Coulter was lovable gaiters coach
Canadian football hall of famer played in Grey Cup, inspired a generation as coach
Bruce Coulter, the longtime head football coach at Bishop’s University, died Tuesday at age 90.
Coulter was with the Gaiters from 1961-90, but was much more than just a coach to his players at Bishop’s, where he was athletic director and dean of students. He was also a father figure.
“A father figure, but also a bigbrother figure,” Larry Smith, who played four seasons under Coulter at Bishop’s before joining the Alouettes in 1972, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Bruce was a great coach, but you felt like he was a teammate of yours.
“If you look at Bruce and his legacy, it’s that he changed the life of many young men,” added Smith, now a member of the Senate of Canada. “Not only did he help them become better athletes, but he taught human values and leadership values.
“The best way of looking at Bruce Coulter is that he changed people’s lives and helped young boys, teenagers, become young men. He knew how to win and he hated to lose. But he taught us how to handle the ups and downs from winning and losing. Thankfully, we didn’t lose too often.”
Coulter was a defensive safety and a backup quarterback during his playing days with the Alouettes from 1948-57 and was part of three Grey Cup games, winning in 1949. Before going to Bishop’s, Coulter was head coach of the McGill Redmen, starting in 1959 and winning the Churchill Bowl national championship in 1960. As a coach, Coulter posted an overall record of 137-80-2 and he was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1997. The football field at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville was named Coulter Field in honour of the Toronto native in 1991.
“I graduated in ’87 and we kept in touch ever since,” Tony Harris, the Gaiters’ quarterback from 1984-87, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “No one loses touch with Bruce. He’s one of those guys who always had time for you and you could ask him questions that were football-related or not footballrelated. Even in business, he’d make introductions for you with guys who played before you and other people he knew. He was constantly giving, even after you played for him.”
Harris is now a successful professional sports portrait and landscape artist. In 1986, Harris helped lead the Gaiters to the OQIFC championship with a 9-2 record before losing 32-30 to the UBC Thunderbirds in the Central Bowl. Coulter won the Frank Tindall Trophy that season as coach of the year in the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union, and four Gaiters were named allCanadians that season: Harris, Jake Vaughn, Wally Zatylny and Leroy Blugh.
“The great thing about Bruce as a coach is that first of all he was really, really likable,” Harris said. “Second of all, there was a lot of substance to him … he knew what he was talking about. Marc Crawford, the hockey coach (now an associate coach with the Ottawa Senators), is a friend of mine and he would ask me: ‘Why was Bruce such a good coach?’ The simple answer was you wanted to do well for him. You hear that expression ‘the coach has lost the room’ … that never applied to Bruce. He always had his finger on the pulse. He knew who he could yell at and who he couldn’t yell at. He just had a great awareness of everybody’s disposition.
“He treated players with respect and they respected him back,” Harris added. “But he also knew how to get you going … that’s very, very rare in a coach.
In 1991, after Coulter retired from Bishop’s, a dinner was held in his honour in Lennoxville.
“I had come to Montreal to play for the Alouettes,” Coulter recalled that night in an interview with the Montreal Gazette’s Pat Hickey.
“There wasn’t much money in the CFL in those days and I always had another job. When I started thinking about the Bishop’s offer, I realized that I wasn’t going to be a business tycoon. What skills I had were in the area of dealing with people. I think I am a people person and I realized that the Bishop’s job might be good for me.”
Coulter said it was the Gaiters teams from 1969-72, which included Smith, Tom Allan, Robbie Allan, Ron Perowne, Sandy Baptiste and Bill McDonald, that really put Bishop’s on the map in Canadian university football.
“Before that, people in Montreal knew who we were but, in the rest of Canada, people would hear about Bishop’s and wonder where Lennoxville was,” Coulter told Hickey. “I’d talk to a player in Ontario and he would think it was just on the outskirts of Montreal. Suddenly, people were talking about us.”
Smith said some of his favourite memories from his days at Bishop’s are from the party Coulter and his wife, Joyce, would have at their home for the players midway through each season.
“Joyce Coulter was the glue that kept Bruce going in terms of his career, his family,” Smith said. “She’s a great, great individual.”
So was her husband.
He treated players with respect and they respected him back. But he also knew how to get you going … that’s very, very rare in a coach.
TONY HARRIS, Bishop’s University Gaiters quarterback from 1984-87, on his coach, Bruce Coulter