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Robert Brennan - Profile
Recently, I concluded a career of writing copy for political hopefuls and seaside tourist destinations that have seen their good fortunes of the sixties shrink in the face of competition from several Caribbean locations with more impressive claims to the sun and sea. Now, I am ready to while away my senior years with travel and writing about things that escape the desks of those in the advertising vocation.
It’s not that travel hasn’t been a part of my life when time and circumstances permitted. The pleasure of quaffing Guiness in Cork, sipping Tuscan wine in Florence and deftly side-stepping a pick pocket in Piza have retained places in the memory that has experienced enough of travel to know I want more.
With some notable exceptions when my work required me to write printable copy in defense of building the bridge to Prince Edward Island, dispelling notions of the virtue of proportional representation and electing people to office, the majority of my creative efforts has been in writing and producing advertising copy for radio and television. I have taken on Federal politicians and advocates with views at variance with my own in a series of letters to newspapers across the nation, debated issues of the day on our local version of Canada's public broadcaster, as well as CBC Newsworld.
The television write-and-produce part of my efforts were far more fun than the "creative” sweat shops of private radio. Having started in that business several years before most contributors to this site were born, I can attest to the Dickensian environments that afflicted the employees of the time. It was enough to drive many to conduct career changes to law, medicine, used cars sales, entrepreneurial endeavours and, in some very sad cases, the bureaucracy.
One special memory was a morning at a Radio Bureau of Canada breakfast at an Ottawa hotel. Before I left, my place at the table was further enhanced with three trophies and five Honourable Mention certificates for creative excellence.
Still, there are many happy memories of that time when I even learned to appreciate the historic character and unique beauty of Saint John, New Brunswick, before I started on a trek that would land me back in the place of my birth, on Prince Edward Island, many years later.