NATIONAL POST
We don’t care about our heroes
Barbara Kay
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
CBC's Greatest Canadian final showdown was excruciatingly disagreeable to watch for content and presentation reasons. Additionally offensive was the absence of those who didn't make the cut. That we collectively feel top 10 "greatness" excludes Romeo Dallaire, but includes Don Cherry, should be perceived as a national embarrassment. Moreover, the entire list of 100 disappoints for its near-shutout of physical, patriotism-based valour.
Today's column is a paean to one who never made either list: heroic man of action Raymond Zebulon Munro. Most of you won't recognize the name. I wouldn't have either, if it weren't for the persistence of screenwriter/businessman Edmund James, who is determined to revive Munro's fabulous story. James pressed Munro's 1987 autobiography, The Sky's No Limit, on me so ardently I had to read it.
I was captivated by the story and the virtuoso writing from the opening paragraph: "The first and only time I ever prayed for the safe return of my body to the sanctuary of the good earth I was flying low over the English Channel on the Brest side. A cannon shell had just exploded in the wing of my Spitfire, shredding her aluminum wrapping. The airplane was corkscrewing through the shrinking airspace towards the green and greedy sea." The mesmerizing pace never lets up, vividly recreating a life of heroic adventure that would be unbelievable if it weren't so well documented.
Munro began as a Second World War fighter, enjoying a brief, but exciting career in the RCAF where he honed the brilliant flying expertise that put him in Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame. He then achieved success and celebrity as an aerial photo-journalist (he was an inventive pioneer of the art). Munro had a knack for showing up at the scene of disasters, and often combined reportage with daring rescues of victims drowning, trapped in flames, or lost in the wilderness.
In his down time Munro earned a poetry prize, finished a law degree and proved a dab hand in the stock market. But his first love was aerial adventure. As a bush pilot he ferried Hollywood stars such as Errol Flynn, Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe to the back of beyond in British Columbia, earning their friendship and high regard. At Expo 67 he was chosen as Canada's Polar Ambassador, which required him to pilot a single-engine aircraft on a 10,000-mile midwinter flight through the high Arctic. It was a harrowing escapade, but just one amongst many occasions on which he cheated death.
When airplanes held no further challenges, Munro took up hot-air ballooning. It soon became a passion and he earned the first balloonist flyer-instructor's licence ever issued, setting 12 world records as an "aeronaut," flying farther and longer than any hot air balloonist in history. He claimed he would earn "every official record in aerostation" he could for Canada, and succeeded in setting 33 national and 28 international records. The Guinness Book of World Records twice honoured him, once for crossing the Irish Sea in a balloon during a storm and again for making the most northerly parachute jump in history.
Munro was "the most decorated man in the world." He received more than 400 honours, including 100 honorary citizenships, 19 life-saving presentations, the Order of Canada and numerous other decorations and medals. As a newspaperman he received 30 national and international awards.
All Munro's exploits required physical audacity, but his greatest journalistic coup also called for moral courage and nerves of steel. As a reporter in the 50s, his fearless investigation of Vancouver police corruption in a lottery scheme led to the longest running news story in Canada since the end of the Second World War, producing 27 consecutive page one headlines.
Vancouver's police chief was brought to justice, but not before Munro had narrowly escaped multiple attempts on his life, including a car explosion and a savage beating by crooked cops, none of which deterred him from following the trail that led to the breakup of the ring and a shakeup of systemic corruption.
Munro died of cancer in 1994. Friends remember him as a gentleman with strong protective instincts and an unflappable sense of right and wrong. Toronto Sun editor Peter Worthington called him a "knight errant" (James adds, "with dents in his armour" -- Munro had several failed relationships).
Alas, Munro's swashbuckling, combative, fiercely patriotic brand of manhood has been out of favour with fastidious liberals since Trudeau. Predictably, the CBC wasn't interested in a biopic proposal from James, so he submitted it to an American production group. A spokesman responded, "Great story and character ... but if you Canadians don't give a damn about your own heroes, why should we?" An excellent question, wouldn't you agree?
Barbara Kay - National Post columnist
www.barbarakay.ca
Edmund...
I read Barbara Kay’s column in Wednesday’s Post and e-mailed to tell her how much I enjoyed it. She gave me your e-mail. I read The Sky’s No Limit last summer and SCENE magazine in London, Ontario (of which I was new editor for eight-plus years, Until recently) published the following of mine in its August 19, 2004 edition.
Colonel Ray Munro’s heroics and incredible lust for life helped make Him the most honoured person in Canadian history.
By Barry A Wells.
SCENE magazine, London, Ontario
AS ONE WHO confines nearly all my reading to non-fiction, a few times every year I come across a book that is impossible to put down.
The autobiography, The Sky’s No Limit, by Raymond Z. Munro, first published in 1985 by Key Porter Books, is such a gripping, action-packed tale that I found myself repeatedly shaking my head, thinking, “Is Munro making this stuff up?”
