Robert was a musician, and health care worker at the Hassle Free Clinic, a downtown Toronto sexual health clinic which became the first clinic in Canada to offer anonymous HIV testing (when anonymous testing was legalized in Ontario, the provincial government adopted Trow's manual on anonymous testing guidelines).

He was a member of The Body Politic collective, and a founding member of the AIDS Committee of Toronto. Robert died of a brain aneurysm. The Ontario Ministry of Health awarded him a posthumous citation for his work. He was survived by his lover of 10 years, Denis Fontaine.