A former provincial politician, a practising lawyer, and a lifelong horseman, Mike Murphy has – intentionally or not – followed in the footsteps of the Murphys who came before. As part of a Maritime family with law, government, and horses in their blood, his life choices certainly seem a natural fit.
By Howie Trainor
For Mike Murphy, horses have been a part of life since his boyhood days on the family farm, and the connection has continued through a long and successful career in law and politics. He says he truly loves their majesty, beauty, and graceful movements.
Murphy, 53 and fluently bilingual, has a busy life outside horses too. He practises mediation with one of Atlantic Canada’s largest law firms after a successful private practice and several years in politics; he was lead counsel on many New Brunswick precedents in personal injury and counsel in family law.
As a provincial politician, he won elections in 2003 and 2006. When the Liberal Party moved to government benches, he served as Health Minister and later, Attorney-General and Justice and Consumer Affairs Minister before resigning more than one year ago.
Murphy recognizes good associates and good clients for his success in private practice. Early clients, all from the race track, provided his start, and he learned never to deviate from his base. “I knew three things in my life I was good at,” he grins. “I knew about law, I knew about politics, and I knew about horses.” It was that combination that got his practice off the ground, and soon he was attracting clients from around the province.
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Ammon Standarbreds is a small equine operation on a 110-acre farm just four miles from Murphy’s home in the north-end of Moncton. He and Moira, his wife of 23 years, often jog to the farm as part of their exercise regimen. Currently on the property, you’ll find two miniature horses, a saddle mare, and four standardbreds – two-year-old Ammon Scotty (Carlspur-Armbro Lapidary), three-year-olds Ammon Sandy (Western Paradise-Bansha) and Ammon Annie (Full Scholarship-Annabelle Sahbra) and five-year-old Ammon Eamonn (Peruvian Hanover-Armbro Lapidary). Full brother and sister Ammon Julia and Ammon Shannon (Western Paradise-Spanish Dancer) are leased to Gus Doucette of Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
Murphy made the decision to purchase the farm from his father after learning that the aging horseman was likely dying as the result of a heart condition. Henry Murphy did recover, however, and looked after horses for nearly four more years until his death in late 2006, just months after Joan, his wife, passed away. Besides owning horses, the elder Murphy was a licensed trainer-driver and chair of the now defunct New Brunswick Harness Racing Commission.
His father was happy to sell, knowing his son would improve the condition of the farm and keep it in the family for years to come. “We did a lot of things that had been slipping away for a few years and he enjoyed it,” says Murphy of their extensive renovations. He cites their close connection to the racing community as impertive to the farm’s improvements and operations as well. “Even when my father was frail, we had such a network of people from the racetrack that we’d just have to call somebody and they’d help us out.”
Luckily, Murphy has always preferred to barter favors. In political life, he recalls keeping in close contact with Moncton horsemen like Rosaire Barrieau, Louis (Bubba) Belliveau, Frank Fagan, Jr., John Breau, and Paul Breau. “A lot of them have asked to borrow my trailer or have asked if I could do something for them. They’ve always asked favours because they all know me – they’d want to pay and I’d refuse, like in The Godfather,” he laughs. “‘I’d rather you owe me the favor,’ I’d say.”
This approach has paid off – the horsemen were quick to respond if he needed something from them. He remembers receiving a call while on a business trip in California that his miniature horses had escaped and were out on the road. He called Belliveau, Larry Donovan, and Gordie Chappell in to help, who happily rounded them up.
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The Murphys came to New Brunswick from Ireland in 1832 and settled in the small Westmorland County community of Melrose, where they stayed for three generations. They never had a lot of money, and never abandonded the immigrant mentality, says Murphy. “We have never lost that to this day... the ambition and the lack of connection to the business community,” he admits. “We never had a connection to the business community. We never made a connection to the social elite.”
Law and politics, though, are in his bloodlines. His late mother, the former Joan Barry of Saint John, came from a family that produced six lawyers and a judge. Murphy’s father was a lawyer, judge, alderman, and Member of Parliament and his grandfather was an alderman and lawyer. Mike also has eight more relatives who have practised or are still practising law. One cousin, Brian, is a former Moncton mayor who is currently the local Liberal MP and a late uncle was an alderman and mayor of Moncton who twice ran unsuccessfully for Parliament. In essence, it was a family used to dealing with busy careers and stressful lives. “My father used to say: ‘if you get tired of this stuff, just go to the barn and relax. You can talk to the horses. But when the horses start talking back, that’s a bad sign.’"
His family was never shunned by the business community or social elite, but never had much in common with them, he says. The same applied in politics. Neither he, nor his father or grandfather, Murphy points out, were ever the favored sons of the political establishment.
Murphy resigned from government in 2009 at the height of a controversial plan to sell New Brunswick Power assets to Hydro Quebec, citing a desire to spend more time with his family and resume practising law. The sale did not occur, but was considered by many as a key factor in the government’s defeat last September. His actions, he says, were courteous. “When someone is integral to government and suddenly disagrees with its direction, it’s incumbent upon them, as a matter of honour, to quietly leave. And, that’s what I did. I quietly left and I said nothing and I’ve never made another public remark until I spoke about hospitals three months after the election.” That departure had a financial consequence, though – he was just months away from a lifelong $55,000 yearly pension. Now, he is contemplating revisiting the landscape and taking a run at the party’s leadership.