Colonel Munro’s incredible life story (1921-1924) is one a bona fide hero and patriot, proving the adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Given that Colonel Munro is the most honoured Canadian I history – strangely, I had never heard of him prior to reading his autobiography – and that all of his exploits are well-documented, this book is no fairy tale.
Born in Montreal in 1921, Munro lived in 21 towns and cities with his family before the age of 16; everywhere from Saint John, N.B. to Costa Mesa, Calf.
At age 16 during the Great Depression, he ran away from home, hitchhiked across America and a an air show in Arizona, fearlessly talked his way in to making his first parachute jump – without any prior training. He nearly died due to an ill-fitting parachute, folding like an accordion when he landed.
Undeterred, the young Ray Munro became a licensed aviator in 1939. Two years later, he flew Spitfires as an RCAF fighter pilot over England, Scotland and occupied France.
Having survived three fighter plane crashes (a least one of which was caused by industrial sabotage), Ray Munro returned to Canada where he had several outstanding careers: investigative reporter, news photographer, ambulance driver, staff pilot and Middle East war correspondent, pilot for hire and bush pilot, parachutist (more than 525 jumps, including several “High altitude, Low opening’ dives), hot-air balloonist, instructor, businessman, aeroplane designer and aerobatic pilot.
As a fearless newspaperman, he worked a total of 17 years for the Toronto Star, Vancouver Su, Vancouver Province and the Chatham Daily News as it editor-in-chie (where he hired Peter Gzowski) and transformed a listless coupon-clipper into a multiple, national award-winning newspaper.
Starting at the Toronto Star as a cub reporter at $17 a week in 1942, he inherited the desk of Ernest Hemingway. As a newspaperman, Munro received 30 national/international awards.
In 1969, the self-described “participant in life, not a spectator” was the first person to parachute onto the north pole ice cap.
HONOURS: Before his death from cancer in 1994, the strikingly handsome Col. Munro had received more than 420 honours, including more than 100 honourary citizenships, 19 life-saving citations, the Order of Canada, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in the British Realm, the Order of Polaris, 61 FAI aviation records (Munro is a founding member of Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame) and numerous other orders, decorations and medals. During the 1950s, Munro quit the Vancouver Province after his tough-talking gutless bosses refused to publish his investigative reports about Vancouver’ corrupt police department and its crooked chief, Walter H. Mulligan.
Instead, Munro worked briefly as a reporter for Flash Weekly where he broke one of the biggest corruption scandals in Canadian history, prompting 27 consecutive days of front-page headlines and a Commission of Inquiry, during which the Vancouver police chief fled the country, a superintendent committed suicide and detective-sergeant tried to kill himself but failed.
It was during his time in B.C that the pistol-packing, two-fisted Munro received scores of death threats and survived several attempts on his life.
During his many adventure, Ray Munro befriended Eleanor Roosevelt, legendary Canadian newspapermen Pierre Berton, Gordon Sinclair, Jack Webster and Ray Timson, rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, actors Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum, Errol Flynn, Tony Curtis, Rory Calhoun, Walter Pidgeon, Gary cooper, Gabby Hayes and Pat O’Brien, plus numerous world leaders .
Invariably in the right place at the right time, when Ray Munro wasn’t reporting news, he was making it.
Definitely not a “dull Canadian”
Barry A. Wells is the news editor of Scene magazine
www.altlondon.org banddwells@execulink.com
Saturday, March 8, 2008
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From the archives of http://www.altlondon.org
One of the best (and funniest) Pierre Berton stories that I've ever come across, comes courtesy of a book by Raymond Z. Munro called, The Sky's No Limit (Key Porter Books, 1985).
Trust me, it's a real howler. Funnier than hell. But you'll never read about it in any book by Pierre Berton!
The late Pierre Berton, bless his lion's heart, was one of Canada's most prolific authors and most-respected media personalities. As a patriot, he was second to none.
I'm far from alone in that sentiment. He'd been a "Canadian icon" from the late 1950s onward. He also was on the vanguard of Canada's heritage preservation movement.
Simply stated, Pierre Berton was larger than life and Canada is greatly diminished by his death a few years ago.
First I should tell you a bit about the Montreal-born Colonel Ray Munro (1921-1994). A truly unforgettable Canadian in more ways than one.
A self-described "participant in life, not a spectator," he was a strikingly handsome, two-fisted man of action who invariably put himself into the thick of things, often where angels would fear to tread.
The book reads like fiction, but it's not. Munro's incredible exploits are all well-documented.
Munro is one of the most decorated men in Canadian history -- perhaps the world. When he was alive, he was the closest thing you'd find to a true-to-life Superman.
Among his more than 420 awards, honours and citations are 100 honourary citizenships, 19 life-saving presentations, the Order of Canada, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in the British Realm, the Order of Polaris, 61 FAI aviation records and numerous other orders, decorations and medals.
A Second World War RCAF fighter pilot, a bush pilot, a record-setting pioneer parachutist and hot air balloonist, investigative reporter, part-time ambulance driver and news photographer, crime fighter, whistle blower, a newspaper editor-in-chief, foreign correspondent, businessperson, airplane designer, investment broker, Munro did just about everything, including earning a degree in law.
