Bruce Dowbiggin
RIP Rob Bennett: The Promoter, The Pirate, My Pal
Robert Bennett: 1952-2023
This is a column I hoped I’d never have to write. But my best friend Rob Bennett has lost his fight with ALS. And my life has a void that can’t be filled. Most people know Rob as one of the country’s top music promoters for more than 35 years. From James Taylor to Robin Williams to Raffi my pal knew them all. One night he even threw snowballs with Bruce Springsteen atop Mount Royal .
My own memories of the man are more personal. We met as U of Toronto students working the 1974 Christmas season at the LCBO on Dupont at Huron. These were the days where patrons filled out a coupon and we runners fetched their order in the back of the store. This gave us lots of time to chat about sports, music, politics and wine. If there’s anyone who was more of a cultural clutter box than me it was Rob.
He told me he was working at the Victoria College coffeehouse Wymilwood, doing gopher work for The Bernies— Fiedler & Finkelstein— who owned True North Records and managed the iconic Riverboat in Yorkville. They also managed, among others, Bruce Cockburn and Murray McLauchlan. It all seemed like exciting stuff.
Xmas ended, and we went separate ways. When we next ran into each other I was at the U of T Student Housing service looking for a place for me and my girlfriend at the time. As I pursued the board I saw this guy posting an opening for a place on Albany Avenue. It was Rob. In no time flat I was installed as the third occupant of Mr. Rosen’s walkup rental. It became pizza boxes, newspapers and rotating Dowbiggin roommates for several years.
By this point Rob was getting more and more work from the Bernies. And more releases from the record companies. One day I remember him dashing into the living room, insisting I listen to this hot new record. It was “You Make Me Want To Be” by Dan Hill, who’d been a waiter at The Riverboat. As ever, Rob’s enthusiasm was infectious, and he played the 45 over and over. Another night in 1977 it was Fleetwood Mac’s game-changing Rumors, as we were awed by the new clean, crisp California production sound it represented.
When living in the Albany walkup got to be old, Rob and I took off to his grandmother’s now-vacant bungalow across from Taylor Creek Park in East York. My girlfriend was gone, but Rob was now installed with Lesley, his longstanding girlfriend at the time, and my two cats in our Three’s Company takeoff. For some strange reason he objected to the half-eaten rabbits, birds, snakes and critters my cats brought in each morning.
Having moved from the downtown Rob bought himself a used Renault to get around town. Typically he did zero maintenance on the car as he travelled on tour. One day I heard noises coming from under the hood. I propped it open. Squirrels had moved in. Another time an open basement window allowed a skunk to vaporize our basement for two weeks. It was pure bachelor stuff.
We were also political junkies. I recall us watching the provincial Liberal convention that elected unknown Stuart Smith as (star-crossed) leader in 1976. We saw Smith’s election as transformative. We were wrong. A born and bred Ontarian— Rob never lived outside the GTA— he liked to colour inside the political lines. I was more inclined to contrarian views— which became more pronounced as I settled into Alberta. His political bent made him conversant with the young student politicians at U of T Student Council (SAC). Rob was a mentor and a friend who gave them a touch of the big time.
I finished my degree, edited the student paper at what was then Erindale U of T campus, and had a play produced at Tarragon Theatre’s writer’s workshop. Then I headed off to travel around the world in 1976-77. Rob, meanwhile was getting more independence from The Bernies. He’d worked a deal with SAC to promote shows at Convocation Hall. I’ll never forget his fledgling show with the late Steve Goodman. We were so excited for him. After the show we were invited to Gordon Lightfoot’s place where I ended up at Gordon’s dining room table examining blueprints for his new yacht with him. It was great to be young and alive, and Rob was bringing us along for the ride.
