A Few Words on Robert Redford’s passing from Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted September 16th, 2025 on Niagara At Large
“Like most people of my generation (born and growing up during the Great Depression of the 1930s and Second Word War eras), I was brought up to believe in progress. I still do. But we are now at a point where we have to ask ourselves if we are beneficiaries of our progress – or the victims. Manifest Destiny doesn’t work anymore. Progress from now on has to mean something different. We’re creating a world a world that is tipping dangerously out of balance. We are running out of places, we’re running out of resources, and we’re running out of time. … It is a pretty lousy legacy we have left our children. …
“What we’re living with is the result of human choices. And it can be changed by making better, wiser choices.” – Robert Redford, from an essay he wrote for a 1991 book paying tribute to 19th Century naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau and Walden Woods called “Heaven Is Under Our Feet.”
With that, this Robert Redford fan was so shaken by the sad news this September 16th that Robert Redford died at age 89 that I can’t help but pay a little tribute to him.
Robert Redford (left) and Paul Newman, from the 1969 blockbuster ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’
It goes without saying that Robert Redford was a film star with magnetic appeal for both women and men alike. I was still in my teens when I first saw the 1969 film ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ on the big screen co-starring him and another actor on top of my list of favourites, Paul Newman. There was a chemistry between the two of them that has always had me thinking that if I’m going to go down in a blaze of gunfire, I hope, at least, it is with sidekicks like that.
There were so many other great films – among them ‘Barefoot In The Park’, ‘Out of Africa’, ‘The Way We We’re’, ‘Three Days of the Condor’, ‘’The Sting’, ‘The Horse Whisperer’, ‘The Great Gatsby’ and one that may film scholars still feel is the best movie about journalism ever made, ‘All The President’s Men’ about the Washington Post reporters who investigated the Watergate scandal that unraveled the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Yet as big a star as he was, he was, by all accounts, including those of people I know who met him, a humble and very nice guy.
Robert Redord, working on the 1980s film, The Natural, in Buffalo, N.Y. One of my old neighbours from Welland was in Buffalo celebrating her birthday at the time when Robert Redford showed up at her table to join in wishing her a Happy Birthday. It was a birthday she said she would never forget.
One of my former neighbours in Welland went to Buffalo with a few friends in the early 1980s to celebrate her birthday. They were at the Anchor Bar where the waiters did the usual thing when they found out that one of the guests was celebrating a birthday. They came to the table and sang Happy Birthday to them.
It just so happened that Robert Redford, who was in Buffalo at the time acting in a baseball film called ‘The Natural’. was in the Anchor Bar that same night enjoying those Buffalo wings with a few others working on the film. Much to her surprise, he came to her table to wish her a ‘Happy Birthday’ and to invite her and friends on a little cruise he another other members of the film cast and crew were taking on Lake Erie.
It was his way of making her birthday a little more special and she said it certainly did. She said she always had a feeling he was a nice guy and that night did nothing to dispel that.
Robert Redford, where he loved to be, out in nature.
I was still a full-time environment reporter at The St. Catharines Standard in the 1990s and I belonged to a Canada-U.S. association of environment journalists who were looking forward to gathering for their annual conference at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in Utah. I was getting ready to join them when the newspaper was sold to a corporate chain and my chances of travelling any further than Niagara Falls or Grimsby for anything were gone.
I was left hearing all the stories from what were by then my former environmental reporter colleagues about their experience meeting Robert Redford and what a gracious host and passionate supporter of their work he was.
I still feel bad about never getting a chance to meet him, yet how good I also feel that he was here on this earth at the same time I was, dong so much good work in the arts and in the public arena, at least trying to make life better on this planet for present and future generations.
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Farewell Robert Redford and Forever Rest In Peace, Doug Draper,Niagara At Large
Here is a trailer for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, to watch it, click on the screen below –
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