Family Ties

Bob Bossin performs “Davy the Punk” on Saturday, Feb. 28th at 7:30 p.m.

Imagine your father was a quiet, conservative man. Then imagine if one day someone tells you that your father was once outlaw and a punk.

Performer Bob Bossin, one of BC’s best known folk singers from way back, comes to ArtSpring on February 28th with his one-man show of music, theatre, and storytelling about his father “Davy the Punk”.

The show tells the tale of Davy Bossin’s life in the gambling underworld of the 30s and 40s. A life Bob Bossin knew nothing about till about forty years ago.

Blocked by the rampant anti-semitism of the time, Davy Bossin blazed his own path in the gambling industry. The Attorney General of Ontario and the police doggedly pursued Davy Bossin from the late 1930s onwards.

Imagine Bob Bossin’s surprise to discover this.

Now, how many of us really know the people our parents have been? Often there are many lives lived within a life and this show explores just that.

You’ll want not only want to attend the show because of this fascinating story, but also because Bob Bossin is probably BC’s best known folk singer from way back and has considerable talent and skill, having spent 40 years writing and performing music and stories.

He co-founded the iconic and long-lived Canadian folk group Stringband and is the author of some of Canada’s favourite folk songs. He has recorded a dozen albums.

“Only a handful of songwriters have created a body of work that constitutes a portrait of our country. Stan Rogers did that. So did Gordon Lightfoot. And so does Bob Bossin,” says Stuart Mclean.

In addition to being a musician, Bob Bossin is also a writer. He published poetry in the 70s with House of Anansi Press. He has written non-fiction, including the book Settling Clayoquot (1981), and the play Bossin’s Home Remedy for Nuclear War (1986).

In 2014, Porcupine Quill published the memoir by Bossin – Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, Toronto the Good, the Mob and My Dad. Copies of the book will be on sale at ArtSpring on the evening of the performance.

Now is your chance to hear Bossin’s performance about fatherhood, family, immigrant life, political high life and the criminal underworld.

Kinda makes you wonder about your own family, doesn’t it?

Tickets to the February 28th 7:30 pm performance can be purchased at ArtSpring in person (100 Jackson Ave.), or at 537-2102 or at www.tickets.artspring.ca. Adults: $23; Youth: $5.