The enduring myth of Brandon Bob is baffling

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/02/2018 (2983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a few well-known Bobs in Brandon that have name recognition among our citizenry.

We have Brandon-area farmer and businessman Bob Mazer of Mazergroup. There’s BOB FM, the radio station that plays the ’80s… ’90s… and, well, whatever. And of course B.O.B. Headquarters, which is positioning itself to take advantage of the soon-to-be legal recreational marijuana market.

No doubt there’s more than a few in the city — and plenty more outside its borders in greater Westman. But for my purposes, I’m looking within the city limits this time — sorry, Dauphin-Swan-River-Neepawa Conservative MP “Bob” Sopuck.

There is also a more famous Bob whose name rings out at this time of year whenever there are shadows to be seen. I speak of that elusive critter, Brandon Bob, the groundhog that seems to be Manitoba’s official Groundhog Day torchbearer. The only problem, of course, is that he doesn’t exist. Well, at least I’ve never seen him.

I’m not sure where the name Brandon Bob first appeared in The Wheat City — likely before my time here at The Brandon Sun. But the earliest recorded appearance in our archives that I can find of the rodent is in the Feb. 3, 2005, edition of The Sun —one year before I started here as a reporter.

Then-Sun reporter Marcy Nicholson asked the question: “Where is Brandon Bob, anyway?”

She noted that media outlets like the CBC and even The Weather Network had reported on the Wheat City’s groundhog “year after year,” but that there was no hint of where this name came from, or who had started the myth of “Bob.” The S.J. McKee archives held no record of the groundhog, and former Brandon University archivist Tom Mitchell expressed his confusion to The Sun over its history.

“I must confess, I’ve never heard of Brandon Bob,” Mitchell told Nicholson.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that Brandon Bob seems to have been part of someone’s active imagination, media continue to refer to our local figment as an annual tradition. Brandon Bob shows up on the websites of the Delta Optimist newspaper in British Columbia and the Nova Scotia-based South Shore Breaker (owned by the Chronicle Herald) and — yes — Wikipedia.

Even since that 2005 Brandon Sun article dismissing Brandon Bob as fake news (so to speak), the CBC and The Weather Network continued to allude to Manitoba’s Brandon Bob. The Weather Network did so as recently as Jan. 31, 2017, and Winnipeg’s Power 97 radio station did so the year before.

And so too did Star FM this year, when it tweeted out a cute cartoon groundhog with the hashtag “#BREAKING. #brandonbob sees his shadow. 6 More Weeks of Winter.”

Eek. I sense the hand of Brandon Sun columnist Tyler Glen in that one, who noted in his most recent Sun column that the Wikipedia reference to Brandon Bob “gets more national attention for Brandon than our yearly drunk guy riding a lawn mower through the local drive-thru.” He’s right about that, in a Tyler Glen sort of way. But I better not tell him.

Groundhog Day, too, seems to have gained more fame with the release of Bill Murray’s comedy film of the same name in 1993 — and given worldwide name recognition to Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia page, the phrase Groundhog Day has since entered common uses “as a reference to an unpleasant situation that continually repeats.”

How apropos.

Glen has proposed an idea often before — that someone finally make Brandon realize its namesake in Brandon Bob, and bring a groundhog to the Wheat City, so that we too — like the town of Punxsutawney — can get a little time in the spotlight from national and international media. And throw a party, of course.

I’m not convinced pretending that a large rodent can forecast the weather is the best way to advertise ourselves and our community, but it does seem passing strange to me that we continue to be known for a character who does not now nor has ever existed. Any animal lover out there prepared to take on the task of handling such a critter?

If no one decides to step up, at the very least will somebody please tell The Weather Network the truth? It’s starting to get embarrassing.

» Matt Goerzen