Author, teacher, former Alouette Ray Baillie dies at age 80

Author, teacher and former Alouette Ray Baillie, seen in an early photo and one from later years, has passed away at age 80.

Well-loved Montreal author, teacher and former Alouette Ray Baillie has passed away at the age of 80.

Baillie played parts of six seasons with the Montreal Alouettes between 1956 and 1965, where his twin brother Charles was a teammate.

But he left his biggest impression as a history teacher at Chomedey High School where he set up an ambitious history resource archive centre.

“He was a very quiet, steady, supportive presence for a lot of us,” said former student Myra Shuster, who knew Baillie for 40 years and credits him with putting her on the path to her current work at mediator and lawyer at the Immigration and Refugee Board. “He sensitized us to all sides of any conflict. I think it was pretty radical that he was teaching us how to look at political conflicts.”

Baillie also taught part-time at McGill’s Faculty of Education and coached football at Chomedey and served as defensive coordinator with the McGill Redmen in the 1970s.

Baillie authored a three-part series known a Imprints: Discovering the Face of English Quebec and followed it up in 2010 with Scottish Imprints in Quebec. In recent times he was visiting small villages with his wife as part of a project to recuperate English heritage from small towns in Quebec.