Even while he battled his illness, Murphy still filed in recent months, writing about Hamas and Christmas and interviewing Pierre Poilievre with his distinctive panache
âIncredible how radicalâ Trudeau is â Pierre Poilievreâs interview with Rex Murphy
Rex Murphy, the loquacious and voluble National Post columnist, radio host and podcaster, has died.
âIncredible how radicalâ Trudeau is â Pierre Poilievreâs interview with Rex Murphy
For decades, Murphy was a fixture of the Canadian media and punditry scene, a regular on the public-speaking circuit, and, perhaps less well-known, an aficionado of The Simpsons and, at least until the pandemic, when he was forced to learn how to toss together Kraft Dinner, a dreadful cook.
Murphy died at age 77 after a battle with cancer.
He died just one day after his column on Prime Minister Justin Trudeauâs stance on the Hamas atrocities of October 7 appeared on the front page of the print edition of the National Post.
âRex could not be held back,â said Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of National Post. âHe filed what turned out to be his last column on Monday, so driven was he to voice his support for Israel and Canadaâs Jewish community. It mattered immensely to him in his final days.
âHis last email to me on Tuesday: âDid the piece make the online edition?ââ said Roberts.
Read Rex Murphyâs National Post columns
Even while he battled his illness, Murphy still filed in recent months, writing about Hamas and Christmas and interviewing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre with his distinctive panache.
He was born in Newfoundland in 1947, before that province even was a province, to Harry and Marie Murphy, the second of five children, in Carbonear, although he grew up in the community of Freshwater. He skipped two grades and eventually, in 1968, headed to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, before returning home and, after bailing on a Master of English degree, done in by the endless necessity of footnotes referring to 17th-century poetry, settling into a media career.
Murphy, in 1981, attempted to run for the federal Conservative party, although he abandoned the idea and instead went to work for provincial Conservative leader Frank Moore. He also ran for provincial political office twice, in 1985 and 1986, under the Liberal Party of Newfoundland banner. He lost both times.
For 21 years, Murphy, with his distinctive Newfoundland accent, hosted Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio, a nationwide call-in show and appeared on various other CBC programs. He was, as a Ryerson Review of Journalism writer noted in 1996, the âantithesis of ⌠other high-profile on-air personalities, with their CBC smiles and central Canadian dialects.â
Yet, after he left CBC in 2015, the public broadcaster became a favoured recipient of Murphyâs ire, often dispatched from the Comment pages of the Post. But CBC was his home repeatedly over the decades.
He worked on Here and Now, a Newfoundland and Labrador radio show, through the 1970s and in Toronto, on the current affairs program Up Canada! Indeed, it may be a surprise to his younger readers, who saw his regular excoriations of Justin Trudeau, to know that in 2004, during The Greatest Canadian contest CBC hosted, Murphyâs pick was prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
He joined the National Post in 2010, having had his column at the Globe and Mail cancelled. âNow that Rex Murphy has moved to the National Post, I am left with absolutely no recourse but to cancel my subscription ⌠to The Globe,â wrote one reader to the Postâs letters to the editor after Murphyâs arrival.
âRex was a Rhodes scholar who could match wits with any intellectual, but he always seemed more comfortable and far happier being around regular Canadians, wherever they were. Whenever he would speak and write, as sharp and witty as he was, you could always tell it came from a place of genuine love for Canada and its people. This nation is poorer without him,â said Kevin Libin, Postmediaâs executive editor, politics, and a longtime editor of Murphyâs.
Share This:
