Rex Murphy passed away!

[jungleboy]

At the age of 77.A Great Canadian may he Rest in peace.


Rex Murphy, the sharp-witted intellectual who loved Canada, dies at 77
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

Author of the article: National Post Staff
Published May 09, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read
191 Comments

Rex Murphy.
“Rex Murphy was a Rhodes scholar who could match wits with any intellectual, but he always seemed more comfortable and far happier being around regular Canadians.
Rex Murphy, the loquacious and voluble National Post columnist, radio host and podcaster, has died.

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 Trudeau’s stance on the Hamas atrocities of October 7 appeared on the front page of the print edition of the National Post.

“Rex could not be held back,” said Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of National Post. “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. It mattered immensely to him in his final days.

“His last email to me on Tuesday: ‘Did the piece make the online edition?’” said Roberts.

Read Rex Murphy’s 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, about 10 minutes up the highway. 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 “antithesis of … other high-profile on-air personalities, with their CBC smiles and central Canadian dialects.”

Yet, after he left CBC in 2015, the public broadcaster became a favoured recipient of Murphy’s 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, Murphy’s pick was 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,” wrote one reader to the Post’s letters to the editor after Murphy’s arrival.

“Rex 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,” said Kevin Libin, Postmedia’s executive editor, politics, and a longtime editor of Murphy’s.

[Twisted Canuck]

Just saw it. That's really a tremendous loss. Rex was a Rhodes scholar, and yet the most down to earth voice of reason left in the Canadian media. Loved his articles and
Interviews, they were always insightful, and full of common sense. I'm going to miss him.

[saskbooknut]

He was always thoughtful and provocative, and often witty.
I didn't always agree with him, but almost always read what he had to say.
In person, he was just an ordinary guy - no pretensions.
He was a bookstore addict, so easy to relate to.

[stob]

An honest truth teller...big loss for Canada...he had a lens that saw through the mist and layering of the liars amongst us...blessing, miracles, and love to you and yours Rex

[pikergolf]

Huge loss, especially given the times we are in. One of the few that could tell the truth without embellishing it or couching it. I respected his views tremendously.

[David Henry]

My flag is at half mast and my cap is in my hand at the hearing of Rex Murphy's passing. What a wonderful human being. Long may he rest.

[Phil McCracken]

Oh wow...

Gonna miss this Canadian Icon! Always called a spade a spade. He was a true journalist!...RIP Rex!...

[densa44]

Sad to see you go, may you RIP.

[badbrass]

One of the best! RIP

[waldedw]

A good man RIP Rex

[Scott N]

He'll be missed, RIP.

[barsik]

one of the best this country has forged. a breath of truth and logic in the face of corrupt and vacuous politicians and assorted liars. RIP Rex, you earned it.

[Hunter Trav]

Always enjoyed his work, RIP Mr. Murphy...

[AxeMan]

RIP Mr. Rex Murphy.

Pierre P sums it up as well with his respects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GNbgcBH3lE

[CBintheNorth]

Likely the last true journalist this country will see.
Canada has lost not only a patriotic icon, but a beacon of truth, wit, and logic.
Young journalists should aspire to be like him.

RIP Rex

[gunluvr]

His eloquent writings were always inspirational no matter the subject. One of the finest Journalists of his time and a great Canadian. He'll be deeply missed. RIP.

[calgarychef]

Mainstream journalists seem to fear telling it like it is.
Rex didn’t have that fear and used his platform to champion the issues of all the common folk. I’ll miss his opinions. I’m sure Trudeau is happier today.

[Sundog57]

A sad day
The loss of one of the few rational voices in Canadian journalism

[Athabasca1]

RIP Rex Murphy. A truly great journalist and great Canadian.

[Bigwoodsman]

Enjoyed his radio shows back in the day. Also looked for his articles in print. RIP Mr. Murphy!

BW

[32-40win]

Could almost always depend on a Rex column to put some issues into words that could bite, occasionally shred, along with reinvigorate a percentage of faith in the idea of Canada. It could be a real treat to read his stuff or listen to him. His kind of journalism is pretty rare to see, he had character, will certainly be missed.

