Rex Murphy, dead at 77, from astute commentator to bitter curmugeon | Robin’s Weir

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”…