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Bob chased his acting career for fifty years. He picked up small parts in movies and had regular parts in plays in local and travelling theatres. After surviving multiple cancer treatments in 2010, he accepted his time was limited. This was Bob’s era to shine, he wrote plays and took on characters of men his age and in his condition. His efforts were rewarded with full houses and Dora awards. His last stage performance was Samuel Beckett’s Krapps Last Tape in 2018, a one man play about a writer at the end of his life going over his past interviews. His performance was lauded by the critics as one of the best they had seen of the play. The show was extended three times and played again the following season with more extensions. This was Bob’s last public performance. Our last adventure -- March 2018, I am looking at how to leave my memoirs, my tales of working with the Canadian magician Doug Henning. I had never written anything but, my experiences and history were being asked about. I am the last man standing in some instances. I had never taken my tales and put them into story form. The interest shown suggested I should at least try. In this day and age, technology allows us to leave written, audio and video trails of who we were and what we did. I was thinking of audio as the main conveyance. I had done voice recordings of some tales I was working on and wanted some guidance. I thought I needed some kind of speech lessons, he corrected me and told me I needed a director. The memoirs were of my working with Doug Henning from 1973 to 1976 which interested Bob, but I didn’t know if other people would be interested. I told him part of the saga was a juicy tale staring Doug and Muhammad Ali, but I didn’t know how far to take it. This caught his ear and he wanted to read it. I was very surprised to find he liked the story, but it needed work. He went to the extent of asking a personal friend of his that was a literary agent to look at it. Her only response that I heard was: “Its readable.” And she sent him the correct book proposal form to pass on to me. This was more than I had expected. Those two words emboldened me to reach further into my personal literary community. The right people in this circle advised me to proceed, which is what I’m doing now. Bobby told me to write a book, and that is the plan. We were cohorts for more than 50 years, there were many memorable moments of other types of incidents as we reinvented ourselves over our lives. We called each other’s bullshit more than once and we disagreed on more than one thing but these debates were guides to the drama of his real life. All of us who were there need to be writers of The Book of Rochdale. The only way your story is going to be told right, is if you write it yourself. Always be aware that what you see and remember is related to how you feel. Two people with inconsistent emotions, seeing the same incident, happening at the same time, may see the event differently. Write down what you remember, then plug in the bullshit meter. There is no single story about any one of us, or group that tells the whole tale, we are a saga with many characters and events. Bob did not waste his life; he took on many challenges accomplishing a variety of results. Win or lose, making the effort was what was important to him. Bob’s question was: “Which is more important, the blowjob or what you did to get it?” Bob is a fine example of not giving up until something had been accomplished. Even if it meant all the wheels fell off cart. He kept himself a Toronto celebrity right to the end. I am honoured that Bob read some of my work and encouraged me to reinvent myself as a writer. I hope I can do him a little justice. Bob is imprinted in my life, if I forget him, I will be suffering from dementia. 
Bob Nasnith 
Karen Johnston 
Jay Boldizar 
Lionel Douglas 
Bill Littler 
Mike Randal 
Rudy Hierck 
Brian H. Lumley 
Fergie 
Lionel and Bob street theatre at a Rochdale graduation 
1971 GovCon meeting |