Robert (Bob) Wayne Hiebert

Born ~ May 21, 1944

Date of Passing ~ July 3, 2026

Following a determined battle with cancer, COPD, and heart disease, our Bob died peacefully at age 82 at Riverview Health Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Friends Bud, Glenn and Jay were there one last time.

Bob was born at St. Boniface Hospital and spent his earliest years in Winnipeg, at a logging outpost in the Algoma District, and in Sault Ste Marie (where he attended Edith Cavell Elementary School). His father left permanently and the family was then in a greatly impoverished state. As a boy, Bob sold newspapers and raffle tickets and sang on the street so as to bring money home to his mother.

He attended Western Tech and Commerce High School in Toronto and then served in the Canadian Army as a craftsman (1961-1962). After basic training in London, ON, the army sent Bob to Kingston for Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers or REME Corps training as a mechanical engineer.

Upon being honourably discharged, Bob attended a technical college to become a drafting technician. Following graduation, he returned to Winnipeg as an apprentice draftsman for Green Blankstein Russell. Always adventurous, Bob spent a year in Louisville, Kentucky working as a draftsman for an engineering firm which had a large road topography contract. In his off hours, he was an emcee and singer at a Kentucky sing-along bar.

Subsequently, Bob moved to Vancouver and worked as a caregiver to an elderly couple who both required complete nursing care. On a whim, he answered an ad for dance instructor trainees with the Arthur Murray dance studios. He spent the next six months in intensive training. He was hired by the company, had a large clientele and achieved the gold-standard designation. Two of his dance students, Violet and Ben Jones, well-known insurance brokers, became surrogate parents to Bob and offered him a sales position for all classes of insurance in their company in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond in the late 1960s. He became, at 22, the youngest person in British Columbia at that time to certify as an insurance broker. By 1976, Bob was a commercial and industrial insurance broker in downtown Vancouver for Lukis Stewart Price Forbes Western Brokerage, and in 1980, returned to Richmond for a similar position with Ivy Insurance Agencies.

He loved living in an apartment along English Bay beach and, later, in a beautiful house in the suburbs with his Great Dane, Hannibal. Bob had a cabin on Hollyburn Mountain above West Vancouver, a great motorcycle, a 22-foot cruise boat – and a horse which he used to say was 17 hands tall. He and his horse went on many camping adventures in the B.C. wilderness. In Vancouver, Bob was also a bodybuilder, a singer, and the doorman at the Shaggy Horse Bar.

In the early 1980s, Bob went to San Francisco for a visit but wound up securing a draftsman position and spending a year in California.

By the mid-to-late 1980s, Bob and his partner were living openly and proudly as a same-sex couple in the small town of Oliver, in the Okanagan Valley of B.C. He worked at a furniture manufacturing firm as its main saw operator. During the height of the worldwide AIDS epidemic, Bob was diagnosed in 1986 as HIV-positive – which then was considered an almost certain death sentence. Bob’s boss was one of the first people he told of his diagnosis. He offered to resign but his boss insisted he stay. That gesture in a time of great discrimination impressed Bob greatly. The fact that he later became one of the longest Manitoba HIV survivors (40 years) always astonished Bob.

After his partner died in BC, Bob went to work on an oil rig in northern Alberta and spent two years in Calgary as a foreman for the Wild Rose furniture fabricating company.

Bob returned to Winnipeg in the spring of 1992 to help care for his terminally ill mother, Kathrine (Kay). He first lived at 220 Hugo Street North, then at 1038 Dorchester Avenue. It was around this time that he met Tom. They shared a house at 367 Lipton Street. While the relationship did not last, the friendship did. It was this enduring friendship which led them, 33 years later, to be married on March 1, 2025 at Young United Church.

Bob was the senior resident of Artemis Housing Co-op (32 years, since 1994) and its president for three terms. He was also the Artemis representative on the board of Crossways in Common, and fire marshal of the complex.

Bob was a proud, lifelong Liberal and enjoyed architecture, mechanics, welding, woodworking, plumbing, cooking, plants, movies, bargains, and technology.

Bob is survived by Tom, his husband of one year, sisters Diana (Tim) and Mary, brothers Eugene and Donald Guay, nieces Audra and Deborah and nephews Victor and Shawn. He was predeceased by his parents, Kathrine Derksen (1992) and Heinrich (Henry) Hiebert (2007), his

former partner in BC, and his good friend, Bryan Parker (2025).

The Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, August 15, 2026, at 2 p.m. at Young United Church, with Rev. Tim Crouch officiating. Bob’s ashes will be scattered in English Bay in Vancouver, a place he loved and always missed. For further information, please contact: archivesguy@hotmail.com

Bob expressly wished to extend heartfelt thanks to Dr. Ida-Lynn Gregan and staff of Nine Circles for exceptional care, the wonderful caregivers of Riverview’s 3 East Palliative Care, WRHA nurses and home care, Gisele the cleaner, Jamie Lillie the cook, Freya the hair wizard, Artemis friends, Jay Rich for Bob’s peace of mind for handling many legal and logistical matters, Tim and Lara from Young United Church, and Quinn and Rayne from Hunter Funerals.

Hunter Funerals is entrusted with the arrangements.

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