Rex Murphy, the controversial Newfoundland-born pundit and wordsmith whose writing and often-blistering commentaries have been the main target of a decades-long profession in Canadian media, has died at the age of 77, in accordance with the National Post.
“You might not agree with what Rex had to say, but oh, boy, could he ever say it,” stated comic and fellow Newfoundlander Mark Critch, who carried out an impression of Murphy on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
In a report published on the Post’s website on Thursday, the newspaper stated Murphy died after a battle with most cancers, and he had final corresponded with an editor there on Tuesday, inquiring about his most-recent column.
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey posted a press release on the social platform X Thursday saying that individuals there “are mourning one of our own tonight, and sending condolences to his family and friends.”
Murphy’s “quick wit and mastery of words were unmatched, and his presence was significant — whether or not everyone always agreed,” Furey stated, echoing a theme that Critch touched upon in his personal remembrances.
Critch advised CBC News that he’d “only known a world with Rex in it,” explaining that he grew up subsequent to a radio station the place his father labored, together with Murphy.
Speaking with CBC News, comic Mark Critch shared recollections of Rex Murphy, who handed away from most cancers at 77. ‘I’ve solely identified a world with Rex in it,’ stated Critch, reminiscing on when he was a boy, his father had labored with Murphy and that was how he first got here to know the ‘man with wild hair, in a golden turtleneck.’
“As a little boy, I remember seeing this man with wild hair in a golden turtleneck, listening to music with dad at the house and he was larger than life,” Critch stated Thursday.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper, in a tribute posted on social media, remembered Murphy as “one of the most intelligent and fiercely free-thinking journalists this country has ever known.”
In one other social media tribute, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre referred to as Murphy “an icon, a pioneer of independent, eloquent and fearless thought, and always a captivating orator who never lost his touch.”
Newspapers, radio and TV
Murphy graduated from Newfoundland’s Memorial University earlier than attending Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1968.
He bought his begin lending a hand at the personal radio station VOCM in St. John’s, backfilling a chat present whereas its host went on trip.
Murphy would go on to spend a few years working with CBC, together with work on each radio and tv. He was a National Post columnist at the time of his dying and had beforehand written columns for The Globe and Mail.
“When Rex had something to say, he knew exactly what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it,” Kevin Libin, a longtime editor of Murphy’s work at Postmedia, advised CBC News on Thursday night.
Murphy hosted Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio for more than two decades and was a well-known face to longtime viewers of CBC’s The National. His appearances on CBC-TV date way back to the Seventies.
Controversies and criticism
Murphy’s work drew criticism, at instances, together with for accepting paid speaking engagements for the oil trade.
In 2014, whereas nonetheless internet hosting Cross Country Checkup and usually contributing TV essays to The National, members of the general public complained to CBC’s ombudsman that Murphy was in a battle of curiosity for doing paid speeches at oil trade gatherings.
Murphy had lengthy defended the sector, together with on CBC, saying the oil growth saved lots of his pals and fellow Newfoundlanders from financial spoil when the East Coast fisheries collapsed.
As for the speeches, he stated no one managed what he stated — not the oil trade, and not the CBC.
Later in life, Murphy grew to become a loud detractor of the federal Liberal Party — regardless of having twice run as a provincial Liberal candidate within the mid-Eighties — and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s authorities.Â
But he nonetheless had Liberals who admired him, corresponding to longtime politician Bob Rae who posted on X that whereas they disagreed on many issues he by no means misplaced “affection and admiration for him. He loved Newfoundland and Canada and was fearless.”
He was additionally an outspoken opponent of “wokeism,” progressive ideology delicate to systemic inequities, and argued in his column that conservative voices like his have been being pushed to the margins.
In a 2022 column, he decried “the frenzy of woke politics and the cancel culture it has bred and nourished, the prescriptions on what may or may not be debated or talked about.”
Two years earlier, he’d been at the centre of 1 such frenzy for an additional piece of writing within the National Post.
Every week after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, a Black man, Murphy accused liberals — each typically and within the social gathering — of trumping up racism in Canada.
“Most Canadians, the vast majority in fact, are horrified by racism and would never participate in it,” he wrote. “We are in fact not a racist country, though to say so may shock some.”
The column was broadly decried, prompting an editorial evaluation at the Post, which ultimately added a word at the highest of the piece saying it fell in need of the newspaper’s requirements.
(*77*)
Rex Murphy, on Newfoundland outport fishing
The Rhodes scholar describes how his province has modified and tells a favorite native joke.