Mayor of town where Alice Munro lived would ‘consider’ amending monument honouring her

The mayor of the municipality where Alice Munro lived for much of her adult life says he would “consider” amending the monument to the celebrated writer outside the public library in Clinton, Ont., although he does not personally support such a move.

Jim Ginn, the mayor of Central Huron, says he was shocked by the revelations that emerged Sunday regarding Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin.

Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro’s daughter with her first husband, James Munro, wrote in an essay published in the Toronto Star that Fremlin sexually assaulted her in the mid-1970s — when she was 9 — and continued to harass and abuse her until she became a teenager.

Skinner wrote that in her 20s she told the author about Fremlin’s abuse but that it stayed a secret for decades, with Munro deciding to remain married to Fremlin until he died in 2013. The couple lived together in Clinton.

Ginn says Munro will ultimately be remembered for her unique gifts as a storyteller and that he does not currently foresee amending the monument in Clinton honouring her.

But he says if calls mounted for such a change, “then we would consider it.”

Munro’s writing is heralded for its depth, realism, and psychological insight. She has been hailed as a master of the contemporary short story genre.

Munro is the first Canadian woman and only the 13th woman overall to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

With files from Lucas Casaletto of CityNews