Rex Murphy, one of Canada’s best known, loved and hated TV commentators and columnists has died at 77.

I have mixed feelings about his passing.

I was Rex Murphy’s online editor from 1998 to 2003 when I was web producer for CBC’s The National.

In those days his writing was superb and he had incitive often bighting insight into Canadian politics even if it was from a small C Conservative point of view. He was good to work with and did take my suggestions to make the online version of his TV opinion better for the computer screen.

After I moved on to become CBC News photo editor, CBC News management foolishly took down the archive of his early columns to in redesign of the National website but mostly to save server space there were hundreds of complaints. (As one former colleague commented on my Facebook post “Saving server space by erasing text files??? Argh”)

Although not everyone shares the sentiment, several former CBC colleagues, in those days, Murphy was generally good to work with, with a sense of humour and a good joke (even if the jokes weren’t entirely politically correct, then they were done in good humour and with out malice. At that time)

For those who commented on my Facebook post which this blog is based on, Murphy’s commentaries were must listening in the 90s and early 2000s, but after that he changed from a “gadfly” and “contrarian” who became unrecognizable with his hard right. often hate filled rants. He was the host of Cross Country Checkup for 21 years.

In later years, however, I believe that he had lost all human perspective when it came to saving all life including human life on this planet from the coming climate catastrophe. He also became more extreme in his conservative views.

Murphy’s transformation from a moderate conservative to a raging ranter was, unfortunately, typical of many in the boomer generation, angered and disturbed by the changes in society. For years there were memes posted by hard right supporters on Facebook and X “Rex Murphy for Prime Minister.”

Murphy was also accused of being in the pocket of the oil industry for taking paid speaking engagements.   (CBC audio) Although he said no one told him what to think or write.

His obituaries note that he supported the oil and gas industry because it helped save the Newfoundland economy after the collapse of the cod fishery. I also know that he was enraged by the environmental and animal rights continued efforts to ban the seal hunt including using images of white coat seal pups after that harvest was banned.

One wonders if he was wilfully blind to the environmental damage caused to Newfoundland and Labrador by over exploitation that led to the collapse of the cod fishery and the damage to the province by climate change?

To me the most egregious example of Murphy’s bias in later years was when during the Northern Gateway pipeline controversy, as host of Cross Country Checkup, he held a series of celebratory town halls in oil town Fort McMurray but never bothered to bring the show to Kitimat and northwestern British Columbia to tell the other side of the story. This was a profound failure of Cross Country Checkup’s producers and CBC News management at the time. That lack of balance was also a direct violation of CBC Standards and Practices. (By the time of that broadcast I had retired, moved to Kitimat, and was freelancing for various news agencies including CBC News)

When I was CBC News photo editor, I took a series of photos of Rex against a green screen that were used for an animated opening for his opinions on the National. He couldn’t resist making silly faces at times.

CBC obituary: Writer and journalist Rex Murphy dead at 77
National Post obituary: Rex Murphy, the sharp-witted intellectual who loved Canada, dies at 77

Rex Appeal, 1996 profile in the (former) Ryerson Review of Journalism by Mariam Mesbah