[jstubbs]

Rest in peace. Will miss his curmudgeonry.

[elkrub]

Listened to him all the time...he will be missed!
Rip Rex

[trailraat]

I just saw that - it's sad - I always appreciated his writing. His vocabulary and style are completely unmatched by most current editorials.

[59whiskers]

Rex Murphy was the best modern day journalist Canada ever had. More amazing is the fact that he lasted as long as he did at CBC. The Political liars in Government I’m sure are glad he’s gone.

[Fish along]

For me this a sad day indeed,Rex was one of Canadas finest people,i dont think we will ever see the likes of him any more. He was a truth teller and called a spade a spade. My dad who passed away many years ago loved listening to him and would often praise him.Ijust recently watched an interview with him and Jordan Peterson talking about the mess our country is in,and just a few days ago he spoke about how we as a nation should back Israel because its the only sensible thing to do. Lets see if the media will honor him and lets see how Canada will commemorate this Canadian icon..May he rest in peace.

[Sooner]

One of my favorites to watch or read his stuff. As mentioned, a true Canadian. RIP Sir.

[sjr]

RIP Rex you where one of the best !!!!
You where the last great honest reporter CBC every had .

[jungleboy]

I love that he took the time to skewer Trudeau one more time before he left the building.

Rex Murphy: Trudeau faced an essential moral test after Oct. 7. He failed it
Our loudly, proudly self-proclaimed first male-feminist prime minister was silent on the horrid tortures and rapes of Israeli women.

Author of the article: Rex Murphy
Published May 07, 2024 •

On Oct. 7, a cowardly, medieval, murder cult (campus heroes) Hamas took the lives of over 1,200 Jews.

Without warning, at a music festival; chased, toyed with; beating every Jew they could find; hunted them down, tormented them, raped them, shot them. A great insensate orgiastic jubilation over a massacre of innocent Jews of an intensity and enormity not seen since the demonic practices of Jew-hating, Jew-destroying Nazism. The greatest puncture in that useless lying balloon of “never again” since the failed slogan was first muttered. Jews massacred in their homeland. Jews killed again.

Hamas is in a squalid tradition; there’s a lot of Himmler in Hamas.

There was also the deep cruelty, the sadism of taking hostages, ripping families asunder if they did not kill them, scooping up babies, young children, keeping a special eye out for pretty girls — dragging over 250 innocent people of all ages to Hamas’s web of dirt tunnels. How could a man look into the eyes of a 10-month-old infant and sunder him from his family? How could men rape and beat so many female hostages?

Oct. 7 was an enormity, I say again, on a historic scale. Were an equivalent atrocity to have fallen on Muslims somewhere in the West, this world of ours would be spinning into the sun on the strength of universal and ferocious denunciations.

But hey, this was Israel. Those killed, raped and kidnapped were Jews. Jews who lived in Israel. So, this runs on a totally different moral and political plateau.

The ambush of unarmed civilians on that Oct. 7 demanded and still demands a clarion statement from our leaders of totally unambiguous support for Israel, a visit to relations of those killed, and those still hoping for release of their family members held hostage.

Where has Justin Trudeau been? Where’s the utter denunciation of Hamas and those complicit with Hamas in mass murder, mass rape and mass kidnapping?

And where is Mr. Trudeau’s message to the green-flag-flying activists that Israel is not genocidal, an accusation ludicrous, lying and insolent at the same time.

After his clumsy, incompetent and amateur eight-year holiday as prime minister, our country, Canada, is diminished on the world stage, and worrisomely scattered and incohesive on the home front. Canada has “no core values” according to the one person most responsible for nursing the “core values” of the nation. And so, the world has no sense of where Canada really stands because we really don’t have a stand; and by Trudeau’s lights, our “postnationalist” Canada of “no core values,” just by definition alone, has nothing to say. (Query: Should a post-nationalist state have a seat at the UN — the United Nations.