He sees the disconnect with white collar elites emerging yet again as he ponders a return to the political arena, but that does little to dissuade him from pursuing it. “I’m in a situation where the Liberal establishment of New Brunswick in Fredericton do not want me to return,” he admits. “I take it as a compliment. It just seems to be the family tradition. In Greater Moncton, the Murphys have won a lot of elections and we’ve lost a lot of elections. But we stick it out. We stay here because it’s a great place.”
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From helping his now late father Henry around the barn, to dabbling in horsemanship with a brief driving career, to enjoying the benefits of horse ownership and now operating Ammon Standardbreds, Murphy has experienced the highs and lows of harness racing from every angle.
After a lengthy hiatus, he returned to the sport he loves in the early 2000s, and had 19 horses by 2008, including a good deal of broodmares. Because of a sagging market demand for colts and fillies, though, he sold them in late 2008 and early 2009. “I got rid of Annabelle Sahbra (Big Towner-Annabelle Hanover), Spanish Dancer (On The Road Again-Rhythm Hanover), Char Mac Speed (Lightening Speed-Donmar Rhea), Armbro Lapidary (Direct Scooter-Emerald Girl) and Bansha (Cam’s Cardshark-Jenny’s Love). They had produced a total of 12 foals bearing the Ammon name. Another broodmare, Nia Rita (Niatross-Serita Lobell) died at the farm at age 22. Her Dream Away filly, Opera Winfree, was sold by Murphy and went on to take a mark of 1:54.1.
Of the homebreds, Ammon Shannon (Western Paradise-Spanish Dancer) stands out. Murphy had trucked him to a sale in 2006, but there were no bids and his father suggested he buy him back. He was “just crazy enough to be good,” the elder Murphy advised.
So buy him back he did, and the pacer turned out to be the best they ever had, winning in 1:59.3. His two-year-old campaign was Murphy’s proudest moment in racing, he says, because the horse was supposed to be nothing. “It’s a horse that my father thought highly of. And he was the underdog, always the underdog.”
Many horsemen – including two well known faces, in fact – credit Murphy and former Premier Shawn Graham for taking steps to put New Brunswick harness racing on the road to recovery.
Long-time owner and breeder John Breau, for one, worked with Murphy and the late Don Canning to help establish the framework which is now Horse Racing New Brunswick (HRNB). “I know that Mike worked tirelessly to promote, advance and boost the benefit of having harness racing in the province,” says Breau, an HRNB board member. “Anytime you talk with Mike you know that one of his main passions is horses. It’s quite evident when you look at his involvement. He is an honourable, committed, fair kind of person who will give it his all in whatever he does.
Harness racing needs a few good men and I think Mike Murphy is one of them.”
Mike Sullivan, another industry supporter, was a 10-year member of the Maritime Provinces Harness Racing Commission and has owned or co-owned several horses. He says that having Murphy and Graham both with a love, passion, and knowledge of harness racing was a boon to Atlantic Canadian horsemen, and he believes racing is in a far better state, thanks to Murphy’s role in establishing HRNB. “Despite some wobbly steps, the future is more secure for racing and breeding than at any time in the last quarter century and a large measure of this accomplishment is a consequence of the colourful, but very capable, Mike Murphy.”
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Murphy admits the toughest thing about leaving political life was the circumstance of controversy – his friends and colleagues were staying in office as he departed. But overall, the decision was an easy one, he says, because his departure was for right reasons and was done honourably. Waking up the next day with no job and a wife and five children to support, though, was difficult. He rented an office in an attempt to venture out on his own again with his law practice, but the phone never rang. It was no surprise to him, and he spent a lot of time around the barn that winter. “Things have built up since then... I’m not back to where I was at one time, but the practice is changed. I’m fine now.”
Now with the law firm Cox and Palmer, he explains that insurance companies, many of which he took on in his litigation practice, are open to hiring him for his experience and neutrality; he doesn’t favor anybody on either side. Only one of the more than 20 cases he handled last year hasn’t settled.
Murphy has indeed spent more time with his family since resigning and recently started travelling the province to measure support and ideas for an eventual leadership run. He says it’s different now with four of his five children away at school. Timothy, 22 in April, graduates from St. Francis Xavier University this spring; Tara, 20, is a second- year student at Mount Allison University; Keegan, 18, is in his first year at St. FX; Molly, is in Grade 11 at Rothesay Netherwood School and Aodhan, 13, is still at home and in Grade 8.
Because he’s resumed practising law and is considering a political return, he doesn’t find he has adequate time to train horses himself. “I’m going to lease the horses out and they can be leased to buy or I’d do a half with them, rather than training them at the farm for the next year or two.”
But horses have been a part of his life for so long that he doesn’t see himself ever being too far away from the barn, no matter what the legal or political future may bring. Murphy, after all, tries to keep things simple. “There are no great plots and schemes in my life. I speak my mind, which is not necessarily offensive. I just say ‘this is what my thoughts are’ and sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes I’m convinced I’m wrong, but, quite often, I’m not.
“I’m an open book, and if you’re an open book, you can seldom get yourself in a mess.”