Jim Mason
Columns
June 07, 2007 08:46 PM
By: Jim Mason
Call him The Nuge. Everyone does.
Call him a legend. The title fits.
“The oldest living teacher in York Region”, as his voice mail describes him, is hanging it up. Unwillingly, he would add with an exclamation point.
At 66, long after most teachers have moved on to new careers or full-time retirement, Wayne Nugent is retiring.
Serious illness saw to it.
Mr. Nugent collapsed outside his Woodbridge home in January. The sore back that hunched him over in the new year was diagnosed as advanced bone marrow cancer. He’s been taking chemotherapy treatments ever since and been in hospital for most of it. A stem cell transplant is in the works.
Before that there’s matter of closing a 42–year teaching career that started in his native Quebec and ends at Woodbridge College in Vaughan.
In the middle, 1976 to 1982, was his time coaching and teaching at Stoufffville District Secondary School in his adopted home town. "His happiest years,” Christina Baggs, one of his three daughters, said.
The mountain of man, who was scouted as a baseball and football player, lived for sport. He went to Woodbridge to head up the phys ed department and found the school's football program.
During summer vacations, he worked at Eddie Shack’s golf course and on the set of Showdown, the hockey skills TV show. He was a founding member of the Stouffville Buttermakers slo-pitch team, whose Canada Day weekend tournament spawned the Strawberry Festival.
“People still come up to me and say he was their favourite teacher,” Christina said. “He touched a lot of people.”
Like the parents, whose son fell in with the wrong crowd. The Nuge stepped in, welcomed the boy to the football team and helped him earn a U.S. scholarship.
Former Buttermakers and SDSS Spartans are invited to a retirement party June 25 at La Primavera Banquet Hall in Woodbridge. Tickets are $30 and available from Hela Risbridger at 905-851-2843 ext. 181 or Christina Baggs at 905-640-1630.
It’s about time we all thanked The Nuge.
Jim Mason is editor of The Sun-Tribune.