Huron County remembers Alice Munro

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Huron County is mourning the death of Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the iconic author whose short stories set in small-town Ontario brought her worldwide acclaim.

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Munro, 92, died May 13 at her home in Port Hope. She had reportedly been suffering from dementia for more than a decade, and previously had battles with cancer and a heart condition.

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Through her career, Munro released 14 collections of short stories, winning numerous prestigious prizes, including the Governor General’s Award for Fiction three times. She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and, in 2013, her acclaim reached its pinnacle when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Among Munro’s acclaimed works are Lives of Girls and Women, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Love of a Good Woman and Runaway.

Munro’s loss is being felt among fans and friends in Huron County. Born in Wingham in 1931, Munro later lived in Clinton for decades with her second husband, Gerald Fremlin, who died in 2013. After selling the home in 2019, Munro moved to Port Hope to live with her daughter.

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Verna Steffler of Wingham started out as a fan of Munro’s, later becoming friends with the author and leading local initiatives to honour her. She said when she first started reading Munro’s work she learned not to read in a hurry, but to let the punctuation dictate the pace.

Steffler said Munro’s short stories, with their vivid descriptions of rural settings, had that “small-town feeling” about them.

“You certainly knew most of it was talking about Huron County,” she said.

Huron County is dotted with tributes to its famed author, including the Alice Munro Literary Garden in Wingham, which Steffler spearheaded as president of the Wingham and District Horticultural Society in the early 2000s. At the time, Steffler wanted to make sure Munro was happy with their plans, so she began meeting with Munro and got to know her well.

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The garden opened in 2002, and Steffler said Munro was so impressed with it that she once took fellow author Margaret Atwood there.

“She’s a very gentle woman,” Steffler remembered of Munro. “Loved to laugh. . . .  Her fame never changed her. She was always the same Alice Munro.”

Steffler, who owns all of Munro’s books signed by the author, noted that Munro was proud of being from a small town and her birthplace of Wingham is noted on the back of each of the books.

“We used to see her in town quite frequently,” Steffler said.

Steffler had been in frequent touch with Munro’s daughters over the years and had visited Port Hope a couple of times to bring some Munro-related artifacts, including the Nobel Prize, back to Huron County, where they now sit in the Huron County Museum in Goderich.

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Steffler was also involved in the initiative to have entrance signs posted at each end of Wingham announcing the town as Munro’s birthplace.

“I was very proud of Alice,” Steffler said. “She was . . .  I think probably the most important person that Huron County has ever seen, certainly in Wingham. We don’t see too many Nobel Prize winners. She was very special.”

“She’s going to be missed,” Steffler said. “It’s very sad.”

Karen Stewart of the annual Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story, which is set to run June 5 to June 9, said the festival’s board was planning to meet to plan a special tribute to Munro this year.

“We are committed to honouring her legacy,” she said.

Stewart described Munro as “larger than life” for her fans. She said Munro was “delighted” about the festival’s creation because it encourages young writers.

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“People who love Alice Munro’s writing always talk about where she sets her stories . . . primarily in Huron County,”

 said Stewart, explaining that readers often recognize the characters and places Munro describes.

Stewart said Munro was also “a huge fan of the Blyth Festival,” where Stewart previously worked. Stewart recalled when a young playwright named Marcia Johnson was inspired by Munro’s short story collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Johnson met with Munro and explained to her she wanted to create a play out of it.

“Alice said, ‘Well then, why don’t you?’” Stewart remembered.

With Munro’s blessing, Johnson then wrote Courting Johanna, based on Munro’s work, which premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2008.

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“It was just so lovely,” Stewart said. “(Munro) was just delighted that this young playwright had taken her work and created the stage play out of it for the Blyth Festival, which of course she loved.”

Local politicians have also paid tribute to Munro. North Huron Reeve Paul Heffer said the municipality will fly its flags at half-mast “in an act of honour of respect, expressing a collective sense of the sorrow shared by all.”

The township said, “We are deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Nobel laureate Alice Munro. Alice was highly regarded in her hometown of Wingham, and has had an immense impact on our community. Her deep roots in our township are woven into the fabric of North Huron with tributes in the community such as the Alice Munro Literary Garden and the Alice Munro Public Library.”

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Huron County Warden Glen McNeil said the county was “deeply saddened to hear of the loss of Alice Munro.”

McNeil extended his condolences to Munro’s family while speaking about her successful writing career, highlighting her 2013 Nobel Prize.

“That is an absolute testament to her ability to write and inspire the hearts of the readers that followed her work,” he said. “Her creativity and captivating storytelling abilities reflect what she elevated in themes and shared with others on an international stage. Alice proved that small towns can have big ideas and achieve incredible things, and she truly inspired so many people in Huron County, throughout our region, throughout Canada, and throughout the world.”

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