Rex Murphy – my kind of fellow

By Ivan Morgan

It would be disingenuous of me to partake of any homage or mournful kaddish to the late loquacious and erudite raconteur Rex Murphy without first . . .

Ok. I’ll stop now. I’m no Rex Murphy. That’s my point. No one is. Now he is gone. Murphy, a Canadian icon, and proud Newfoundlander, died last week at the age of 77. 

I first remember Rex when I was a boy. My parents were part of a cohort that went to the airport to see Rex off to England to start his Rhodes Scholarship. He was a hero of my parents for bravely standing up to Smallwood as a student at MUN. Few did.

While only nine, I remember looking out the big airport window watching Rex, in a dark duffel coat, wild curly hair blowing in the wind walk jauntily across the tarmac to the plane. In my memory he was barefoot, as was the fashion among young people at the time. More about that in a minute.

After university, he worked here for a while, then like so many Newfoundlanders he looked to Canada for a career. He found several.

I had a few Rex moments. As a journalist I interviewed him several times. He was always gracious, accessible, and free with his time. He loved the paper I worked for at the time (The Independent) and took great interest in what we were doing. Truth be told, he probably asked more questions about us in the interviews than I asked him.

My favourite time with Rex was surreal. For reasons I won’t get into here, I was at businessman Craig Dobbin’s wake, at his house out in Beachy Cove. Suffice it to say it was wall to wall swells, with big time mucky mucks from across Canada and the world. To give you a taste, former President George Herbet Walker Bush (the daddy of President Dubya) had called Dobbin’s teenaged granddaughter, to personally apologize for not making it. It was quite the party, with endless hot snacks, raw oysters on ice and champagne. I had a beer.

To put it mildly, I was way out of my league. I am at best a very uncomfortable mingler, accustomed to being snubbed and ignored by all manner of local dignitaries. Here I was ignored by some of the biggest names in Canada, if not the world. I was busy looking for a wall to flower when I found myself, beer in hand, talking with a few other people: Jean Charest, then Premier of Quebec, Paul Demarais, billionaire financier from Montreal… you get the picture. I believe the next lowest rung up from me on that social ladder was Brian Tobin, hard at work pressing the flesh. We were talking about a particularly moving moment in the funeral at the Basilica, so having been there I was on safe ground. Suddenly (and I remember this as if it was last week) Rex sidled up to me with a beer in hand. Looking at the gathering, he turned to me and said “Wow!”

I was taken aback.

“Wow? You’re wow!” I said incredulously.

We had a laugh about that while the others ignored us.

“Come on,” he said. “I got to have a smoke.”

Soon we were sitting outside on the deck overlooking a dark, still Conception Bay on a cool fall evening. I told him I had seen him off to Oxford as a boy, and he was amazed at my memory, verifying everything I remembered (except he couldn’t remember if he wore shoes). He remembered my parents. We talked about those heady days of fighting Smallwood.

That led to talking about Danny Williams, premier at the time, who Murphy muttered was “the latest Ceaușescu (the deposed corrupt communist dictator of Romania).” I laughed and told him John Crosbie had told me Williams was “a tinpot Mugabe” (dictator of Zimbabwe) not a month earlier. Eyes bugging out of his head, Murphy leaned into my face and said, “That’s because he is!”

I defended Williams as not nearly as bad as Smallwood; he hotly disagreed.

We had a grand chat about many things, and I remember he was warm, good humoured and kind. I don’t think either of us was in a rush to get back to that international suck-up fest.

I learned a great deal from Rex Murphy over my life. He had a deep and strong respect for his readers. He never for a moment forgot the people who work, and live, and pay taxes – you and me. He was modest, brilliant, fierce. He was a national treasure.

As a columnist, I must note something else. Rex Murphy’s last column ran in the National Post May 7th. He succumbed to cancer May 9th.

He died with his boots on. My kind of fellow.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com