“You couldn’t go anywhere in our city without bumping into Bob Morrow.”
Hamilton has had dozens of mayors since the city was formed in 1846. But none of them served longer than the tall, deep-voiced piano man named Bob Morrow who held the top job from 1982 to 2000, through six election victories.
Now, six years after his death at the age of 71, a documentary film about him is set to be premiered at the Westdale Theatre on June 16.
“Golden Era: The Legacy of Bob Morrow” by Hamilton filmmaker Scott C. Newman of White Dwarf Pictures is a mostly affectionate look at his life. It leaves no doubt that “Mayor Bob” loved his city. If there was a ribbon to cut, some sod to turn or a community event to attend, he would be there.
As current Mayor Andrea Horwath says, “Bob Morrow was the man about town. You couldn’t go anywhere in our city without bumping into Bob Morrow.”
But the hour-and-a-half film also notes he is remembered for saving the Hamilton Tiger-Cats from folding. He helped usher in recreational and environmental improvements in the West Harbour, and he worked hard to lay the groundwork for the city’s transition to a more diverse economy from its industrial heritage.
An NHL franchise never landed for the newly opened Copps Coliseum, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying on his part.
The film features a wide range of newsreel footage from CHCH and other media of his days as mayor along with clips of him at the piano or church organ.
The Spectator’s Graeme MacKay adds to the story by talking about cartoons he drew of Morrow, many of which raised the mayor’s blood pressure. Political colleagues, friends and family share their memories.
Morrow’s son George recalls the long hours his father worked.
“Being mayor was a 24-hour-a-day job,” he says. ”My dad was always on call. Unfortunately, that was one of several reasons why my parents’ marriage didn’t work out because he was also married to Hamilton.”
His mother Guay would eventually remarry and move out west.
As a boy, Morrow was acknowledged as a wunderkind pianist, says his brother Al, a rowing coach, and a member of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. “He could listen to any tune in any genre and immediately play it back.”
After finishing university, Morrow ran for Ward 1 alderman. He managed to win, but ended up being disqualified because his name wasn’t on the voters’ list.
Incredibly, his father George, a dentist, stepped forward and took the ward in a subsequent byelection.
That set the stage for Morrow to return two years later — with his name on the voters’ list — and he easily won.
From there, he was elected to the city’s board of control, an executive committee of council that was elected at large under the political system at the time. After a few terms of that, he focused his attention on the mayor’s chair and managed to unseat incumbent Bill Powell in 1982.
He became unbeatable at the polls until 2000, in the newly amalgamated city, when he lost to former Ancaster mayor Bob Wade. From there Morrow served as a citizenship court judge and pursued his passion for playing church organ, most notably at St. Patrick’s Church on King Street East. He briefly returned to politics to finish the term of Ward 3 councillor Bernie Morelli after he died in 2014.
In the film, Sheila Copps describes Morrow as likable and unpartisan.
“The thing with Bob is that even when he was being pushed on all sides with all kinds of pressure, he literally was always a gentleman. He was always kind, always in a good mood, always very positive,” she says.
“If worse came to worse he could always get everyone smiling by sitting down and playing the piano.”
But others recalled how Morrow could have a thin skin and display a fierce temper, especially when someone voiced disparaging words about the city.
“Whenever Bob saw anyone slagging Hamilton he took it personally. He would push back sometimes tempestuously,” says Fred Eisenberger, who served 12 years as mayor. “Bob could flare up. He had a temper. His temper would flare up on those moments when someone took a shot at Hamilton that he thought was unwarranted. It angered him to have his city slagged in any way by anyone and he would reach out and respond.”
The film recalls Morrow taking offence from a Milton Berle joke that said: “a tornado blew through Hamilton the other day. Nobody was hurt, but it caused a million dollars in improvements.”
And of course, there was the matter of the disappearing mayor’s chain of office, a 1950s gift to the city from the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. It was something Morrow loved to wear. Then, in 1991, he claimed it had been stolen.
But Eisenberger, who was an alderman at the time, believes the mayor “was upset with the (chamber) leadership or the chamber of commerce as a whole … I believe Bob was upset enough to take the chain and chuck it in the harbour.”
Whatever happened, the chain never surfaced. Another one was made and Morrow refused to wear it.
A bigger controversy that lingers to this day was his refusal to proclaim Gay Pride Week. It led to a landmark Ontario Human Rights decision in 1995 that found he discriminated against the gay community, and he was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine to the complainant in the case.
Incredibly, the city stopped issuing proclamations for all special events, as a way to avoid the issue.
Former mayor Larry Di Ianni says, “I think he thought he was reflecting what the community wanted” but “I think if he had to redo it again, he would have handled it differently, would be my guess.”
Rosemary Baptista, a close friend who spearheaded and co-produced the film project with Newman, says “Bob was the real McCoy. There was no fakeness about him.”
“He treated everyone with love and respect regardless of their place in society. It was real. It was not to win votes. That is the way he was,” she says.
Baptista approached Newman about taking on the project. His company does feature film and television series work that has appeared on Cable 14 and CHCH, among other places.
She also organized a recent ceremony at city hall to celebrate the naming of the “Bob Morrow Forecourt” in front of city hall.
The premiere at the Westdale Theatre at 1 p.m. on June 16, will be hosted by Tony Agro, a school principal and son of Vince Agro, who was a longtime friend of Morrow and city politician who died in 2020.
The film will later be reformatted into a five-part series that will run on Cable 14 in July, Newman says.
Source Credit: thespec.com
Recent Comments