Most people don’t know this, but I’m not the first Shis’ka Bob. I often get asked about where my name comes from and the answer is this: I come from a long line of Shis’ka Bobs, but much like the Highlander, there can be only one.

My father was Shis’ka Bob, his father before him was Shis’ka Bob, my great-great-infinitely-great-grandfather was Shis’ka Bob.

However, before the Europeans came here, the first Shis’ka Bob was not called Shis’ka Bob, he was called Drink Water because, presumably, he was an excessively thirsty man. I mean, if you drink so much water that it becomes your name, it stands to reason that you drink a significant amount of it. Maybe he was dehydrated a lot, I think he may have had a high-sodium diet which he was offsetting. Anyway, that’s where my last name came from and my ancestral namesakes have been known by it for many generations.

It changed after my great-great-grandfather was given the Christian name Robert, and his original name was contracted and made into his last name. From that time forward, it was traditionally passed down to every first born son. After that, it was retroactively applied to every historical Drink Water so that they also became Shis’ka Bob. I’m not even sure which version number I am, but it’s likely my predecessors number in the hundreds.

Shis’ka Bob isn’t a name one is bestowed with upon birth; upon either the death or retirement of the previous Shis’ka Bob, the son then inherits the traditional name in addition to the Anglicized name which he was born with. My father found the burden of being Shis’ka Bob too much to bear and he abdicated, passing the title to me. So while there are currently two RD’s, I’m the only SB. Some would say SOB, which I always took to mean Son Of Bob, but others seem to interpret it much differently.

That’s how I became Shis’ka Bob.

And the rest, as they say, is history.