Globe and Mail correspondent Ross H. Munro exposed human-rights abuses in China

Ross H. Munro had the mild-mannered look of a stereotypical high-school teacher and a gap-toothed resemblance to British film comedian Terry-Thomas, both of which masked a journalist’s fearless sense of adventure and exemplary, analytical curiosity.

As The Globe and Mail’s seventh staff correspondent in China in the mid-1970s, he found himself more than once on the knuckle-rapping end of rebukes from Chinese government authorities for his reporting and was told eventually that his visa to work in the country would not be renewed (a straw-dog reprimand because Mr. Munro’s replacement in China, dance critic John Fraser, had already been dispatched from Canada in 1977 by Globe editors).