ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — When Colin Robillard began his first year at Carleton University in Ottawa, he joined a recreational soccer team in order make new friends.
Among his first contacts with the team was someone who showed at up the soccer pitch wearing nothing but Detroit Red Wings gear.
“I thought, well, you’re at the wrong place here, bud,” Robillard recalled.
But Bryan Tobin was at the right place and for Robillard, it meant his first meeting with a kind-hearted oddball who would become a great friend.
“He ended up being a clown ever since,” Robillard said.
A 28-year-old originally from the Goulds, Tobin moved to Ottawa in 2011 to pursue a communications degree at Carleton, which he completed in 2014. He then entered the sports journalism program at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ont.
After work terms with CBC and CTV, Tobin was still trying to find his niche. So, he returned to school, this time joining the broadcasting-radio program at Algonquin College.
In his second year at Algonquin, the Juno Awards Show was being held in Ottawa. Tobin pitched the idea of taking advantage of the gathering by developing a show where he would interview celebrities, but his instructor didn’t believe he’d be able to do it.
“(I thought) that’s it, this is going to happen,’” Tobin said.
That determination led to him landing interviews with Canadian comedian Colin Mochrie andl Max Kerman, lead singer for The Arkells.
It became the first episode of "Tobin Tonight," and the show has continued ever since.
It’s now produced from the basement of his parents’ home in Witless Bay, where he moved in 2019.
Unofficially, the podcast has been in the works for over a decade.
“(When) I was 16 or 17, my brother introduced me to the Conan (O’Brien) Show,” he said. “I thought, this is interesting, this is what I want to do.”
Sean Tobin, that brother, says the quality of the guests Bryan manages to interview never ceases to amaze him.
Among the more tham 80 guests on Tobin Tonight have been Adrienne Arsenault, James Duthie, Rick Mercer, Cathy Jones and Jimmy Rankin.
“He’s incredibly bright, very tenacious and passionate about what he’s doing,” Sean said. “He’s doing this through his own force of will and just really sticking to it.”
Being 13 years older than his brother, Sean saw first-hand how Bryan struggled at the beginning of his life, when it was discovered he had a rare neurological disorder called Sturge-Weber syndrome (SWS).
“I remember him being a baby and having these (seizures),” Sean said. “He had this stroke at 11 and he lost his entire right side. He lost the ability to move in his right arm and his right leg and his face.”
According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), SWS is characterized by a port wine birthmark, typically on the face, caused by an excessive number of capillaries — tiny blood vessels — near the brain. While the disorder is highly variable, strokes, seizures, migraines, behavioural issues and glaucoma are common.
"He never saw himself as someone with a disability. He just saw himself as someone who was able to push through in spite of the disability.” — Sean Tobin
SWS affects males and females in equal numbers. NORD says the exact incidence and prevalence is unknown. One estimate places the incidence at one in 20,000 to 50,000 live births, although approximately three in 1,000 babies are born with a port-wine birthmark. However, only about six per cent of individuals with a port-wine birthmark on the face develop the neurological abnormalities associated with SWS.
“(It) was pretty scary at that time,” Sean said. “It’s only been fairly recently that he’s (been) willing to acknowledge the illness is even there. He never saw himself as someone with a disability, he just saw himself as someone who was able to push through in spite of the disability.”
His ability to move the right side of his body eventually returned. Today, Bryan says the symptoms are mostly contained with a blood thinner.
Still, he sometimes has to stop to wait out the symptoms, although on occasion he can will his way past them.
“I actually did an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos a few days ago and in the middle of that interview, I felt warm, I felt anxiety, and I (thought) this is a great interview, I can’t just (say), ‘Well, thanks George, I have to leave now,’” he said.
“You have to put it in your mind that this is going to (last) five or 10 minutes, just ride it out and no one will know.”
Because the disorder is “invisible,” employment is hard to come by, he says.
Nevertheless, he always seems to remain upbeat, and his mind is never far from attempting a joke.
As he describes the complicated disorder, he draws similarities between SWS and epilepsy, riffing on it until it eventually turns into a joke where different disorders are sitting around a table in a boardroom.
“It’s like a team meeting where it’s like, ‘Sturge-Weber, what do you got? Well, we were a little less productive today, we had to sit down for 20 minutes,’” he said. “‘What about you guys over there? Well, the room was spinning for us.’”
He considers himself lucky to work at a call centre because it helps him put money toward the podcast. But eventually, he would like to podcast full time and fill what he sees as a vacuum in the Canadian media landscape.
“Take any Canadian content show that we ever had in the past, put it all together and you’ll get Tobin Tonight,” he said.
Tobin Tonight is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify, and online at tobintonight.com.
Twitter: @AndrewLWaterman
