We’ve known Bob Rotz as Rotzy. He has been our funny bone and our wonderfully humorous political prod for half a dozen years, appreciated by all of our website visitors. He made us laugh and nod our heads in agreement in every Monday morning column, wishing we were as creative as he was with his barbs and slings. He was a passionate court jester and royal critic of the supreme order with every political miscreant vulnerable to his verbal foils.
“From NAKINA,” first appeared on our site, www.szpin.ca, in 2018. Rotzy had already been writing for the Geraldton Times-Star for more than a dozen years. He even published his own paper for a while up in northern Ontario.
Who’ll forget his D.O.T.W. (Dink Of The Week) awards bestowed on numerous politicians, from Doggie Ford to Tuffy Trudeau? The Honourable Bob Rae once called him ‘an amazing journalist,’ but as Rotzy wrote, “now [Rae] doesn’t call me at all”.
His love for his wife Jo Ann was heartwarming. Miz. Jo, as he named her, was in poor health in the last few months and Rotzy’s weekly updates kept us praying and hoping for her recovery. It worked Rotz. Miz. Jo’s still goin’.
Sitting in his man cave, Edna, the truck he parked out back of Harris Place, even in the cold of winter, Rotz would sip his coffee, occasionally with a ‘splash’ of Bailey’s in it, Edna’s driverside window notched open a tad to let the fumes out.
Rotzy had a way with phrases, names and sobriquets for MPs and MPPs from Trudeau to Doggie Ford, Mr. Edsel. His spelling had our heads spinning and once early in his postings, I was about to edit his “mispellings” but realized these were not errors, these were the character of the piece, the personality of the man in ink. You do not touch such things, such sharp and poignant barbs as those that flew from Rotzy’s keys. Every sacred cow was a vulnerable target with this Robin Hood of the text keyboard. His verbal missiles targetted equally, every big whig might be a target, and usually was.
Rotzy was the curmudgeon of the north, the Gordon Sinclair of the Geraldton Times, the Allan Fotheringham of Nakina.
I have perused some of his columns trying to catch the special spirit of the man but it was like trying to catch a pixie in a hurricane. He was unique, one of a kind as a journalist and commentator. But most important of all, he uncapped humour across the laughter spectrum of laughter. Never crude or insulting, always sharp with a deftly delivered jab. Kings were as vulnerable as pawns at his keyboard. To say he’ll be missed is like saying heaven is heavenly.
May he rest in peace up there in his new office writing columns for the angels who’ll be rolling in the heavenly aisles reading Rotzy’s best.
We’re gonna miss ya Rotzy, real bad!