The unique thing about Rob was his eclectic taste. He loved the music as much as the action of betting on which acts would sell. While CPI did the megastar arena shows at Maple Leaf Gardens, Rob stuck to more intimate venues like Con Hall and Massey Hall. His roster of acts was so diverse. John Prine, Pat Metheny, Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, J.J. Cale, John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Maria Muldaur, the McGarrigles, Leon Redbone, Levon Helm, Steeleye Span, George Thorogood, Peter Tosh, Jesse Cook, the Gypsy Kings and so many more were on the bill. Fans knew it was more than a payday when Rob presented. It was always a musical event of acts Rob wanted the public to know.
His onstage intros for the acts— the bearded guy in the beret— and his chiding customers about smoking in the bathrooms were vintage Rob. (Once he let me introduce Jay Leno who rode his motorcycle onto the stage!) So was the affection from the young people at SAC who worked with Rob and got the frisson of showbiz in addition to running student government. (I know this sad news will touch a community of SAC hacks who still revere him.)
In 1983 he stood up as best man at my wedding in the backyard of my parents’ home in Burlington. He was the sound recorder, but 30 seconds in the technical demons switched everything off, committing the ceremony to the “oral tradition”. We thought it might convince him to tie the knot himself, but he somehow managed to avoid matrimony till Mary got him to do the deed last year. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised as Mary also got him to ski in his 60s.
Eventually he rose the ladder of concert promoters in the country, taking tours across North America with the superstars. For a time he promoted the big summer shows at Molson Amphitheatre. In the winter, it was the O’Keefe Centre/ whatever-its-name-is-now. He’d bring you backstage to meet Robin Williams, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Mick Jagger, KD Lang, Stephen Page, Lucinda Williams. One Sunday night he called me up late to join him for dinner with a guest— who he couldn’t identify. I protested it was too late, and I was tired after doing two shows a day for CBC Toronto. I passed. Missing dinner with Bruce Springsteen.
After years of rubbing shoulders backstage with the stars Rob’s real joy seemed to come from the fine wines he brought backstage after the concert. Many a night as fans and hangers-on mobbed the act, Rob and I sipped a Mollydooker or a Lewis Cab in the corner of the dressing rooms. We were always comparing notes on our latest purchases. Me with U.S. futures, Rob with the latest LCBO treasures. In his spare time Rob began hosting dinner parties at home in Orangeville where he would lead tastings while his beloved partner Mary produced the food.
We also shared a passion for golf. I joined Weston G&CC while he became a ClubLink member at Grandview near his second home, the cottage on Bigwin Island. Despite his short stature, Rob could smash his driver through the many rocky outcrops at Grandview. He also became legendary among the members at the club for his explosive laugh that reverberated around the entire course.
They nicknamed him The Pirate for his booming Robert Newton laugh and even created an annual tournament in honour of his signature braying. Players wore eye patches in tribute. We liked to call him the hedgehog after his adventures in the rough during our Florida trips.
After golf we’d retire to the cottage to sip wine and debate politics. Unlike so many people these days, political or cultural differences never interfered with Rob’s friendships. He was the most loyal friend to my family, which designated him the sixth Dowbiggin brother. At my father’s memorial service he brought a vintage Cheateau Beaucastel, because my father and mother had visited the winery. You could tell him anything knowing it would (almost) never be repeated. That’s why the acts respected him. What happened backstage stayed backstage.
In our earlier days it was the girls and women we dated, as he teased me about my first-date playlists of Hall & Oates or Boz Skaggs. After I met Meredith in Montreal, we’d compare golf handicaps. As our careers flourished we’d share our satisfaction over his celebrated sell-out concerts, my Gemini Awards and the compelling people we’d met.
As Meredith and I started our family in 1985 with the arrival of our son Evan, Rob became Uncle Rob to our three kids in a five-year window. Not the most paternal fellow himself, he was a great uncle to the kids. In his Raffi days he was godlike. For Evan, our eldest, the pinnace was a backstage meeting in Calgary with John Prime, who autographed Bruised Orange for him.
We were so pleased how Mary’s children Robin and Will came to accept Rob in their lives. And he (belatedly) adopted a parental streak. He was as proud as anyone when Robin was married beside the Ottawa river in Hudson, Quebec. And he played the annoyed parent whenever Will acted like a teenager. It was precious. Lately he became a doting step-grandfather even as ALS took its hold on him.
