Robbie Robertson Birthplace — Toronto, Ontario

Jaime Royal Robertson was born on July 5, 1943, in Toronto, Ontario, to a Jewish father and a mother of Cayuga and Mohawk heritage from the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve near Brantford. He spent summers on the reserve as a child, an experience that gave him a complicated, searching relationship with identity — between Indigenous and settler cultures, between Canada and America — that would inform his songwriting throughout his life. His last album, "Sinematic" (2019), returned explicitly to these themes. He was self-taught on guitar and left Toronto as a teenager to join Ronnie Hawkins's band, eventually leading the Hawks into their transformation as the Band.

Robertson was the Band's primary songwriter and the architect of their sound — a guitarist of restrained, perfectly placed instincts who understood that what you didn't play mattered as much as what you did. His songs — "The Weight," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek," "Stagefright," "Ophelia" — are among the most durably significant compositions in rock history. He also produced the Band's albums and helped shape the visual and conceptual identity of a group that, at their peak, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.

Robertson died on August 9, 2023, in Los Angeles, from prostate cancer. He was 80 years old. His relationship with his Band bandmates was complicated in their later years — his claim to the lion's share of songwriting royalties was a source of lasting bitterness for Helm and Danko in particular. But his contribution to the music is beyond dispute, and Toronto has recognised him as one of its most significant cultural exports.