Stuart Robertson (CBC photo)
If the plants in your garden seem a bit limp today, they might be water-logged from the rain, or they might be mourning the death this morning of local gardening expert Stuart Robertson.
According to obituaries in The Gazette and at CBC, Robertson died Wednesday morning of complications from pneumonia after a long battle with lymphoma.
Robertson, who worked at CBC Radio in Montreal (among other things, as a traffic reporter) until retiring in June, turned his gardening expertise into a weekly column in The Gazette (the last one was just this past Saturday), a regular column on CBC television, and a weekly (sometimes more than that) spot on CBC’s Radio Noon. He also wrote two books on gardening.
The CBC obit mentions that Robertson was a popular columnist on Radio Noon. This can’t be overemphasized. His gardening call-in was by far the most popular regular segment. While other times the call-in segment would struggle for a trickle of calls, when the topic was gardening everyone wanted to get on and ask him a question. The only thing stopping the station from having him on more often was a concern that Radio Noon not turn into the Stuart Robertson Gardening Show.
Stuart Robertson was a quiet man, but his departure leaves an ominous silence.
UPDATE: The full Gazette obit got Page 1 treatment on Thursday.
I loved hearing his voice.
Mary Soderstrom’s blog has a good memorial piece on Stuart today: she also evokes his role as chairman of the Electronic Rights Defence Committee: http://marysoderstrom.blogspot.com/2009/09/several-spider-plants-years-of-support.html I also remember him cracking jokes during the bitter Radio-Canada labour conflict a few years back.
Like just about everyone else in the city who was comfortable speaking English, I phoned in to the gardening shows, and won a book, with a kind note from the author…