One of Rob’s signatures was to arrive just in time for dinner. Since our moving west in 1999, getting together with Rob and Mary was less frequent. He often lamented that we couldn’t drop by each other’s homes on a whim or tee up a weekly golf game at Weston or a ClubLink course. But we made time for winter golf in Florida, where during one round Rob absent-mindedly twice stepped over what he thought were logs on a golf course looking to find some Titleist Pro Vs. The logs turned out to be alligators. He still couldn’t see what the fuss was about.
In spite of the great venues and great acts he staged Rob might have been most at home on Bigwin Island in the rocky cliffside cottage he’d purchased. Riding back and forth to the shore in his pontoon boat he felt himself the quintessential Ontario gentleman as he pointed out Shania Twain’s compound or the home of the GolfTown co-founder or the stately Bigwig resort. For an adopted kid who procrastinated about so much, the cottage was a definitive statement about how far he’d come since Norm and Glenna brought him to their home in Willowdale in 1952.
It’s hard to put value on a friendship, but if I was asked to capture our own bond it would be how it helped us grow as men. I can remember us walking one perfect Florida night near my parents’ winter home and saying in astonishment, “Who ever thought we’d get this far when we met at the LCBO in 1974?” As we all reflect on his impact, that is how I’ll remember Rob, a vital life force with his big laugh and a corkscrew in hand. And a man we can never replace. Good night, my friend. Take a bow in heaven with John Prine.
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air:”
Been quite a month for political plot lines, no? Since Joe Biden went full Sling Blade in his debate with Donald Trump to a near-fatal assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania to the Democratic Party staging a Covid-inspired coup against Biden. And now Ms. Montreal, Kamala Harris, being retro-fitted into the Dems’ nominee against Trump while her media pals hastily erase her past.
You rarely get this much red meat from the people who run the American political system. Most of the time the public is encouraged to think that Aaron Sorkin’s version of politics on The West Wing is how it works. Earnest liberals gamely coping with venal right wingers and foreign potentates in airtight 60-minute chunks.
There have been occasional attempts to pierce the fog. Veep showed politics as Benny Hill farce, Wag The Dog showed Hollywood’s staging counter narratives. The Death of Stalin showed the totalitarian state managing leadership succession.
But thanks to mainstream news networks, American politics for the most part is shown as a horse race to the White House, one with show ponies, handicappers and media jockeys. That seems to be the way people wish to consume their constitutional republic. Show business for ugly people.
That’s likely why the naked bones of the process being shown so explicitly since June 27 has upset people. Like the making of sausage, the making of laws is a distasteful sight. Guts and tissue on a blood-stained abattoir floor are hard to un-see. The fainting-goat followers of The West Wing are upset that the man with his hand on the nuclear codes can’t zip his own fly anymore.
Gullible liberals, with their fondness for the Covid administrative state, are most upset with all this honesty. As we wrote in September of 2023 of this Gallup Poll : “It shows that from 1972-2022 that GOP trust of media has plummeted from 41 percent to under 10 percent, while independents have gone from 53 percent to under 36 percent trust. IOW, their former favourite news sources don’t jive with their everyday reality.
But Democrats in the poll have vaulted from 64 percent to 76 percent in trust of media. Why? One reason probably lies with being told the narratives that please them. That give them comfort. These consumers allow legacy media’s fact checkers to sort out what they should know from “disinformation” without getting their hands dirty with the original story.” IOW, give me The West Wing.
The previous occasion when political machinations were so stark was the Western cultural upheavals of 1967-74, when assassinations, race riots, civil disobedience and blatant political chicanery poisoned the culture. Faced with insurrection and Charles Manson’s flower-power insanity, the powers of the time abandoned politesse for bare-knuckled reality. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were dispatched to another realm, LBJ was told to go back to his Texas farm, and sources inside the FBI apparatus stabbed Richard Nixon after the greatest presidential win in U.S. history.
