Bob (Robert Chambers) Edwards

Bob is the editor of the Calgary Eye Opener. He was born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He moved to Alberta in the early 1890s and established The Wetaskiwin Long Lance in 1895 and after the local preachers ran him and the paper out out of Wetaskiwin and, in turn, Strathcona and High River for, as Bob described it, "expressing contrary opinions, drinking and hootin and yellin and generally disturbing the Gospel", he arrived in Calgary and the paper became The Calgary Eye Opener in 1904. Nothing is sacred to The Calgary Eye Opener --- Bob managed to antagonize many an all too sober cleric but Eye Opener stories, satires, cartoons made Calgarians laugh and listen and the paper became so popular throughout Canada that 35,000 Canadians subscribed to it. Grossly exaggerated rumors had Bob dying in 1922.

Historians Grant MacEwan (once a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta) and Hugh Dempsey (Chief Curator Emeritus of Calgary's Glenbow Museum) have written extensively about Bob. MacEwan has written a biography, Eye Opener Bob. Dempsey has put together an anthology of Bob's Eye Opener work, The Best of Bob Edwards

In 2004, our star reporter, Scoop, interviewed Bob --- click here to read the interview.