Murray Knight was a man on the move. He was always found driving around Morinville in his Buick SUV, stopping for coffee at Tim Hortons, coaching at the arena and speaking at town council meetings. He couldn’t go to the grocery store without stopping to chat with someone from his broad circle of friends. They all knew him from his volunteer work, which ranged from coaching the Morinville Jets hockey team to being treasurer of the Morinville Historical and Cultural Society to his work with the Canada Day flag initiative.
Originally from Ontario, Knight had a 37-year career with CN Rail, volunteered as a firefighter, and coached six different hockey teams while living in Peace River before moving with his family to Morinville around 1982. He quickly became a fixture of the community, the kind of thing that happens when you coach hockey in a smaller town.
It’s also what happens when you spend time talking in front of town council. According to friends, Knight was a good public speaker, though in an unorthodox way. He was not polished, but when you listened to him, you knew that what he was saying came from his heart. He would occasionally curse, something not everyone in town could get away with at a council meeting, and his delivery could be emotional. The town and its history were important to Knight — you could tell in the way he spoke about them.
The Morinville Notre Dame Convent, which housed the town museum, was condemned in 2005. The building had been handed over to the town by the Historical and Cultural Society before asbestos was discovered. The closure created renewed interest in the society and the town’s museum, and people in town started work to save and rehabilitate the convent. A mini museum arose off site to display some of the artifacts while the bulk of the collection went into storage.
This is around the time that Knight became involved as the society’s director and later treasurer. He was talking with his wife, Renee, who felt that the building should be saved. Knight, true to form, decided to act, taking on the project. In 2006, the convent received funding through the Provincial Historic Resources Project, and the Musée Morinville Museum reopened in the rehabilitated convent in 2009. The following year Knight received the Silent Hero award at the town’s 24th annual volunteer appreciation night for his part in saving the building and the museum inside it.
The Canada Day Flag initiative is arguably what Knight was best known for. Established in 2010, he organized 30 or so volunteers every year to leave a small Canadian flag on the front lawn of every house in town. People would see the flags and some would be moved to volunteer with the initiative for the following year. Started by Knight and organized by the Historical and Cultural Society, Morinville town council eventually passed a bill which includes the cost of the flag initiative in the town’s yearly budget, guaranteeing the initiative will continue in perpetuity. He was instrumental in bringing back Morinville Festival Days (formerly known as Frontier Daze), which take place at the end of June to celebrate the town’s community and heritage.
Once Knight decided something had to be done, he would do everything in his power to make it so — even if it meant doing it himself. To honour Murray Knight, the Canada Day after he died, the flag initiative volunteers went to his wife’s house and made a heart out of flags on the front lawn for her to wake up to. For Morinville, Knight’s memory is a testament to what one volunteer can do when they set their mind to something.
Lost Ones is a series of essays by Edmontonians reflecting on human connection. Pitch your little love story to [email protected].
This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Edify
