The Village of Anmore will celebrate its newspapering pioneer, Margaret Lally “Ma” Murray, even as the newspapers she helped found no longer exist and the home in the community from which she and her husband, George, embarked together on their journalism and political careers has been demolished.
Ma Murray Day occurs Sunday, Sept. 8, from 12-4 p.m., at Spirit Park (2697 Sunnyside Rd.)
The event will include:
- BBQ and bar hosted by the Sasamat Volunteer Fire Department
- live music by the band, Double Overtime
- a market fair
- photo booth
- cake eating contest
- kids activities like pony rides, axe throwing, cornhole, giant Jenga
- a bike skills course for kids and youth
- kids bike decorating contest and parade
One resident will also receive Anmore’s Community Spirit Award in a special presentation. The award recognizes their contribution to the village’s overall sense of community or their efforts to improve safety and well-being within the village.
Margaret Lally moved from Kansas City, Missouri, to Vancouver in 1912 where she landed a job as secretary and bookkeeper at the The Chinook, a weekly newspaper started by George Murray, a former reporter from Ontario and aspiring politician.
Lally and Murray fell in love, married, moved to Anmore and launched a magazine for rural women called Country Life.
In 1933 George Murray won the provincial Liberal Party’s nomination as a candidate for Lillooet and the couple headed north where they promptly founded the Bridge River-Lillooet News and the Mines Communicator. They also started the Howe Sound Tribune in Squamish.
After George’s run in the Legislature came to an end in 1941, the Murrays headed even further north to Fort St. John and started the Alaska Highway News in 1944.
Known for her colourful wordsmithing and outspoken editorials, Ma Murray continued to publish and serve as the editor of the Lillooet News long after George’s death in 1961.
But the papers she and George Murray started didn’t have such fortitude. The last to close was the Alaska Highway News, in October, 2023, another in a growing graveyard of print publications unable to compete with the internet for readers’ attention and advertising dollars.
According to the Local News Research Project, between 2008 and August 1 of this year, 525 local news outlets across Canada — most of them community newspapers — have closed, leaving many of the 347 communities they served bereft of independent, impartial reporting of civic affairs and local happenings.
The Murray’s home in Anmore suffered a similar fate.
While the cedar-shingled structure served as the Village Hall for several years, water damage and mould took a toll, forcing Anmore to move its civic offices into temporary trailers until a permanent structure was finally opened earlier this year.
Efforts to restore and preserve the century-old home, as well as some of its artifacts from the Murrays’ newspapering exploits, like an old type-setting machine, failed to gain enough traction or funding, and it was demolished in 2018.
• Community organizations, artisans, artists and businesses wishing to operate a booth in the market fair at Ma Murray Day have until Aug. 30 to register their intent.
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