There was little subtlety. Chicago mayor Richard Daley saw to that in Grant Park. CBS reporter Dan Rather was gut punched on camera at the DNC convention for getting too close, and VP Spiro Agnew was canned in favour of the genial Gerald Ford, friend of the donor class and Warren Report booster. He and Jimmy Carter smoothed the anxieties of the urban middle class that went from protest to pacified. Martin Sheen über alles.
By the 1980s Ronald Reagan was crushing the Soviets, and Aaron Sorkin began his soothing epistles to the sanctity of the political process. Ted Turner’s birth of CNN cable news in the ‘80s codified the game. Guard rails were erected to keep news in its place. The true power brokers like donors and PACs were grated anonymity. Anyone defying the rules of the DC Media party— hello, Rush Limbaugh— was sent to the gulag of right-wing radio.
The emergence of brash NYC hotelier Donald Trump was first seen as fodder for the cable-news showbiz narrative. He’d be the sideshow carny to distract zombie voters from the coronation of Hillary Clinton. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough thought he was money, constantly pimping for Trump on his morning show. What a laff riot he’d be.
Then Donald got too close to the untouchables. He discovered there were probably 50 million votes just lying there waiting for someone to pick up. Certainly not the bespoke DEMs. Or the Bush Republicans with their pals in the armaments and pharmaceutical lobbies. It was free money, and when has Don Trump ever left money on the table?
From the instant he started talking about borders, foreign wars and the Swamp he had a target posted on him. Because there is no treachery like class treachery the Swamp sought to destroy him in 2016. Chuck “Schemer” Schumer confirmed it: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 12: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) holds a news conference following meetings between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and GOP congressional leadership at the U.S. Capitol May 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Senate Democrats pointed to policies they say that Trump and Republicans in Congress agree on and said they were both operating from the same textbook. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
When he punked Hillary in the voting they employed the FBI, CIA and Barack Obama’s machine in a coup attempt predicated on Russia. While it was a struggle, they managed to keep the real story from their MSNBC/ NYT devotees, who to this day, still recite the Russiagate tropes. To them it was a West Wing plot line in which their liberal friends would persevere.
For all that the game was in still peril. Then came Covid. The Left and Neo-Con Trump haters were able to orchestrate a quasi-election in 2020, replete with historic voting totals and hastily-assembled regulations— hello vote harvesting, unsupervised drop boxes— never seen before.
Aging longtime DEM loyalist Joe Biden “a blowhard senator, a bad guy, a fabulist, corrupt, and a preternatural liar who didn’t hold a single consistent principle in his career” was appointed as place holder till the Obamas and Nancy Pelosi could orchestrate a new Barack in 2024. It almost worked, until Biden’s debate meltdown against Trump advanced the agenda and threatened the donors.
As the world watched in amazement it was out with Joe and in with Kamala. They don’t care who knows. Between now and the election in November expect more Black Swan events to unsettle the public and advance the globalist agenda.
During that time, never forget that confusion and chaos are the calling cards of the Far Left. Far from being a problem, the head-spinning reinvention of normal is their goal. Don’t believe legacy media, they’re happy for this.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
It’s unlikely Donald Trump will have time or energy for a post-presidential TV encore. But were he to do so at the age of 85 he might call it You’re Not Fired! In this take on his Apprentice franchise, Trump brings on governments officials and employees who’ve never been fired despair egregious mistakes, many costing lives.
They compete to see which one made the most gargantuan mistake without ever taking responsibility. Bonus points are awarded for players who can say things like “The buck stops here” with the most cloying insincerity as they keep their job. At the end of the episode Trump declares to the winner, “You get to keep your job forever. Better yet, we are giving you a raise.”
It’ll be a smash hit. Certainly he can talk from firsthand experience about government service being the gift that keeps on giving. To its employees and contractors. This past weekend, for instance, a complete cock-up by the Secret Service nearly cost Trump his life in front of a worldwide TV audience. As snipers tried desperately to put down a shooter, Secret Service folks heroically draped themselves over the president’s body. (At least those tall enough to shield Trump from incoming fire.)
