Radio broadcaster Bob Mackowycz Sr. works in a Q107 radio studio on May 26, 1986. His visionary radio programming injected a certain artistic flair into Toronto's cultural sceneAl Dunlop/The Canadian Press
On Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed outside the apartment building where he lived, the Dakota, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Like the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the horrible event is seared into our collective memory.
Bob Mackowycz could hardly forget it. Anchoring the postassassination coverage at Toronto rock radio station Q107 (CILQ-FM), he was on air for hours. “Everyone of our generation turned off their TVs and listened,” he later recalled. “It was the only appropriate way of grieving.”
The poetry-loving Mr. Mackowycz had a master’s degree in English literature but no experience in radio before arriving at the freshly founded Q107 in the late 1970s. He was an unconventional new personality finding his voice on an unconventional new station. The slaying of a former Beatle brought things into his focus.
“Until that day, I really didn’t know why I was in radio,” he said. “But during the broadcast, I felt for the first time that I was born to be there.”
There is an intimacy and instancy to radio not found on other mediums. No cameras, no makeup – no time. “Radio is your brain and the microphone,” television personality and radio host Jeff Marek told The Globe and Mail. “And that is where Bob really thrived.”
Bob Mackowycz Sr., the renaissance man of rock radio whose innovative programming brought an educated-hippie panache to Toronto’s cultural scene and whose philosophic bent implied the full moustache his listeners could only imagine, died on May 29. His son, Bob Mackowycz Jr., said he suffered a sudden and unexpected illness. He was 75.
He will be remembered as the writer and host of Q107′s much-imitated Six O’ Clock Rock Report, a dinner-hour digest of commentary, music spotlights and high-profile interviews. Streetwise and smart, it was daily appointment radio for the rock music enthusiast.
Mr. Mackowycz also had a hand in establishing Psychedelic Sunday, a weekend staple of lysergic Sixties sounds for 33 years, hosted for most of its run by Andy Frost. A generation of Toronto millennials rolled their eyes at their dads blasting Nights in White Satin on Sunday afternoons, only to appreciate the period music when they grew older.
Mr. Mackowycz had completed his masters’s degree and was packing boxes at Simpsons while looking for the right job to suit his brain. That is when Q107 co-founder John Parikhal recruited his friend and former classmate to write for programs that aired at the station, including the Six O’ Clock Rock Report.
One evening, when the host of the program didn’t show up on time, “Macko,” as he was known to colleagues, was told by program director Dave Charles that he would have to go on air because there was no one else who knew the material well enough.
“He had a look of shock on his face, but Dave and I told him he wrote it, so he could read it,” Mr. Parikhal said. “He did a great job, and we let him know he’d be doing the show from then on. He said he couldn’t do it. I told him, ‘You just did.’”
Mr. Mackowycz was later promoted to music director and program director at the quickly successful station. “We had a lot of spoken-word programming which the so-called experts told us would never work,” Mr. Parikhal said. “Six O’Clock Rock Report was one of those shows.”
Music tastes were changing in the late 1970s and into the 80s, and Mr. Mackowycz was receptive to punk music and new wave, even if his own tastes leaned to early Rolling Stones and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. He was a nonconformist who stuck his neck out for the Ramones, XTC and the Police on commercial radio.
“He saw the change that was happening but not generally recognized,” said Toronto concert promoter Gary Topp. “While others were deaf to it, he appreciated the new sounds with a very open mind.”
In 1988, six months after being promoted to program director, Mr. Mackowycz left Six O’Clock Rock Report and the only station he’d ever known.
“I’ve spent a good decade in the front lines, and 10 years at one station is remarkable in this business,” he told The Globe. “I’m leaving a bit of my soul behind.”
Among his off-air pursuits was 1988′s Dream Tower: The Life and Legacy of Rochdale College, a book about the rise and fall of an experiment in student-run alternative education and communal living in Toronto. It was co-authored with entertainment writer Henry Mietkiewicz.
“Between the two,” Globe reviewer Max Layton wrote, “they bring to their subject a knowledge of Sixties pop culture and reportorial skill that make Dream Tower eminently readable and fascinating.”
