Robert (Bob) Corlett Proctor, transitioned peacefully at his home on Thursday, February 3rd, surrounded by his loving family.

Born on July 5th, 1934, he was the middle child of Marguerite and Norman Proctor. With her aging mother in tow, Marguerite moved Bob and his two siblings, Helen and Al from the rural town of Owensound to Toronto, with very little support from her family.

Growing up during the Great Depression, money was scarce. Bob was about to learn a lesson he would never forget: the power of giving. It was winter and Bob had shared with his mom that one of the families down the street didn’t have money to buy coal. With barely enough money to make ends meet, Marguerite placed half of her weekly salary of twenty dollars in Bob’s hand and told him to give it to the family, so they could heat their home. That lesson stayed with him his whole life.

In 1961, fueled by reading Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich, and the works of his first mentor, the Dean of Personal Development, Earl Nightingale, Bob opened a cleaning company, starting with a single office in his hometown of Toronto. Cleaning became incidental, but it gave Bob an opportunity to perfect his art: he was a natural born salesman. But he wasn’t selling goods, he was selling ideas. He figured out how to show people how to get what they wanted in life. If it was extra money, a new car, whatever it was, he’d show them how they could achieve it. He was using what he’d learned in Hill’s book and was passing it on to his cleaners to motivate them; he was getting them to set goals. His company quickly expanded with various offices in Canada, the US, and the U.K.

He would later sell the cleaning company to begin teaching the concepts that had profoundly changed his own life. In 2006, he was featured in the movie that took the world by storm, The Secret. By 2021 – sixty years later – Bob Proctor’s rich trainings had found their way into every single country around the world, teaching people how to BE more, do more, have more, and give more. Further, his personal mentoring within the ranks of his own company the Proctor Gallagher Institute that he founded with co-founder, Sandy Gallagher, is poised to continue the legacy Bob established, for generations to come.

Bob met the love of his life, Linda, while conducting a training for Metropolitan Life in Atlanta. He and Linda spent time in Atlanta and then moved to Toronto to live with his three children. Later Proctor would pen an inscription in his first book, You Were Born Rich: Dedicated to Linda, who brought the sun from the south with her and willingly shared it with Brian, Colleen and Raymond.

As much as his life’s work took him on the road, Bob loved being at home and would often travel all night to get home. As his children married and began their own families, they would gather at the house every Tuesday afternoon in the summer for swimming lessons. Proctor’s staff knew Tuesday was off limits for scheduling. The afternoon lessons would later include nieces and nephews. Plenty of kids, food and water splashing from every corner of the pool while the kids watched from the sidelines sharing their goings on with their dad and Linda. This was home.

Proctor is survived by his loving wife Linda, son Brian and wife Cory, daughter Colleen and husband Michael, son Ray and his wife Toni, sister Helen and her husband John, brother Allen, 11 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren, three on the way and his two dogs, Dolly and Gracie.