Bob Bossin

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.

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 screen writer. 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.

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 song-writer. 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.

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