To Bob Douglas, his first taste of coaching was less than successful. So he stared his perceived failure in the eye, made some adjustments and the rest, as they say, is history.

After a respectable college career as a basketball and hockey player and degrees from Acadia and Dalhousie universities, the product of southend Halifax’s Lucknow Street took on his first coaching job at Acadia in 1958. To put it mildly, his basketball team did not burn up the league and Douglas knew he had much to learn about this demanding profession he had chosen.

“That experience taught me that I was not fully qualified. Coaching was not as easy as I thought it would be and I knew I’d better wise up.” he says now. Douglas headed for Boston University where he earned his Masters in Physical Education, then returned to Halifax to coach basketball and football at St. Patrick’s High School. The year at St. Pat’s was hardly an overwhelming success — his football team didn’t win a game — but he was learning his craft. And then in 1960, he returned to his high school alma mater, Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth, and a remarkable 34-year coaching career began to unfold.

In those 34 years, all at Queen Elizabeth, his teams won more than 800 games in football and men’s and women’s basketball. There were eight metro high school football championships and seven provincial titles. His basketball teams won nine provincial championships and in 1964 nailed the Canadian juvenile championship.

Impressive numbers, and when asked to single out his strength as a coach, he says: “As a student it was always drilled into me that QEH was a special place. I think I was able to transfer that sense of pride into my players.”

If Bobby was a gregarious personality with an easy boyish smile on the Halifax social scene, his reputation as a coach was something else. He was often described as abrasive and hard-nosed, but he gradually made adjustments. “When I first started I was a disciplinarian, a complete dictator,” he told Halifax reporter Steve Bezanson in 1978. “I changed a lot over the years. I adjusted, and I learned that you had to treat each kid differently, depending on skill level or maturity, whether black or white, rich or poor.”

Another notable change infiltrated the Douglas style. Although winning was always the ultimate goal as a coach, he came to admire the art of losing with grace. He cites for example, that one of his most memorable coaching moments came when his football team lost the metro championship in the 1970’s. “When the game ended my players came and shook my hand and said thank you”, he recalls. I realized that the players themselves had learned that there was no shame in defeat, that they had done their best on that day and that’s what counted.”

Douglas gets good reviews from many of his former players, and he’s had some great ones. Says Jason Wilson, who played for him in the early 80’s: “He has the ability to always see the good points in a person.”

Mike Tanner, his quarterback in 1965: “I can’t think of anyone who didn’t have respect for him.”

They are sweet words for Douglas, who has retired from a profession he now regards with a fresh perspective. “I look at all the kids I coached who have turned into admirable adults, and I think that maybe I played a small part in helping them along the way. It’s a wonderful feeling because I learned a lot as well. I feel lucky.” Then he flashes the Bobby smile, still boyish after all these years.

Bio Courtesy of Harris Sullivan