Robert Charles Osborne, born in 1949 in Port Credit, Ontario, then a dying fishing village about thirty kilometres west of Toronto at the mouth of the Credit River on Lake Ontario, was the second of four children from a poor family. Osborne dropped out of school at sixteen and headed to Toronto, where he took to drugs and the life of the street. Feeding his cocaine addiction led to crime. Sobering experiences led to a clean-up. Osborne stayed on the street where he made legal money as a bicycle courier for seven years. Osborne’s stories present a toughly detailed picture of poverty, alcoholism and abuse in a family and the tough life of the street that so many who escape such families turn to.

"Across the Street"
"The Boy"
"The Fish"
"Why Did He Say That"

These stories are now published in the collection Rub Salt: Stories by Robert Charles Osborne, Peaches D. Ledwidge, Elizabeth Clark and Hien The Chu.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Edition: 1st Canadian ed.
Names: Osborne, Robert Charles, 1949-
Publisher: Toronto: Life Rattle Press, c1996
Series: Life rattle new writers series 1200 5266 3
Desciption: 30p.; 22cm.
Numbers: Canadiana: 969306458
ISBN: 978-0-9699507-2-1
Classification: LC Class no.: PS8579* Dewey: C813/.54 21