George Matheson Murray

George Matheson Murray (1927-1961), known publicly as George Murray, was a publisher and politician in British Columbia in the first half of the 20th Century. Originally a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen he was schooled informally in politics by Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with whom he rode the streetcar to work every morning. Murray played a key role in the founding of the Boy Scouts of Canada, having been assigned to find someone to found the organization to please the then-Governor-General who was a big fan of Baden-Powell.

He moved to British Columbia and started a weekly newspaper, The Chinook, from an office in South Vancouver and was active in Liberal Party politics and local society. It was during this period that he hired and ultimately married Margaret Lally. Unable to enlist for World War I because of health condition, he folded The Chinook due to a lack of business during wartime and moved to Anmore while accepting a job as reporter and editor with the Vancouver News-Advertiser (the predecessor to the Vancouver Sun). During the Murrays' time at Anmore they launched Country Life, a magazine for rural women which remained popular for many years and was his wife's pet project at the time, as she was active in the organization of Women's Institutes in British Columbia.

During the 1920s while resident in Anmore the Murrays organized the funeral cavalcade for Vancouver's pioneer bartender and long-time volunteer lifeguard Joe Fortes in 1922 and also instigated the construction and dedication of the Peace Arch and its international peace park at the Blaine Border Crossing in 1921.

Always an enthusiastic promoter and maker of stump-speeches on the subject of railways, agricultural potential, the untapped natural resources of the province's north and Interior, and the huge potential of trade with China, he was offered and accepted the Liberal Party nomination for the provincial legisltautre in the the wilderness riding of Lillooet and moved the family there in 1933 and with his wife founded the Bridge River-Lillooet News. Soon after they founded the Mines Communicator, a satellite publication serving the goldfield towns of the Bridge River Country west of Lillooet. They also launched the Howe Sound Tribune in Squamish and continued to publish Country Life.

The Murrays made an official visit to Shanghai just around the outbreak of the War in the Pacific, and had to be evacuated from that city during its bombardment by the Japanese Empire. With all banks closed, they were lucky that Margaret found a Canadian 50-cent piece hidden in her sewing purse to purchase a rickshaw ride to the city's harbour, where evacuation to a waiting American warship was procured and the MLA and his wife announced as the Premier of British Columbia (apparently a protocol scoop engineered by his wife to assure passage).

Upon their return to Lillooet they found the town's rail siding packed with railcars loaded with Japanese-Canadian evacuees from the Coast, many of whom were to remain in the area for the duration of the war. The Murrays immediately launched a fund-raising campaign for Chinese relief, and managed to raise $20,000 from the many local Chinese merchants, in part thanks to an improvised ad in Chinese characters made using potatoes for printing blocks and characters gleaned from the Vancouver Chinese papers. During their absence, the Murrays had left the newspaper business in the hands of their young adult children, Dan and Georgina, whom it was discovered had moved the Howe Sound Tribune to Williams Lake (in violation of wartime newsprint-rationing rules), where it remains today as the Williams Lake Tribune even though it did not stay in Murray hands for long as tje Murrays quickly liquidated their offspring's efforts at building a newspaper empire due to financial difficulties.

George was an avid promoter of the economic potential of his riding and invested from his own pocket in junkets for businessmen and investors to tour the Bridge River Country goldfields. He and his wife also became enthusiastic promoters of the region's rich history and were behind the campaign to erect the "Mile O Cairn" in Lillooet to commemorate the original Cariboo Wagon Road's commencement at the head of the town's Main Street. He also lobbied for road construction to back up the development of the new Blue Creek gold find in the Shulaps Range near Big Dog Mountain, which would have seen a highway routed to Gold Bridge and Bralorne via the north end of that range (instead of via the Bridge River Canyon where Highway 40 makes that connection today.

The Murrays' support for striking miners at Bralorne-Pioneer Mine incurred a boycott of their advertising pages by the mine company and other businesses, forcing the closure of the Mines Communicator and the sale of the Bridge River-Lillooet News. The Murrays, finding themselves pariahs in the Lillooet region, and with George losing his seat in the provincial legislature in 1941, they decided to start over again with a move to the new boomtown of Fort St. John in the province's northeast Peace River Country, where they founded the Alaska Highway News. In 1945 he ran unsuccessfully as an independent in the Lillooet riding, commuting to Lillooet from Fort St. John for the campaign. under the banner Liberal Progressive, as he had refused to join the Liberal-Conservative Coalition of John Hart. George run successfully for the federal Liberals in the riding of Cariboo in the 1949 general election.

The greatest embarrassment of his career came with his wife's running for the provincial legislature as a Socred - without telling him first. She lost, but the mere fact of her campaign and her temporary support for W.A.C. Bennett ruined George's political career although he continued to love his wife deeply, despite her eccentricites and reputation as a political loose cannon. George lost his federal seat in 1953 to a Social Credit in the wake of the embarrassment and retired from politics, returning to Lillooet where the family had re-purchased the Bridge River-Lillooet News and which his wife continued to edit and publish after his death in 1961.

Electoral Career

18th Provincial Election 1933

Lillooet riding

• Carson, Ernest Crawford NPIG 705 33.51%
• MURRAY, George Matheson LIB. 927 44.06%
• Smith, John Morrison CCF 472 22.43%
• Rejected ballots 96
• Total votes 2,104

19th Provincial Election 1937

Lillooet riding

• Armstrong, Robert Purvis CCF 855 28.92%
• Carson, Ernest Crawford CONS. 925 31.29%
• MURRAY, George Matheson LIB. 1,176 39.78%
• Rejected ballots 57
• Total votes 2,956

20th Provincial Election 1941

Lillooet riding

• Archibald, Harry Grenfell CCF 841 31.75%
• CARSON, Ernest Crawford CONS. 1,017 38.39%
• Murray, George Matheson LIB. 791 29.86%
• Rejected ballots 29
• Total votes 2,649

21st Provincial Election 1945

Lillooet riding

• CARSON, Ernest Crawford COAL. 1,143 51.42%
• Jacobsen, John Fossmark SCA 196 8.82%
• Murray, George Matheson PRO.LIB. 61 2.74%
• Radcliffe, Charles CCF 823 37.02%
• Rejected ballots 21
• Total votes 2,223

1949 Federal Election

Cariboo federal riding

• MURRAY, George Matheson journalist 7,330 Liberal
• IRVINE, William editor 5,870 CCF

1953 Federal Election

Cariboo federal riding

• LEBOE, Bert Raymond lumberman 5,562 Social Credit
• MURRAY, George Matheson journalist 5,160 Liberal
• IRVINE, William organizer 4,314 CCF

Epitaph

The Murrays' daughter and biographer Georgina Keddell observed that if it were not for being eclipsed by the high profile in politics and publishing gained by her mother, her father would be far better known for his political career and as a historical figure.

George is commemorated on the British Columbia landscape by a Mount Murray in the Hart Ranges on the southern periphery of the Peace River Country, and also (with his wife) by Mount Murray, in the Clear Range mid-way between Lillooet and Spences Bridge.

See also

• Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray
• Politics of British Columbia

Books

• The Newspapering Murrays, Georgina Keddell

Sources

Elections British Columbia historical election data Elections Canada historical election data

External Links

• Library and Archives Canada profile of Ma Murray
• North Peace Digital Collections Profile of The Newspapering Murray