As a newspaperman, Munro received 30 national and international awards.
In Vancouver during the 1950s, he brought down the Chief of Police, Walter H. Mulligan, on corruption charges, during which his efforts resulted in several consecutive weeks of front page, above-the-fold, screaming newspaper headlines, as well as a federal public inquiry.
Throughout it all he rubbed shoulders with Hollywood's biggest stars, including Gary Cooper, Tony Curtis, Errol Flynn, Pat O'Brien, Rory Calhoun, Gabby Hayes and Marilyn Monroe.
(I wrote a column about Ray Munro for SCENE in 2003 which I'm sure I've saved electronically. If I can locate it, I'll post it on this thread.)
He also rubbed shoulders with the young Pierre Berton when the two of them were working in the Vancouver newspaper business in the 1940s.
But, after the incident described below, Berton reportedly never forgave Munro for the practical-joke-turned-sour pulled on him in 1947 and rarely mentioned Munro again, except to disparage him, which partly explains why Munro remains a relatively unknown Canadian hero today.
These things happen in life, right?
Here's the stunt pulled on Perre Berton, direct from pages 136-140 of Munro's autobiographical book, The Sky's No Limit.
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"I was delighted with the holiday [suspended for
punching the Vancouver Sun's chief photographer, George Young, for jeopardizing Munro's newspaper scoop by arriving late for work one morning] and was about to leave for home when I remembered it was going-away day for Pierre Berton.
Berton had been on the Sun staff for three years as a reporter and was considered the finest feature writer in Vancouver.
After he'd graduated from the University of British Columbia and before he had joined the Sun, he had been the youngest managing editor of a daily newspaper in Canada, the morning Vancouver News-Herald.
On the side he had held sway as a modestly successful radio-show host and had written articles for magazines. He and managing editor Hal Straight were bosom buddies.
The party was to be a farewell before he left on a dinnertime train for Toronto, to take up his new post as editor of Canada's prestigious Maclean's magazine.
Having been teamed with him on many assignments, I did not wish to miss the party. Before I joined it, however, I made some arrangements to ensure that Berton and his wife had a departure from the Sun they would always remember.
I telephoned Kingsway Ambulance, where I worked on occasion as a driver on night police calls and requested an ambulance in front of the Sun at five o'clock sharp.
The driver and an attendant with a stretcher and a straitjacket were to rush into the newsroom and put Berton into the restraining device and onto the stretcher.
With his wife in tow, they were then to load him into the ambulance and, with red lights and siren clearing the way, drive them through the rush-hour traffic to the railway station.
Two of the largest men on Kingsway's staff promised to complete the task, despite any verbal or physical protestations from Berton, who was no 98-pound weakling.
The party started even before the last copy left the news desk for the press room. When I arrived it was well under way.
Most of the people whom Berton had worked with over the years were there, as were others from the advertising, circulation, business and promotion offices who just wanted a good time.
I matched the others drink for drink and listened to an increasingly drunken Berton recite some of [Robert] Service's poems of the Yukon and assorted doggerel.
A few minutes before five, Koshevoy knelt down behind Berton, and Bill Fletcher, the Sun's financial editor, shoved him backwards.
Pierre lay horizontal for a moment, as though he'd been levitated, then crashed onto his back, slamming his head on the metal corner of a desk and rendering himself unconscious. Janet Berton [his wife] rushed to his side and cradled his head.
"Jesus Christ, he's hurt!" yelled Straight, who was only an ounce this side of total intoxication.
"Get an ambulance, and hurry!" slurred Koshevoy, ineffectually trying to force himself through the wall of bodies surrounding Berton's stilled form.
"All right, clear aside. Out of the way, please." The huge ambulance attendant shouldered his way through the crowd, while his partner, the driver, scattered drunken bodies like chaff in a wind.
"Christ, but that's quick service," commented a reporter, as he opened another bottle.
"Harry," the attendant called his partner, "get the jacket. We don't want no trouble from this son of a bitch."
They pulled Janet Berton away from him, laughing at what to them was obviously an act.
Then, despite the protestations of 30 drunks, they stuffed Pierre's arms into the sleeves, lashed them behind his back, laid him face down on the stetcher and wheeled him to the elevator. The elevator was too shallow to take Berton's six-foot-four body horizontally, so they propped the stretcher partially upright, crushing his wife into a corner.
The party-goers, meanwhile, ran out of the fourth-floor newsroom and reeled down the stairs, fighting the two ambulance men for possession of Berton's body.
But true to their promise they shoved him, still on the stretcher, into the ambulance, the attendant straddling Pierre's back and Janet trying frantically to help him, while the driver swung away from the curb, siren wailing and lights flashing and disappearing into the traffic [heading for the train station for the Bertons' trip to Toronto]."
_________________________________________________
In Munro's book between pages 160-161, there's a photo of a dishevelled and disorientated Berton (sporting a black eye) alongside of Munro, purportedly shortly after the incident.
It wouldn't surprise me if Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press and a son of Pierre, has never heard this story.
Should I send it to him by e-mail?
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