George Matheson Murray, 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. Despite a distinguished career, all accounts, including that of his daughter, admit that he is most well known as the husband of his colourful and outspoken wife, Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray.
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, near Port Moody 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. Now the Murray's House in Anmore serves as the Village Hall and are celebrated every year at Ma Murray days, a community event in Anmore held in September.
During the 1920s while resident in Anmore the Murrays orchestrated the funeral cortege and civic funeral for Vancouver's pioneer bartender and long-time volunteer lifeguard Joe Fortes in 1922 with a series of well-placed phone calls to their many connections in town, including the bishop who had married them). They also similarly 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, George was offered and accepted the Liberal Party nomination for the provincial legislature in the wilderness riding of Lillooet and moved the family there in 1933. He and his wife promptly founded the Bridge River-Lillooet News upon their arrival in town, and soon after launched the Mines Communicator, a satellite publication serving the booming goldfield towns of the Bridge River Country to the 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 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 the 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. With most of his supporters - the miners - away at war, he lost the 1941 election, disastrously earning less than 100 votes. 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 eccentricities 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.
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| Preceded by: Ernest Crawford Carson Conservative (1928–1933) |
MLA from Lillooet Liberal (1933–1941) |
Succeeded by: Ernest Crawford Carson Conservative (1941–1953) |
Lillooet riding
Lillooet riding
Lillooet riding
Lillooet riding
Yale riding
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 heart of the Clear Range mid-way between Lillooet and Spences Bridge.