The term heroically is key here. While the sunglasses/ walkie-talkie dudes risked their lives in service of the president, their superiors safely back in a DC office were cravenly insisting that they’d do better next time. In an NBC interview, Biden appointee Kim Cheatle claimed the mantle of “the buck stops here.” She promised transparency in finding out why her department had failed so many basic tasks of the raid to almost getting Trump’s head blown off.
What she didn’t do was resign in shame for almost getting the former and likely future POTUS killed. Nor was she asked to resign by her boss at Homeland Security, Antonio Mayorcas. Ditto the Big Boss, Joe Biden. Even when DEI appointee and Jill Biden chum Cheatle tried out a shameless meme about the sniper’s rooftop being unsafe (too severe a slope), no one asked for the keys to her office.
She held tight to her pension even when it was revealed her squad knew the shooter was around hours before the shots that wounded Trump and killed at least one other. That Trump was allowed to take the stage when the sniper’s parents were desperately calling police to find him. That her claim of local police screwing up was debunked. That the crew was undermanned while a more experienced crew worked a Jill Biden function.
Look, this is not to conduct a review of the protocols flubbed and the roofs abandoned. This is about accountability. To say that there is no glory without honour. And from Biden on down, honour has been MIA throughout the years of affirmative hiring and official bungling. They claim glory, but it’s a shattered chalice.
As just one example, DHS head Mayorcas still gets a seat at Joe’s cabinet table despite the total breakdown of border security. So does Kamala Harris, who was named “czar” for border security. Transport secretary Pete Buttiegieg has overseen fatal bridge collapses, train derailments and transit shutdowns without connecting it to his administration of the department.
The same absence of responsibility has ruled in the decade of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Canada. While his father earned (and then wasted) some honour by facing down rock-throwing separatists in 1968, Justin has been Brave Sir Robin, high-tailing it to the rear at the first sign he might be asked to show some stones.
While his media toadies downplayed Ol’ Yellow Stain at the time of the Truckers Convoy, most now acknowledge that had he emerged from under his desk at the Rideau Cottage in the early days to confront the protesters the disaster might have been averted. Instead, Skippy sent in the Ottawa Police and the Mounties to do his job, thereby converting a temporary problem into a historic assault on civil rights and the dignity of his office.
Whenever the coast was clear, Trudeau has predictably acted like a schoolyard bully to give himself gravitas. In addition to the Convoy, there was his draconian vaccine assault on the unconvinced, the cemetery pantomime leading to calling his nation genocidal at the UN, the imposition of the Carbon Tax and the honouring of a former Nazi in Parliament to silence his Ukraine critics. To impress his UN, EU and WEF pals he’s dissed Donald Trump at a distance, something that will now haunt him after November.
His cabinet and party quickly learned that they’d never be canned if they polished the PM’s apple. Most recently came the news that a cabinet minister had ordered the military to prioritize his fellow Sikhs in the frantic retreat from Afghanistan. Using the armed forces to protect your kin? Trudeau gave Harjit Singh Sajjat a pass because Harjit thinks (publicly at least) that the Boss is swell.
The Chinese cutouts in his caucus are likewise exempt from accountability, because Justin wants to be loved in Beijing. Why not? When he’s been repeatedly nailed on ethics violations or self-dealing he’s just gone la-la-la-la-la-la and moved on to new catastrophes. Or had a former Governor General whitewash his devious dealings.
In fact, the only way to get in trouble with Trudeau is to DO your job properly. Justice minister Jodi Wilson Raybould, a signature appointee as a woman and native, was canned by Trudeau for insisting the RCMP get to the bottom of a scandal from Quebec-based SNC Lavalin. Bill Morneau was edged out, because his view of a functioning economy didn’t include the top-down imposition of fantasist climate and gender diktats.
Both Biden and Trudeau drone on about restoring people’s faith in government without ever asking whether there are the problem. When your heart is pure, they say, your mission is noble. Now shut up.
Except Biden and later Trudeau are about to find out that their public is in no mood to shut up anymore.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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