The Complex Legacy of John Carr Munro

By Daniel R. Meister

When it comes to periodizing the history of federal policy of multiculturalism in Canada, existing models have loosely associated changes in policy with the changing of the governments.^[1] But a closer examination of the earliest decades of the policy’s existence suggests that the Cabinet ministers responsible for the policy were more responsible for its evolution than the prime minister or political party in power. This is despite the fact that multiculturalism it was never considered a prestigious portfolio, and therefore some of the figures involved are also lesser remembered.

Take, for instance, the second minister of state responsible for multiculturalism: John Carr Munro (1931–2003). Munro was a long-time Liberal MP for Hamilton East (1962–1984) and although he was responsible for multiculturalism for just under three years (August 1974–April 1977), this was a comparatively long time for the era. Press coverage in his early years as a Cabinet minister emphasized his “social conscience.” For instance, in 1972, a lengthy article in Macleans relayed a series of revealing anecdotes that give a glimpse of a hardworking, grassroots, dedicated, and generally well-meaning politician. According to the article, his mother was his greatest political supporter, even in high school. He scraped through university, became a lawyer, got involved in municipal politics, and eventually ran for Parliament, finally winning in 1962 but accruing significant debt along the way. Despite prime ministerial ambitions, he spent over five years as a backbencher. Passed over for a cabinet post in 1968, he reportedly wept and considered quitting the Liberal party altogether.

All Munro’s political projects were marked by his passionate commitment and personal foibles. The Macleans profile noted that he was finally appointed to cabinet and given the health portfolio, he decided to lead by example and quit smoking cold turkey before unceremoniously backsliding, bumming cigarettes from those around him. Reporter Lawrence Martin further recounted that when the two met at a restaurant, Munro declared that he was starving and “ordered the five-dollar prime ribs,” but as soon as Martin asked a question, he laid down his knife and fork and engaged in a passionate response for over an hour. When his driver called, Munro quickly departed “leaving behind three empty glasses, an ashtray full of du Maurier butts – and five dollars worth of untouched food.”^[2]

As a result of it being an undervalued portfolio, multiculturalism was always given to a minister in addition to another portfolio. In his case, Munro was given labour and multiculturalism together. Although the former took up most of his time, he was determined to get up to speed on his second portfolio and would sporadically spend long hours in the evening with staff from the multiculturalism directorate. Convinced by these bureaucrats that the policy needed to shift from celebrating folk cultures to combatting discrimination, he publicly announced that the policy would be reoriented along these lines. However, his efforts were ultimately stymied by a lack of Cabinet support as well as outright opposition from some quarters, notably many Ukrainian Canadian groups as well as the national chair of the Canadian Consultative Council on Multiculturalism, Julius Koteles, a Hungarian Canadian. Emotional and stubborn, Munro considered moving the entire multiculturalism program to the ministry of labour, so he could more easily effect change. He eventually abandoned the idea and was later shuffled out of the position. Still, some of his policy initiatives, despite being watered down, eventually were implemented by his successor, Joseph Guay.^[3]

Although the above paints a generally positive image of Munro, searching for information about his work with his constituency, however, I was greeted with a far different picture. In Their Town: The Mafia, the Media, and the Party Machine (1979), Munro is presented as exemplifying the worst kind of politician, known for patronage, undue influence, and corruption.^[4] Around 1975, Munro was implicated in a scandal surrounding contracts for the dredging of the Hamilton harbour. In an early attempt to clear his name, Munro released a great deal of his files. This move did more harm than good, however, for the files laid bare the mindboggling scope of patronage appointments that he had helped arrange.^[5] The backlash was such that Munro offered to resign, but Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau publicly defended him, and reportedly told him to just see a doctor and get some rest.^[6]

Then, in 1978, when one of his constituents was charged with assault (a landlord had attacked a tenant), Munro personally called the judge overseeing the case. When this came to light, he was consequently forced to resign from Cabinet. Munro nevertheless finished his term and was re-elected in 1980. He later re-appointed to Cabinet, serving as the minister of Indian and Northern Affairs from 1980–1984. In 1982, Munro announced that the federal government supported the division of the Northwest Territories, a stepping-stone on the path to the creation of the territory of Nunavut. “This is a turning point. An historic day in the political evolution of the North,” he claimed, though the statement was treated with some scepticism.^[7]

