The morning after, for retiring ‘Morning Live’ co-host Bob Cowan

Morning had broken but it wasn't quite the same.

Not for us - there was no Bob Cowan on our TV screens (but there were still the inimitable Annette Hamm and now new co-host Tim Bolen - welcome aboard, Tim, and may your run be as successful as Bob's).

It certainly wasn't the same for Bob Cowan - for Bob, it was later. Much later.

I called him at 10 a.m. the first day of his retirement.

You woke me up!" he joked.

You have to understand that, for a guy like Bob Cowan, 10 a.m. is like 2:45 in the afternoon to you and me, and 2:45 to him is, or rather was, like 7 to you and me; 2:45 in the morning that is. That's when his alarm would go off and he'd rouse himself for another working day, up even before the farmers set out on their tractors to mow those crop circles you hear tell about.

Bob slept in that morning I called. Not until 10. Until 7. He had accumulated a lot more lay-abed credit than that, having just retired after 21 years at CH, most of them as the Hamilton-based station's beloved and congenial morning man, the face and voice this city has woken up to for the better part of this century so far.

He might yet have slept til 10, rather than 7 - he's earned it - but his adrenalin was probably still bubbling from the day before. He had a send-off for his last CH Morning Live" show that left him, well, a little unheld together so to speak.

I tried to hold it together," Bob, 65, tells me from his home in Dundas.

But the emotion got the better part of him, and I mean the better, because when it got to him it got to so many who were watching, and is there a better part of us, at such moments, than the good grace to let it show?

How could you not?

Says Bob, of the last show, It was such a big thrill yesterday.

For my first interview ever on Morning Live' they sent me to California" to sit down with celebrated local son made good Martin Short.

And who was there on the last show, having been his first subject, but the man himself, via video message.

I remember our interview on Morning Live' as if it were ... 21 years ago," said an impishly teasing Martin Short. And I will honestly say, Bob, that of all the people that I admire in show business you are very close to being one of them. Congratulations."

It was one of those moments," says Bob, of the Martin Short message. I just lost it."

But it was more than that. The producers of Bob's last Morning Live," especially Tansy Ko, pulled out all the organ stops for him. They showed highlights from his career. As producers they produced. They produced, as though out of thin air, Bob's first co-host on Morning Live," Cathy Wegner. And so many others. Guests, co-workers past and present.

The fondness was palpable, the send-off tributes glowing and sincere.

They produced one of Bob's first producers Lisa Suarez. She appeared on the set, which made no sense, because she lives in Denver, Colorado now. They brought her up, she came up - just for the show. Of course they did. Of course she did. It's Bob Cowan.

I was blown away," says Bob. It was pretty special. To see her there, from Colorado. It felt almost out of body."

All of it was a surprise.

Almost all of it. The show started in the usual fashion. News, weather, sports, etc, but from there the rest was terra incognita - unknown territory - at least to Bob, from whom they'd succeeded in keeping it secret.

It was a blank run sheet," he says. He didn't know what to expect. One thing - everyone on the show and on the set was wearing a T-shirt with Bob Cowan's smiling face on it.

For Bob the day turned out to be the capping moment on a great career that took him from boyhood home in rural Oakville (the old town of Palermo) - his dad, who worked at Queen's Park in the Ministry of Education, raised standard bred race horses on Willoway hobby farm - to various radio and TV stations throughout Ontario and landed him back home in the Hamilton area.

It was a magical childhood, growing up with horses.

And it was magical to return (in 2001) as a personality on the TV station he grew up watching.

It was amazing, seeing people like Dan McLean and Connie Smith." He was star-struck and then he became the star.

He says he's forever grateful for getting to do some of the terrific things he got to do. Like flying in Hamilton's Lancaster (Canadian Warplane Heritage) aircraft when it flew with the only other remaining Lancaster in the world in England in 2014.

It's been unforgettable."

Of his retirement years, Bob says he and wife Elaine (they have two daughters Chelsea and Sarah and a grandson) have a lot of travel plans to catch up on."

Bon voyage, sir.

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com