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NDOW
ACH
painter in one of the toughest
By Bruce MacKinnon
Professional Painter • Winter 2011
The man behind Robert Candow’s Plastering
and Painting keeps 12 to 15 men hopping
on two plastering crews and three painting
crews, doing mostly subdivision and custombuilt
homes in and around St. John’s Nfld.
Candow was 14 when he learned his first life lesson. He
was hired to paint the outside of his girlfriend’s house and
discovered how suited he was to being a painter. It took a
few years for that lesson to stick, but it was the beginning
of a lifetime of lessons that have made this student of the
craft the success he is today.
Lesson Two
While still in high school, Candow took a job working in
a hospital kitchen in the meat room, the kind of job any
union person would drool over. It was a secure government
job he could have kept comfortably for 30 years, but
Candow decided early on that he didn’t like to see people
given promotions based on seniority instead of on merit.
“I watched my truck-driving dad and stay-at-home mother
work very hard for what they had,” Candow says. “As a
kid I decided that whatever I did for a living I would do
for myself.”
His opportunity to paint came at age 17 when two local
painters promised him a full-time job. He went out and
bought his long-dreamt-of van and then got laid off two
weeks later. Not to be deterred, and fancying himself artistic,
Candow started making decorative plaster casts to sell.
As well, he played the club circuit with the rock band he
started after dropping out of university.
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