We don't care about our heroes (National Post, 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?

© National Post 2004