Toronto Star

The son of Davy the Punk is back in town

- Joe Fiorito

The future is a void; the past is all that we know, and all that we have done and left undone. The only way to keep your head from spinning is to move ahead.

Bob Bossin is moving ahead by looking back at the past, and let me remind you that his past includes the legacy of one of the sweetest Canadian folk groups, Stringband.

And then there is the legacy of his old man, who was known as Davy the Punk — a gambler, a legendary bookmaker and the operator of a race wire in the bad old days of this city.

Bob wrote a memoir about his old man, who was what you might call a luftmensch — a man of the air — a man, in other words, who was doing fine with no visible means of support. How is Bossin moving ahead? By fusing his skills and his experience. He is a musician, and he turned his book — it is called Davy The Punk — into a one-man show, a kind of musical theatre. He has been performing it here and there around the country, in living rooms and small halls, for a while now.

He is performing tonight at Hugh’s Room, 2261Dundas St. W. Show starts at 8 p.m.

Just so you know, I reviewed Bossin’s book a while back. I think it is one of the foundation­al documents of this city, in that it tells us deep secrets about the bad old days of Toronto The Good, when we were good on the surface but the streets reeked of anti-Semitism, and many people found refuge and ruin in gambling dens or at the track.

I met Bossin the other day at Old City Hall. He wanted to take another peek inside the courthouse where his father, Davy The Punk, had been put on trial so many times.

We sat on a bench outside one of the courtrooms. The air smelled of dust and misery, and the corridors were punctuated by the clicking heels of crown attorneys, as if they were typing judgment as they walked.

Bossin has been away from Toronto for a very long time. These days he lives in British Columbia, on Gabriola Island — and yes, for all you Malcolm Lowry fans, he has taken the October ferry to it.

He said, “I have a nice house on a half-acre lot. I’ve lived there since 1990. It will be old age that moves me off; it gets hard to carry in the wood.” I know the feeling.

We talked about the genesis of the book. Bossin said, “When I turned 60, I had this epiphany. If I wasn’t going to write about my father then, when was I going to do it.” That was eight or nine years ago. A couple of things prodded him: He once fell into conversati­on with a counterman at the old United Bakers’ Dairy Restaurant; the count- erman knew Davy, and he told Bob some pretty good stories.

And then he saw Alex Haley on TV, and Haley — this was some time after Roots — observed that everyone should interview their elders. Bossin took that advice and recorded some 40 hours’ worth of tape with his family. Alas, he couldn’t interview his father, who died when Bob was in his teens.

In doing his research, Bossin filed a freedom of informatio­n request, and discovered boxes of documents containing the story of his father’s legal travails. You might like to know that the law was unable to touch Davy The Punk, to their everlastin­g chagrin. But hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em: what Davy did then — gambling, running a race wire — is done for profit by government­s today.

In the end, Bob said, “He walked away from the race wire in 1944. After that, he didn’t work. I think he went back to laying off bets. And then he took over an entertainm­ent business.” And so the bookie became a booking agent, as well as a manager of talent — perhaps you remember the Crew-Cuts.

What’s Bossin doing now, apart from performing this show?

“I don’t have anything on the back burner — my wife doesn’t believe that for a second — but I doubt I’ll do another book.” Instead, he and his wife are planning a trip to Europe; when they come back, Bossin will be looking for more places to perform the story of Davy The Punk.

It’s a Toronto story. Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

 ??  ?? Bob Bossin, son of Davy the Punk, has turned his book into a one-man show, or a kind of musical theatre, writes Joe Fiorito.
Bob Bossin, son of Davy the Punk, has turned his book into a one-man show, or a kind of musical theatre, writes Joe Fiorito.
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