity to recognize that this vision could only be realized if people who were normally at loggerheads or in silos could be brought to listen to and occasionally learn from and even cooperate with others. He was an outstanding mentor, a beloved boss if you could tolerate a (fair) bit of chaos, an insightful, generous and constructively critical colleague who evoked loyalty and affection among staff, scientists, friends.
Just don’t disturb his coffee, the gym breaks and yoga classes he built into his IDRC agenda as “meetings” to maintain the physical energy and flexibility essential to such an approach, or his chocolate. His daughter Larysa learned early to hide her Hallowe’en stash carefully.
After retirement – building a house, renovating another, planting gardens (and harvesting “volunteers” that kept popping up in the heirloom potato field after it was recommissioned for other plants that naturally the local groundhogs preferred), building beautiful furniture (he built the buffet in the house on Grosvenor Avenue out of mahogany “packing crates” in which the family’s belongings were shipped back from Rwanda). Walking – a 21-day trek in the Himalayas in March 2018, just months before he was diagnosed with the cancer that he lived with for another 7 years; organizing a spectacular 4-day trek in the Cordillera for Canadian visitors in February 2024 with the Igorot guides with whom he had explored those mountains over 40 years. Hunting and gathering chanterelles in the forest up the hill behind the house in Cantley. Making crepes on Sunday mornings. Canoeing – often into “Joachim’s inlet” on the Gatineau River to see what the irises, beavers, and herons were up to. Skating on the wild ice of the frozen Gatineau River during the COVID-19 lockdown. Photography with Villia – photo safaris in Vietnam, Yukon, Northwest Territories; a weekly photography field course in Ottawa. Reading – novels, stories, news, substacks, essays. Final visits to Colombia and the Philippines in 2025.
My last visit with Joachim and Villia was in February 2026. After I came back to Australia, Joachim and I continued to talk in our new book club, and in the private photography course he gave me – sending homework, sending feedback. The last books we read together were beautiful, hard books: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, and Richard Powers’ The Overstory. Two weeks before he died, Joachim sent this comment on a chapter of The Overstory based on the life and work of Suzanne Simard:
The story about the female biologist who discovers the trees are communicating also really struck home. Brilliant insights that subvert the prevailing orthodoxy are punished by the establishment. I really like how this story goes full circle to final vindication. When I gave a talk at the Swiss agricultural university, I was surprised that plant sociology has become an established field of study!
Thank you my friend. Safe travels.
Christina Zarowsky
Bulletin 81
July 2026