No sleep till closing Local real-estate agent Rod Peeler, famed for advertising tagline, still in the game By: David Sanderson Posted: 5:33 PM CST Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026

There is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene in Universal Language, the 2024 absurdist comedy set in a re-imagined version of Winnipeg, showing a lead character seated on a bus bench bearing the likeness of a local real-estate agent known as much for his dishevelled crop of hair as his yawn-inducing advertising slogan — “I never sleep.”

“Ha, that’s news to me. No, I didn’t have a clue,” says Rod Peeler, the hirsute agent-in-question, when asked if he was aware of his cinematic moment in the sun courtesy of the Canadian-made flick, winner of the Audience Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Peeler, who is currently toasting his 45th year in the “biz,” chuckles, detailing an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show from a decade ago when his recognizable mug was also front and centre.

DeGeneres had an ongoing bit that asked viewers to submit photos of amusing real-estate signs, Peeler says, seated in a Corydon Avenue restaurant where he is slowly picking away at a teriyaki-chicken salad, being careful not to spill any sauce on a crisply-ironed white shirt.

“Somebody — I don’t know who — sent in a picture of one of my signs and Ellen was like, ‘You know, he doesn’t look too bad for a guy who never sleeps.’”

James Herbert Roderick Peeler, 78, was born on a cattle-and-wheat farm situated eight kilometres outside of Neepawa. The second-eldest of five siblings was six years old in 1953 when he was stricken with polio, resulting in an eight-month hospital stay in Winnipeg. He made a full recovery, though, to this day, his left leg is shorter and weaker than his right.

The farm was an idyllic place for a young boy to grow up, he goes on, but that all came to a crashing halt in 1957 when his father, who often became violent when he drank, had a particularly scary episode. That afternoon, his mother Doris instructed the kids to get in the car, and fast.

“That was the last time I saw him or the farm, my whole life.”

After arriving in Winnipeg, they moved into a one-bedroom, second-floor apartment on Osborne Street, in the heart of what is presently Osborne Village. Their mother was studying to become a cosmetologist, so to help make ends meet, Peeler and his older brother Barrie got after-school jobs delivering the Winnipeg Tribune and Free Press.

A succession of moves followed. By the time Peeler was a Grade 10 student at Kelvin High School, his family was living on Corydon Avenue, a couple of blocks away from a promising musician and fellow Kelvin-ite with whom Peeler walked to and from school, on a near-daily basis.

“I’d go by Neil’s (Young) place and he’d yell out, ‘Hey man, how ya doin’?’”

At age 16 Peeler got a part-time job in the children’s-wear department of the downtown Bay store. He turned out to be a born salesperson and during his senior year of high school, he aced the Bay’s management-training course exam. He was already planning his future as a department manager when a higher-up informed him he wouldn’t be allowed to advance, as he lacked the necessary university credits. Also, if he wanted to keep his position, he would have to get a haircut. (The Beatles were all the rage and Peeler had let his coif grow out, in an effort to emulate the Fab Four.)

Telling himself “I’ll show them,” he marched over to the Portage Avenue Eaton’s store the next day to request an interview with the head of personnel. They must have liked what they heard. He was offered a position and spent the next 15 years with Eaton’s.

Peeler was in his late 20s, married with three young children, when he began travelling first-class to Toronto, Los Angeles and New York City as the person directly responsible for purchasing ladies’ fashion garments for all of Eaton’s western Canadian stores. Things were going along swimmingly until 1979 — the year a global recession tied to an energy crisis caused double-digit inflation and 21 per cent home-mortgage rates.

“I remember our bosses calling us all together and announcing that, effective immediately, everything we were doing was shutting down and that Toronto would be calling all the shots,” Peeler says. “I had three kids, a house, a cottage at Victoria Beach, a new Volvo and suddenly, no job. I was absolutely devastated. I seriously thought my life had ended.”

Peeler spent the next two years trying his hand at various sales jobs, none of which panned out. In July 1981 his brother-in-law Harry DeLeeuw, co-founder of DelBro Real Estate along with his brother Bert, asked if he had ever considered a career in real estate.

“My answer was no because, if I’m being honest, I thought it was beneath me,” he says. DeLeeuw persisted and a few weeks later, Peeler showed up at DelBro’s St. Vital headquarters, asking the receptionist to direct him to his office.

“My ‘office’ turned out to be a cubicle the size of this table with a phone and a single chair,” Peeler says, calling the moment an eye-opener for a person who, despite his then-lot in life, continued to have an ego “this big.” (Here he spreads his arms out fully.)

Without any clients or leads, Peeler spent the first few weeks scanning the classified section of the Free Press, hunting for parties who were selling their home privately. He called every listed number, guaranteeing the person at the other end of the line that he could get them more than their asking price, “whether that was true or not.”

Everybody kept telling him thanks, but no thanks, until he finally convinced a person on Academy Road — here he cites the precise address, promising never to forget it — to let him handle the sale.

“We got close to $100,000 and suddenly, I was off to the races,” he beams. “Going in, I thought I’d be lucky to take home $30,000 in my first year but after seven months, I was already close to $100,000 in commissions, thanks to phone calls, phone calls and more phone calls.” (Before cellphones came along, he knew the location of every public phone booth in town.)

Peeler, who believes he was one of the first real estate agents in the country to plaster their face on “for sale” signs, was visiting San Francisco in the late 1980s when he spotted a billboard for a person who claimed to live and work in a city that never sleeps. As soon as he returned to Winnipeg, he told a colleague that, going forward, he was going to use the catchphrase “I never sleep” on all of his advertising material.

“He told me, ‘don’t do that, it sounds stupid.’ I did it anyway and let’s just say it stuck,” he says, adding his phone used to ring at all hours of the night, mostly from prank callers wondering if his nocturnal motto was true or not.

Peeler guesses he was around 50 when people began remarking that besides sharing a given name with Rod Stewart, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, too, thanks in large part to his shaggy do. Soon, he began appearing at charitable functions as Rod the Mod, strumming a guitar and offering renditions of hits such as Maggie May, Do Ya Think I’m Sexy and Hot Legs. He has yet to meet Stewart in the flesh, though he did create a bit of a stir in 2014, ahead of a sold-out Stewart concert at Canada Life Centre.

“I got all dressed up and arrived at the arena in a limo. I was waving my hand out the window to people in line and they started yelling ‘look, it’s Rod,’” he says. “Even after they realized I wasn’t him, they still wanted to get their picture taken with me.”

Now married to his second wife, the grandfather of five remains professionally active despite a couple of health scares — a stroke in 2008 and a heart attack in 2014.

His goal is to work until he’s 90 — “a nice round number.” He presently sells around 20 homes a year — during his prime, that number regularly topped a hundred — which allows him ample time to travel as well as explore his newfound artistic side.

Most nights, he can be found painting away in the basement of his River Park South home, while his wife is upstairs watching TV, something he rarely does aside from programs such as — you guessed it — Love It or List It.

Finally, if you’re wondering how much shut-eye Peeler gets nowadays, you’ll be pleased to learn it’s well within the realm recommended by sleep experts.

“Bed about 10:30 (p.m.), up at 7 (a.m.), no naps. I’m always available but usually don’t respond to calls after 10 or so.”

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