During the final years of his political career, he was subjected to further allegations of corruption, though these were disproven. In 1981, an article in the Toronto Sun claimed without evidence that Munro had engaged in insider trading. The reporter resigned, the Sun apologized in print, and Munro won a $75,000 judgement in the libel suit he lodged.^[8] Then in 1989, the RCMP laid 34 fraud charges against him related to the federal Liberal leadership race in which Munro unsuccessfully ran in 1984. The charges were eventually thrown out and Munro sued; he eventually settled for $1.4 million, the majority of which went to legal fees. “But if [the lawsuit settlement] marked the formal end to Munro’s political odyssey, his career epitaph will be a complex one,” the press concluded.^[9]

As I’ve argued before, scorecard histories are rarely accurate histories, and it is no different with Munro. For in assessing his legacy, both accounts are correct, if still incomplete. Munro was certainly unscrupulous about the means he employed to gain power – such as the endless patronage – but, once he obtained it, he genuinely tried to make positive social change. Ironically, if he is at all remembered today, it is likely not due to any of this – multiculturalism, Nunavut, or scandal – but simply due to the fact that, since his death, Hamilton’s airport has borne his name. But the attempt to reorient multiculturalism from folklore to combatting racism, however, unsuccessful, is also an important part of his legacy. 

Daniel R. Meister is an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at St. Thomas University who researches the history of Canada’s policy of multiculturalism. He is a Regular Contributor to Active History.

^[1] Augie Fleras, Canadian Multiculturalism @50: Retrospect, Perspectives, Prospects (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021), 81–99.

^[2] Lawrence Martin, “The Social Conscience of John Munro,” Macleans (May 1972), 37-39.

^[3] For a more detailed account of his failed attempt to reorient the policy, see Daniel R. Meister, “Ethnicity to Equity? Official Multiculturalism and Racial Discrimination in Canada, 1971-79,” Études canadiennes/Canadian Studies 95 (2023): 43–72, esp. 57–63.

^[4] Henry Jacek, “John Munro and the Hamilton East Liberals: Anatomy of a Modern Political Machine,” in Bill Freeman and Marsha Hewitt, eds., Their Town: The Mafia, the Media, and the Party Machine (Toronto: Lorimer, 1979),62-73.

^[5] Marsha Hewitt, “Hamilton Harbour: Politics, Patronage, and Cover-Up,” in Their Town, 148-66.

^[6] “Transcript of the Prime Minister’s Remarks to the Press at Uplands Airport on Departure for European Visit, February 26, 1976,” file 3250-1, pt. 6, box 5, accession 1989-09 319, RG6 (Department of Secretary of State fonds), Library and Archives Canada.

^[7] “N.W.T. is at a Turning Point but Division Problems Abound,” Hamilton Spectator (29 November 1982), A9. Munro’s time as minister of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs requires more study but will likely be found to be equally mixed. According to Peter Jull, who held various positions in the PMO and as advisor to Inuit peoples during this period, Munro “put his shoulder to the wheel in the last years of the [Pierre] Trudeau government,” at one point arguing back to Trudeau against some of his more incendiary comments about Nunavut. In 1982, he initiated a review of claims made by nêhiyawak (Cree) and Inuit peoples that Quebec and Canada had not fulfilled their responsibilities in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. See Summaries of Reports by Federal Bodies and Aboriginal Organizations, vol. 2 of Public Policy and Aboriginal Peoples, 1965-1992, produced by Centre for Policy and Program Assessment, Carlton University, for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Queen’s Printer, 1994), 57. Yet that same year, his deputy minister dismissed the idea that any promises of return had been made to Arctic relocatees. See Amy Fung, “Redressing the Redress of the High Arctic Exiles: The Limits of Recognition in a White Settler State,” Memory Studies 18, no. 6 (2025): 1573–93, quote at 1583.

^[8] “Toronto Sun Rules Out Libel Ruling appeal,” Calgary Herald (21 August 1982), B6.

^[9] Jon Wells, “Even $1.4m Isn’t Enough Payback,” Hamilton Spectator (11 May 1999), A5.