Are Pride parades and an infatuation with global warming enough to fuse a great country into one magnificent union? Don’t think so, but that’s really all we’ve seen from Trudeau.)

Political cowardice, the fear of losing some of the Muslim vote has Trudeau and Joly responding to antisemitism by dusting off tattered platitudes (“this is not who we are as Canadians,” or some equally flaccid slogan crafted by a herd of consultants and speechwriters). He has no moral force to exert, he has no high presence in the world’s leadership, his flighty antics and frequent displays of incompetence have left him an isolate on the world platform. Essentially, his sad record internationally, his unintellectuality (his mind is not overclouded with ideas) and the obsessional tie to global warming fantasies (serious leaders may mouth the words these days, but the global warming juggernaut is bogged down) have combined to place him outside the adults who do rule the nations of the world. He is no one’s wise man.

I hear that at the U of T a Jew must show proof of anti-Israel beliefs to be allowed on his or her own campus. I hear there have been firebombing at synagogues and hate graffiti. I hear that individual Jews have been harassed and threatened.

It would be so interesting to see the response to these phenomena if it were, say, Muslims instead of Jews who were bearing the freight of atavistic hate and murderous intent.

To see a Muslim professor get barred from his office on a Toronto campus. Or a Black feminist specializing in colonialism having her speech drowned out.

What a world of difference the coverage would show. What intense concern. And this, this difference, everyone already knows it to be true. Or to switch examples, it’s the same when 10 or 30 or 60 Christian churches are burned in Canada. Burning churches, while highly undesirable, is — we have been told from the highest Canadian political level — nonetheless “understandable.”

There is one particular dimension of the horrid acts of Oct. 7 that cries for particular notice. One area in which the failure of Justin Trudeau is egregious, a collapse of his most visible values, and must be both obvious and depressing to his own partisans.

We never did get to hear our loudly, proudly self-proclaimed first male-feminist prime minister show any serious, extended response to the horrid tortures, beatings, rapes, kidnappings and murder of Israeli women, girls and infants. Remember — because a lot of people don’t seem to want to remember — this was an unprovoked mass killing by armed and hate-saturated Palestinians. As the records and film show (they filmed their own bestiality) they took special and malignant pleasure from the horrors, rape and murder of Jewish women. Women as children, teenagers, parents and elderly. Hamas loves to hate women.

What, my male feminist PM, kept you from taking the podium in your blackest denunciation mode? Where, most progressive of all progressive PMs, was your soul-tormented outcry that woman and girls were being raped and beaten — their dead and mutilated bodies put on exhibit to cheering Palestinians? And for the girls kidnapped to serve as hostages and “sexual relief” for the criminals of Hamas?

This was sexism at the murder and torture level. This was feminism, Hamas-style.

All of which comes to the sad point that our own universities and streets are now venues of the vilest antisemitism. Jews in Canada are, and rightly are, fearful. Where are the assurances, explicitly stated and backed by every state authority, that antisemitism will, when applicable, be punished? Or at the very least those who practice it be place in ostracism and scorned?

After eight years as prime minister, Trudeau is presented with a a singular, historic and essential moral choice to make. He has a moment
to make clear to the world what that choice is. The choice: to stand with democratic Israel, to rebut the insolent lies about genocide and apartheid, to name Hamas for the total sadistic villain it is. To scream to the world condemning the defilement, rape and murder of Israeli woman and girls. And to dismiss the moronic and morally unstable students on Canadian campuses and their infatuation with a terrorist organization. And beyond all to furiously condemn antisemitism and have no truck at all with those who harbour that diseased practice of the world’s most hateful losers.

Do you think he’ll make that choice, those choices? Not very likely. There are plastic bags to ban, military men’s rooms to be stocked with tampons, gay monuments to plan. All these greatly surpass in Trudeau‘s world some distant friction in the history Middle East and the minor discomfits.

National Post

[calgarychef]

Thanks Jungle Boy, copied and shared.