National Post columnist Rex Murphy has died at 77 years old. For decades, Murphy was a fixture of the Canadian media and punditry scene and a regular on the public speaking circuit. “Rex could not be held back,” said National Post editor-in-chief Rob Roberts in a Thursday statement.“He filed what turned out to be his last column on Monday, so driven was he to voice his support for Israel and Canada’s Jewish community.” Roberts said the column “mattered immensely to him in his final days.”National Post staff said Murphy died after a battle with cancer. He died one day after his column on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stance on the Hamas attacks on Israel appeared on the front page of the print edition of the National Post. “His last email to me on Tuesday: ‘Did the piece make the online edition?’” said Roberts.Even while Murphy battled cancer, he filed in recent months, writing about Hamas and Christmas and interviewing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre with his distinct style. Staff said he was born in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1947 to his parents Harry and Marie Murphy as the second of five children. They pointed out he skipped two grades and headed to Oxford University through the Rhodes Scholarship before returning home after bailing on a master’s degree in English and settling into a media career.In 1981, he attempted to run for the Conservatives, but he abandoned the idea and went to work for former Newfoundland and Labrador Progressive Conservative leader Frank Moores. He ran for provincial political office twice with the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberals in 1985 and 1986, but he lost. For 21 years, he hosted Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio and appeared on various other CBC programs. A Review of Journalism writer noted in 1996 he was the “antithesis of other high-profile on-air personalities, with their CBC smiles and Central Canadian dialects.”After he left CBC in 2015, staff said it became a favoured recipient of his ire, where he attacked it with his columns. However, they acknowledged CBC was his home over the decades. He worked on Here and Now through the 1970s and on Up Canada. While he was known for excorciating Trudeau, he said on the Greatest Canadian in 2004 that his pick was former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.He joined the National Post in 2010, having had his column at the Globe and Mail cancelled. “Now that Rex Murphy has moved to the National Post, I am left with absolutely no recourse but to cancel my subscription to the Globe,” said a National Post reader. Postmedia executive editor, politics Kevin Libin called Rex “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,” said Libin. “This nation is poorer without him.”Western Standard publisher Derek Fildebrandt said Rex was the greatest columnist and political commentator of a generation. “Growing up, I remember his monologues on the CBC, captivated by the wisdom of his common sense and curious of his peculiar accent,” said Fildebrandt.“This impossibly articulate Newfoundlander wrote beautifully of the West and its rightful place of respect in Canada, making him an honorary Albertan, and in many ways, the poet laureate of the West.”
National Post columnist Rex Murphy has died at 77 years old. For decades, Murphy was a fixture of the Canadian media and punditry scene and a regular on the public speaking circuit. “Rex could not be held back,” said National Post editor-in-chief Rob Roberts in a Thursday statement.“He filed what turned out to be his last column on Monday, so driven was he to voice his support for Israel and Canada’s Jewish community.” Roberts said the column “mattered immensely to him in his final days.”National Post staff said Murphy died after a battle with cancer. He died one day after his column on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stance on the Hamas attacks on Israel appeared on the front page of the print edition of the National Post. “His last email to me on Tuesday: ‘Did the piece make the online edition?’” said Roberts.Even while Murphy battled cancer, he filed in recent months, writing about Hamas and Christmas and interviewing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre with his distinct style. Staff said he was born in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1947 to his parents Harry and Marie Murphy as the second of five children. They pointed out he skipped two grades and headed to Oxford University through the Rhodes Scholarship before returning home after bailing on a master’s degree in English and settling into a media career.In 1981, he attempted to run for the Conservatives, but he abandoned the idea and went to work for former Newfoundland and Labrador Progressive Conservative leader Frank Moores. He ran for provincial political office twice with the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberals in 1985 and 1986, but he lost. For 21 years, he hosted Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio and appeared on various other CBC programs. A Review of Journalism writer noted in 1996 he was the “antithesis of other high-profile on-air personalities, with their CBC smiles and Central Canadian dialects.”After he left CBC in 2015, staff said it became a favoured recipient of his ire, where he attacked it with his columns. However, they acknowledged CBC was his home over the decades. He worked on Here and Now through the 1970s and on Up Canada. While he was known for excorciating Trudeau, he said on the Greatest Canadian in 2004 that his pick was former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.He joined the National Post in 2010, having had his column at the Globe and Mail cancelled. “Now that Rex Murphy has moved to the National Post, I am left with absolutely no recourse but to cancel my subscription to the Globe,” said a National Post reader. Postmedia executive editor, politics Kevin Libin called Rex “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,” said Libin. “This nation is poorer without him.”Western Standard publisher Derek Fildebrandt said Rex was the greatest columnist and political commentator of a generation. “Growing up, I remember his monologues on the CBC, captivated by the wisdom of his common sense and curious of his peculiar accent,” said Fildebrandt.“This impossibly articulate Newfoundlander wrote beautifully of the West and its rightful place of respect in Canada, making him an honorary Albertan, and in many ways, the poet laureate of the West.”
