Happy Trails To You, Alex Munter

Alex Munter posted a goodbye video on LinkedIn to his friends and colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

Beyond being the president of CHEO, he spent a long time slumming at Ottawa City Hall as Kanata’s councillor. When we complain about the quality of our current city council, compare it to the council your agent covered for the Citizen: Bob Chiarelli, Diane Holmes, Diane Deans, Gord Hunter, Alex Cullen, Madeleine Meilleur, Clive Doucet, Munter et al.

What an all-star team. Brightest among those stars was Munter who (with the great former chief medical officer of health Robert Cushman) pioneered the ground-breaking indoor smoking ban that probably saved more lives than any other measure the city ever undertook. As well, he brought the dinosaurs out of the muck and into some enlightenment concerning gay rights through his own example.

It’s hard to imagine there being a better fit at CHEO than Munter but perhaps it was time for his boot-heels to be a-wandering. Had he hung around the Laurier Avenue bunker, sooner or later he would have been mayor but Munter was a young man in a hurry.

For all that Munter has accomplished, I still think of him as the young kid at the Citizen who I spent a day with teaching him the arcane nuances of the old newspaper mainframe computer system.

That short lesson was so inspirational that he went on to his fine career above and now in the new post of CEO at the Canadian Medical Association.

So just remember, Alex, that were it not for me and that lesson, you’d still be delivering your little community newspaper in Kanata. And if things don’t work out at the CMA, remember there’s still an opening as a columnist in The Bulldog waiting for you. Always nice to have something to fall back on so you can put three squares on the table daily.

Alex is one of our great citizens. Ottawa is lucky to have him.

Ken Gray

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