After Q107, Mr. Mackowycz worked on radio syndication and special projects with Standard Broadcasting, which operated stations including Ottawa’s upstart 54 Rock, where he was program director.
He hosted That’s Rock And Roll on CFNY-FM and held leadership positions at talk radio CFRB-AM and sports station Fan 590 (CJCL-AM) in Toronto and XM Satellite Radio in Washington.
He later participated in the successful broadcast license applications of XM Radio Canada and Vancouver’s Shore 104 (CHLG-FM). He was a programming consultant and part-owner of the B.C. adult album alternative station.
A throughline connecting his managerial posts was his insistence on on-air authority. He had no truck with the mealy-mouthed. On his office door were the words “like” and “I mean,” with lines slashed through them.
“Wishy-washy words drove him crazy,” The Fan’s Mr. Marek said. “He wanted you to make your statement, dig in your heels and defend your thesis.”
Mr. Mackowycz endeavoured to elevate conversations. Standard patter and bland reporting were unacceptable to the fan of Northrop Frye’s ideas on an educated imagination. “To Bob, every look needed to be a thoughtful look,” Mr. Marek said.
In addition to making waves in radio, Mr. Mackowycz briefly penned a pop culture column for the Toronto Star. In it, he was as likely to quote poet Percy Shelley in a piece about the rise of the DVD as say happy 60th birthday to Bob Dylan: “You were absolutely right to deny the ‘troubadour of a generation’ mantle everyone tried to foist on you. What you should be congratulated for is becoming the song and dance man you always said you were.”
Mr. Mackowycz spent his final years writing poetry, including a collection called Smudges. He will be remembered as a forward-thinker who was intellectually curious.
“Bob liked to shake things up,” Mr. Parikhal said. “He always had that twinkle in his eye, as if to ask, ‘How can I make you slip on the ice?’ "
Robert William Mackowycz was born March 6, 1949, in Metz, France, near the Luxembourg border. His mother and father had been displaced by Nazis from Ukraine to French work camps, where they met. They immigrated to Canada when their son was two.
In Toronto, Fedor Mackowycz was a custodian for the Toronto District School Board. Katerina (née Lozynska) Mackowycz worked as a cleaner for Bell Canada.
“His humble and proud family beginning was an important part of his life and shaped his passion for social justice,” said Bob Mackowycz Jr., who followed his father into radio.
In a 1986 profile in the Toronto Star, the elder Mr. Mackowycz said his claim to fame was a gold medal won at the University of Toronto for the highest graduating mark in the class of 1974. He later abandoned a doctorate on the influence of The Book Of Job on 19th-century English literature.
“That makes me living proof of the value of a liberal arts education, because when the door to opportunity opened, I knew how to open my mouth,” he explained.
After Q107 and other stops along the dial, Mr. Mackowycz worked for Lee Abrams, co-founder of XM Satellite Radio, which later merged into SiriusXM Radio, Inc.
“When those two were in the same room, it became about art, not radio,” said Canadian broadcaster Iain Grant. “Actually, radio was the last thing they wanted to create.”
At times, Mr. Mackowycz created mischief. One of his radio influences was Joe Crysdale, who would broadcast the home games of baseball’s Toronto Maple Leafs from Maple Leaf Stadium but recreate away games on air with telegraphed reports and sound effects when the team was on the road.
When a Major League Baseball strike caused the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, Mr. Mackowycz came up with the idea for a dramatized series that played out on Fan 590 as if the games were real.
Likewise, at Q107 in the early 1980s, Mr. Mackowycz created what he described as a “theatre-of-the-mind rock festival,” which was a parody of the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair of 1969, complete with performances and interviews. According to Mr. Mackowycz, music fans not in on the ruse descended on Woodstock, Ont., expecting a real festival.
Mr. Marek recently spoke to Mr. Mackowycz about the future possibilities of podcasts. “To the end of his life,” Mr. Marek said, “he was interested in the next phenomenon.”
Mr. Mackowycz leaves his wife of 54 years, Frances Mackowycz; children, Bob Mackowycz Jr. and Lesia Mackowycz; brother, Taras Mackowycz; and grandchildren, Charlotte and Hugo.
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