Robert Paul Cowen

Bob,
I love and miss you with my full heart.
Together in the Garden, always.
Judy

Bob was born Feb. 28, 1946, in Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S., and passed away Sept. 24, 2026, in Collingwood, Ont., Canada. He is survived by his extraordinary wife, Judy Low, who spent the last 40 years living, loving and creating with him on their magical Clowen Whatchamacallit Farm, and their exquisite fur-babies, Bryn and Ella. Bob is also survived by his siblings: Stanley (Shirley) and Alan (Gretchen) Cowen and Ricci Robson, his two daughters and their partners, Leah (Troy) and Deborah (Alissa), his phenomenal grandchildren: Audrey, Miles, Noah and Lily Cowen, and step-grandchildren Adio Motayne, and Kai and Asha Trotz-Motayne. Very tragically, Bob’s beautiful son Jeremy died less than 16 months ago, but we are so fortunate to have his wife, Robynne (McKinley) Cowen, and their two children (Noah and Lily) in the family. Robert is also survived by his first wife, mother of his three children, Leslie (Oppenheimer) Cowen, and by so many loving cousins, nieces and nephews.

Bob grew up in a working-class Jewish neighbourhood in Pittsburgh and credited his own passion for visual art in part to his childhood explorations of the expansive public collections that city holds. He also told stories of his childhood home with his parents Jules and Alice (Kaufman), of learning from and loving his grandparents in their shared duplex and the joy he took from gardening in their backyard, as well as from their neighbourhood full of extended family.

A brilliant and multitalented young person — Bob had a voracious appetite for art, ideas, history, psychology, politics, humour and love. Bob had striking and diverse talents that could have taken him in many directions but infused all he did. The pressures of postwar life alongside his deep care for others led him to choose the healing art and science of medicine as a way of life. He did his first degree at Washington & Jefferson College and his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania, eventually heading north to Canada with Leslie to make a new home in Toronto. The move was in part a refusal of the late 1960s American war machine at home and abroad, but also a desire to be part of a kinder and gentler future in a country that seemed for a time to offer a meaningful alternative, with its socialized medical care, liberal multiculturalism, active antiwar and Indigenous movements, and pot-smoking hippie prime minister.

In Toronto, Bob spent most of his years serving the downtown East End community with his medical practice, while also painting, sculpting and gardening, and raising a family. His life took another major turn in the late 1980s when he and Judy met and left the city to embark on perhaps his most elaborate and significant creative project of his life — sculpting and tending the ecological work of art — so special and different as to be visible from satellite images — that became their farm. Together and with Leah, Deborah and Jeremy, they planted many thousands of trees, shrubs and perennials. Bob and Judy raised dozens of adored dogs and a few very strange cats. They made art, and they made a little world where precious and unlikely things became possible.

On the farm, Bob continued to develop his interest in healing, but at this time, through the underserviced field of mental health. Bob became a GP psychotherapist — a program that allowed him to extend psychotherapy without cost to local people. In his formal practice and far beyond, so many came to know and love Bob for how he made them feel. When you were in his sight, he had a capacity and commitment to make you feel seen, to help you map out where you were standing and how you could keep moving or move differently. He helped us love and affirm our strange, different and sometimes struggling selves. Whether a client, neighbour, daughter or friend, Bob loved to see people emerge from a conversation with him feeling more confident, capable and recognized.

Bob was utterly heartbroken by the death of his son Jeremy to cancer at the tender age of 46. And through that sadness, he embarked on the hard work of trying to communicate his feelings, of listening and hearing and working to understand the hearts and wounds of those he loved, and of trying to repair relationships where they needed it, though not always in time. He leaves us with an incredible and all-too-rare example of a life lived through passion, integrity and creativity. We are forever grateful and we carry his spirit forward in us.
Friends may visit Bob's online Book of Memories at www.fawcettfuneralhomes.com