The Current - Robert Munsch: The stories he'll leave behind

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

CBC's Adrienne Arsenault sits down with Matt to talk about her interview with beloved children’s author Robert Munsch, a conversation he calls his “last hurrah.” She walks us through Munsch’s reflections on dementia, memory, the kids who shaped his stories, and his decision to have medical assistance in dying. She also shares the surprising revelation that he's left behind as many as 50 unpublished stories waiting to be released.

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over-delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. There was a little girl named Carmen, and one night when it was time to go to bed, she walked upstairs, opened up the door to her bedroom, and there, lying on her bed was a great big purple, green, and yellow fart. And Carmen ran back down the stairs, says,

Mommy, Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, there was a fart up on my bed. And the fart is just, don't be ridiculous. Good families like ours do not have farts. That's a great Robert Munch reading, Good Families Don't. For many Canadians, moments like that are the reason Robert Munch's stories have stayed with them. But now, the author is writing a different story.

He is living with dementia and Parkinson's disease and has decided when the time comes to have medical assistance in dying. The CBC's chief correspondent, Adrian Arsno, sat down with Robert Munch, in his home for what he describes as his last hurrah. Adrian, good morning.

Good morning, Matt. I mean, I think there are many of us who have an idea of what Robert Munch is like. It sounds like what we just heard in that clip. If you've seen him read, it's like fire and his arms are waving around and the kids are howling. What was it like to walk into his house and sit down and talk to him now in this moment? You know, it was a total honor. I mean, you come into the house and then you go downstairs into his basement office, which is like this temple to childhood. There are pictures drawn by little kids everywhere. The books are all arranged neatly on the shelves. The fart monster is there sort of presiding over the entire space. And it's just, it's a really gentle experience to talk with him. You sort of feel like you're in

the presence of somebody you want to protect, that you want to honor. It's a very busy place. There's lots of work happening with and around him to sort of catalog and preserve. of everything. And when we went to sit down, you know, he was in his walker. We just perched together at a table and had a good chat. And I watched his eyebrows raise and his eyes cross and he roar occasionally. And you just see him. He's in there. Sounds like Robert Munch. I mean, I think what everybody wants to know in light of what I said in the introduction and what I want to ask, how is he doing? Yeah, none of this is easy, right? He knows very well that that he's actually dealing with an untameable monster.

I mean, he knows monsters well. He writes his way around them. You can't write his way around or out of this one. On the matter of like the approval for medical assistance and dying, you know, when that revelation first emerged in September, it was in the New York Times, it seems that quite a few people just thought it was imminent. And I think that was really hard for the family.

It's a call he and his wife, Anne, have made peace with but they keep saying look look look it's not right now this is a one day at a time world they're in he you know he had a stroke a few years ago that made it hard for him to grab his words and he he's totally aware of the changes that he's confronting which has to be tough but he's also he's also very quick to smile and very quick to try to make the person sitting across from him feel better that feels like very much munchy into me, you know, like make the kids laugh, make the people you're with feel okay. So I did, of course, say to him, hey, how do you think you're holding up? And this is how he

answered that kind of super loaded question. People say, how are you doing? I say, fine. I'm not fine. You're not fine. What does not fine really mean for you? Well, I fall down. I forget words. I can't open anything. There's all these little things that you take for granted. You know, like opening a bottle. I use a wrench to open a bottle. Yeah, smart. Smart. Where there's a will, you find a way. Yeah. I mean, that's really hard, hearing him talk about that. You lose balance. He can't form the words that he wants to form. It's a loss in some ways. How does he, how is he navigating that? I think, well, with humor, firstly, you know, when he said, I use a wrench to open a bottle,

you can imagine that he was using his whole body to, you know, screw up his face and make it look like he was using a wrench. Humor is a default. I think it is an anchor for him. What I understand about memory loss is that it's a bit like someone who's been knitting for a very long time. and when you start to lose stitches, lose your memories, it's the ones you lose are the most recent stitches. So the sweater starts to fall apart from the bottom. The older ones are kind of baked in. So my gut is that the humor is baked in.

It is fundamental to who he is. He's also a dad, you know, and he's a granddad. And it's someone who cares deeply about how other people feel. And so I think this is just who he is, who he will always be. for as long as he is able. And I think he navigates it genuinely one day at a time. There is a moment in this interview in which he tries to explain what it feels like inside his own head right now.

And I think a lot of people wondered, what's it like to be in Robert Punch's head at any time? But in this moment in particular, listen to this. In my brain, the stories are all stacked. They're locked. Everything else is up for grabs. I can't trust the rest of my thinking. But the stories are your friends. The stories are my friends.

I feel that I've got a stronghold on them. And when I try to tell them, it's like I've always told him. We'll lose that eventually, but they're okay now. When he says the stories are stacked up in his head, that's really quite something, given the amount of stories that he's created. What is this meant for his creativity? Well, it's interesting because when he had the stroke, he said there was actually a time after the stroke when the stories would get a little bit muddled. So the characters were kind of interrupt and intermingle each other, like Mortimer would be having a chat with a paperbag princess, and he knew that's not right.

