‘Sir George welcomed me with open arms’

When Robert Kouri, BSc 48, BA 50, first graduated from what was then known as Sir George Williams College, the institution — which would later merge with Loyola College to form Concordia — had just been granted a university charter.

The year was 1948.

“It was a special time to be on campus,” says Kouri, a past president of Sir George’s alumni association who has made a generous bequest to support the Campaign for Concordia: Next-Gen. Now. “It was much more of a family atmosphere than a college.”

Kouri soon earned a second degree from Sir George and was accepted to McGill University’s Faculty of Dentistry.

Tuition, however, was beyond what Kouri and his family could afford. Albert, his father, a native of Rashaya, Lebanon, eked out a modest wage as a dry goods salesman and his mother, Fadwa, who had married at 14, had a household of nine children to manage.

“Money was a problem,” Kouri recalls. “I delivered newspapers, I tutored kids after school. I took any job that I could.”

With his dentistry plans derailed, Kouri became an educator with the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal — a decision that had a profound impact on the rest of his life.

Beloved teacher and principal

His career began at Nesbitt Elementary School, not far from where he had grown up as a member of a close-knit Lebanese community based in the neighbourhood of La Petite-Patrie.

Over the next three and a half decades, Kouri served as a teacher at Rosemount High School and Monklands High School, and, as principal, at Sarah Maxwell Elementary School, Nesbitt, Maisonneuve Elementary School, St. Laurent High School and Malcolm Campbell High School. He also taught English as a second language at McGill and Université de Montréal.

Of his many career accomplishments, however, which included a novel exchange program for francophone and anglophone secondary-school students, Kouri’s tenure as the last principal of Baron Byng High School is his proudest.

For decades, Baron Byng, located in Mile End, Montreal, was one of the most academically successful public high schools in the city.

Largely populated throughout its history by Jewish students — whose notable ranks included Irving Layton, LLD 76, Aaron Fish, LLD 16, and Frederick H. Lowy, LLD 08, President Emeritus of Concordia — and then the children of Greek and Portuguese immigrants, the school was forced to close in 1980, a victim of deficient enrolment and Bill 101.

Baron Byng’s most famous graduate, Mordecai Richler, sponsored a literature scholarship for students.

“I would go to his apartment on Sherbrooke Street to pick up the cheque,” says Kouri. “Richler was marvellous with our students. At our reunions, which he always attended, they would crowd around him and he would answer all of their questions.”

To this day, Kouri’s role as the fabled high school’s last principal from 1972 to 1980, is what he’s most recognized and known for.

When Baron Byng alumni recorded an interview with Kouri to commemorate a recent milestone reunion, he recalled some of the challenges he faced as an administrator.

One incident stood out.

“We had a student who was very upset and told our social worker that he wanted to run away from home. I called the parents and told them that they had to come in that instant. We talked it out and solved the problem in my office. It was very emotional. Those are the students you remember.”

‘My confidante, my soulmate’