Bob Bossin (born 1946) is a Canadian folk singer, writer and activist who co-founded the Canadian folk group Stringband with Marie-Lynn Hammond. Bossin is the writer of the songs "Dief Will Be the Chief Again", "Show Us the Length", "Tugboats", "The Maple Leaf Dog" and "Sulphur Passage (No pasaran)". As well, Bossin wrote and performed two solo musicals, Bossin's Home Remedy for Nuclear War and Davy the Punk. The latter is based on the book Davy the Punk (The Porcupine's Quill, 2014), Bossin's memoir of his outlaw father.
Early life
Bob Bossin grew up in Toronto surrounded by artists, entertainers and writers. His mother, Marcia Bossin (née Marcella Louise Levitt, 1912–2006) was a painter. His father, David Bossin (1905–1963), was a booking agent for nightclubs. Two of Bob's uncles were writers: Hye Bossin was a columnist and editor, and Art Arthur (né Bossin) was a screenwriter. Arthur wrote the 1946 Academy Award-winning documentary, Seeds of Destiny.
As a boy, Bossin fell in love with the early rock 'n rollers – Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent – but by 1958 he had turned his ear to folk music. The variety, earthiness and politics of folk songs so captivated Bossin that the genre became his musical home for the next half century.
Bossin graduated from the University of Toronto in 1968. His university years coincided with the zenith of student and youth activism in Canada: the civil rights movement, opposition to the war in Vietnam, anti-nuclear and disarmament campaigns, and the nascent environment and feminist movements all engaged young people, Bossin among them. He became, and remained, a lifelong activist and social critic.
Those same years saw a revamping of CBC Radio by young, engaged journalists recruited from the student press, among them Doug Ward, Volkmar Richter, Mark Starowitz, and Peter Gzowski. When Gzowski became editor of Maclean's Magazine in 1971, he assigned 25-year-old Bossin a regular column. Bossin would continue to write essays and articles, and produce radio documentaries, for many years. But his main focus was music.
Stringband 1971–1986
A detailed history of Stringband can be found through the links section below.
In 1971 Bossin met Marie-Lynn Hammond, a young, bilingual singer and songwriter. He recruited Jerry Lewycky, a violin student at University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, to accompany them on fiddle. The configuration – guitar, banjo, fiddle and voices – was that of a string band, one of the traditional North American folk music forms.
Stringband's first album, on their own Nick Records label, was released in 1973. The timing was propitious: the early 1970s saw a burgeoning of Canadian culture. Young writers like Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje were being published. Cultural institutions like Theatre Passe Muraille, the House of Anansi Press, Attic Records and CBC Radio's This Country in the Morning/ Morningside began. Stringband, with its repertoire of Canadian songs and stories, provided a sound track for this cultural revolution. "They search relentlessly for a Canadian sound," Canadian poet Doug Fetherling wrote of Stringband in Saturday Night Magazine in 1975. "Not hearing it, they have perhaps invented it."
In 1974 Lewycky left the group and was replaced by fiddler Ben Mink, who would become one of Canada's most respected musicians and music producers. Mink left Stringband in 1976 and jazz violinist Terry King took over on fiddle. King was followed by Zeke Mazurek in 1978 and Calvin Cairns in 1983. Bassist Dennis Nichol joined the group in 1979. Other musicians who played or recorded with Stringband include Frank Barth, Doug Bowes, Jane Fair, Daniel Lanois, Kieran Overs, Stan Rogers, Alan Soberman, Chris Whitely and, for a time replacing Marie-Lynn Hammond, singer-songwriter Nanci Ahern.
Stringband recorded nine albums, toured Canada for 15 years, and performed in the U.S., the U.K, the U.S.S.R, France, Mexico and Japan. They gained a loyal, almost fanatical, following. The group disbanded in 1986, but in 2001, former fans donated $25,000 to fund The Indispensable Stringband, a retrospective CD-box set released in 2002.