About

With Anita at the farm of my ancestor, Abel Turcault, on Îsle d’Orléans, Québec in August 2008

Welcome to the weblog of Bob Turcotte, not the famous Ontario curler of the same name or the former great jockey (Ron Turcotte) or a former Cardinal Archbishop of Montreal (Jean-Claude Turcotte). I am not to be confused with George W. Bush or Barrack Obama either, though we all have curly hair.

No, this is the site of the infamous, or is it unfamous, Bob Turcotte, high school chemistry and guitar teacher, songwriter, long-term liturgical musician. I was born a “Westmount Rhodesian,” (ref. Bowser & Blue) went to Bishop Whelan High School in Lachine where I took a half-hearted stab at growing up. I played football with the Lachine Lakers, graduated in 1965 (yike!) from Loyola of Montreal with a B. Sc. in Chemistry, taught in Trinidad with CUSO, married a wonderful Trini named Anita, worked in the wall coverings industry for over 20 years and served as a liturgical musician at St. Anthony of Padua for longer than I can remember. In 1992 I re-entered teaching. I retired in 2007.

I rode a horse once and curled once. I have never bombed Iraq. Furthermore, I am not a bishop, though, in the 1980’s, I once heckled Cardinal Carter at his Annual Dinner for attacking the CBC about their coverage of the Mount Cashel scandal. I believe in the immense contribution that public broadcasting has made to our culture and sense of identity as Canadians and worry about the way the CBC has recently become co-opted and cowed by the powerful.

While I respect all who have sought spiritual and scientific wisdom throughout history, in my latter days I have come to believe that religions as we know them have largely abandoned the seeking in order to defend their entrenched and often harmful positions.  I find awe in music, art and in contemplation of the universe – magnificent even while it is dimly pictured by us humans, whose perception is limited to only four dimensions and, too frequently, to a simplified atomistic methodology. 

Advertisement