So he has been able to, the story, they've sorted themselves out. The characters have returned to the place where they need to be. Everyone is in the right place for now. And they're all back on the shelves. He has recordings of himself telling the stories. I don't know how often he can perform them anymore, if you will. But it is funny because he hears other people, he says you'll hear other people telling the stories

and he thinks, you're not doing it right. No, no, no. That's meant to be sung, not said. You know, love you forever. You sing those verses. He can't help it. You know, he can't help it. He's a real creator.

He has a deep connection to his creations. and everything he sees, I get the feeling, is fodder for another tale. Is he still writing? I mean, that's the question. What is he doing now creatively? Well, there is this plan to take his archives to the Guelph Public Library, right? Not to a university. You take it to a library because that's where little kids go.

And you make sure that little kids can get there. That's where there's a statue of the paperback princess. It's not behind glass. It's behind velvet ropes. You can go in. And if you're a little one, you can put. your arm around the paper bag princess and take a selfie because she's your height. It's the best.

It's fantastic. So there's work there, but there's also a cabinet, a filing cabinet, full of stories in various stages of being baked. And this is a big project of his. So let's have a listen to what the plan is there. Do you still have more stories that you feel like you want to come out? I remember seeing a picture of a filing cabinet you had at one point that there were stories in various stages

of being done. There's about 50 stories in that. Now, not all of them are going to make it. But when I'm dead, they'll still be putting out Robert Runch books. Well, your stories are going to live forever. And your voice and telling them is going to be around for a long, long, long time. Is that

a good feeling or a strange feeling? That's a good feeling. People always say, you know, you'll live forever. Well, nobody lives forever. But I will at least have a couple of, as many years as I've already had, that'd be nice. So there's more Robert Munch on the way.

There is, and this is actually, this is news in this. So we confirm with his publisher that the plan is that eventually, not right now, but once he dies, one book a year will be published after his death. So there is the potential for 50 more years of brand new Robert Munch books. If you think about that these books started coming out in the early 80s, If this carries through, you're talking about a century of new Robert Munch books for kids around the world to read to their kids, their grandkids, their great grandkids. This is sort of a social glue that he has created here, and it is a gift. He has this incredible relationship with the kids who not just read his books or have the books read to him, but also inspire the books.

Totally. Like it's this two, three-way conversation. Do you know what I mean? And if you've seen him perform live, that's kind of how it looks in many ways. The kids are there, he's there, and it's all going back and forth. How does he think about that? So he said that when he went on tour, never wrote a book in a holiday inn. The stories don't come to you at the holiday inn.

They come to you at the dinner tables of families where kids are like, I don't want to go to bed. My sister's kicking me. This is where the stories live. So he started to stay with families, in part because it's expensive to tour the country and stay in hotels. But he would go to schools and be invited in to stay with families. And those kids that he met would then inspire the books. So if you think about the book, I'm so embarrassed. It's about two kids, Andrew and Taylor J.,

who get mortified by their moms at the mall. Well, there's a real Andrew and there's a real Taylor J. And they have stayed in touch. And this is what we're learning about. Almost all the kids he inspired have a continued relationship with him. They write to him. Ganin goes to see him all the time. They are adults now, and he changed their lives.

And it's something for a kid to genuinely see themselves in a story. We all know the impact of representation, but when it's really you, it's got to be wild. Let me ask you a couple of quick things before I let you go. One is, I mentioned in the introduction, and people have been talking about this, that he was approved for medical assistance and dying. how does he and how does his wife and how do they think about about where they are with that decision now that's a big decision but to your point when the news came out people assumed that this was imminent yeah and i think that was rough for anne because some people started to write to her and say i'm so sorry this has happened and you must miss him and she's like whoa whoa wait wait a minute he's he's still here he's he's in the next room right now he's fine just because you have made this decision doesn't mean it's it's you know staring you in the face this afternoon I think, you know, this is a man who wrote about little kids having control over their lives. There's an element of saying, hey, I would like to be able to make this decision about when I'm ready.

And I think they have made their peace with that decision and just hope that it's not soon. I mean, these two people love each other dearly. They still laugh. They still tell stories together. They can be together. They can be in a separate room, but they are a team. And so they're both sort of hanging on as anybody who loves someone else would for as long as he can. Just knowing that there will come a moment when enough is enough.

And then he has the power, just like all the little kids have the power in their stories, to change his life. He says this is his last hurrah. That's how he described it. Yeah, his last hurrah. And to have somebody say that to you, it feels like a responsibility to have a conversation. with someone who effectively suggests this is the last one they're doing. So I think we were all very slightly nervous, like pull your socks up and be the best you can be for him because I kept saying to him, like, this whole country, we have so much

to thank you for. Like all the little kids and all the big kids, thank you. And I wanted him to know how much we appreciate it. And I think he feels a love from Canadians. He's a huge part of us. Yes. And I can't wait to see this full conversation. I'm really glad that you did it.

Adrian, thank you. Thanks, Matt. Adrian Arsenal, the CBC's chief correspondent, host of the National. You can stream Adrian's interview with Robert Munch right now on the National's YouTube page or wherever you stream CBC News. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.