Eric Murray was highly rated bridge player
Actor Omar Sharif was ranked as one of the world’s top bridge players, but he had nothing on Hamilton’s Eric Murray.
And how could he — Murray was king of the competitive bridge table. The Canadian Bridge Federation called him “one of the all-time greats” and “one of the true characters of the bridge world.”
Murray and Sharif knew each “fairly well” said his son James Murray. In 1977, his father took him and his brother Fraser to watch him play in a tournament at Sharif ’s casino in Deauville, France. This was when Murray was at the height of his international reputation as a killer bridge player. James recalled Sharif was no match.
“Omar Sharif was good but he wasn’t quite in my dad’s category,” said James.
Murray — who died at age 89 on May 19 in Barrie — played competitive bridge from the time he was a teen until 2010, when he won a seniors tournament. He was most successful with partner Sami Kehela between 1958-1982,
when they won back-to-back Spingold Cups at the summer North American national championships, not losing a single hand in either of the double elimination contests.
They also played on every team Canada had in the first six World Team Olympiads after it began 1960 (it was discontinued in 2004) and were the only Canadian pair to play on a North American team in the Bermuda Bowl, the bridge world championships.
Murray authored a convention
which bears his name: The Murray Two Diamonds. He was inducted into the American Bridge Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Canadian one in 2010. He and Kehela were the subject of an award winning 2007 book called “Canada’s Bridge Warriors.” In 2012, the American Contract Bridge League named him the 30th most influential personality in the organization’s history.
A litigation lawyer in Toronto — and a very successful one — Murray discovered his passion for bridge while growing up in east Hamilton. One of three sons born to William and Mary Murray, he lived at 72 Balsam Avenue South and 26 Blake Avenue before he left Hamilton to attend Osgoode Hall in Toronto.
His parents were from New Brunswick and came to Hamilton in the early 1920s because his father got a job as an engineer at Westinghouse. Murray, who graduated from Delta Secondary School 1947 and McMaster University in 1950, picked up the game from his parents, though his son James said his mother was the better of the pair.
“He said his father played well, but he didn’t play that well,” said James, an actor-writer in Montreal. “His mother was a sharp cookie.”
James said the family had to get two newspapers delivered every day because mother and son enjoyed doing the crosswords. James said his father “lived through McMaster playing bridge” and partnered with a man named Harry Bork, who his father called “the best player in Hamilton.” He later partnered with Doug Drury in the mid-1950s and they won numerous tournaments. James agreed his father was a character, known for quoting “his hero” Winston Churchill and chain-smoking cigars.
“He was larger than life,” he said. “He was a dominate force in both the legal and bridge worlds.”
In his legal career, he represented people he believed were “underdogs” in fights against insurance companies, banks and pharmaceutical companies. He won a $1-million settlement for a woman in 1984 who suffered a stroke from using a contraceptive drug. It was one of the first such monetary settlements in Canada at the time.
Murray even faced off against the Cambridge Club, his downtown Toronto club, when it fired a waiter he liked. James said his dad was not able to get the man his job back but “he got him a good settlement.”
James said he and one of his brothers play bridge, but not at the calibre of his father. Murray is survived by three sons and four grandchildren. His wife Helen died in 2008.