By Stephanie Cesca
They’re going to hot into their boat, head down south until they teach the Bahuman and stay there until they feel like coming back. After all, Miriam and Lee Maguire will have a lot more time on their hands this spring.
That’s because after 70 years of combined service at Ryerson, Miriam, the journalism school’s departmental assistant, and Lee, the school of business management’s associate dean, will retire. And the couple says they’re looking forward to it.
“My motto is you retire to something, not from something,” Lee says.
As a former naval officer, travelling on a boat is the most fitting way for them to spend their time. It’s a trip they’ve been planning for almost ten years.
But that doesn’t mean the Maguires won’t miss Ryerson.
After all, it’s where the two first met more than 32 years ago.
Miriam joined Ryerson in 1965, starting in the Registrar’s office. A few months later, she moved over to the journalism department—or communications department as it was called back then—as a secretary, and then as an assistant.
Lee came to Ryerson in 1967 to help work on the university’s Canadian centennial celebration. Since then, he’s held many positions in the school of business management, eventually becoming associate dean four years ago.
The two would meet in the mornings for muffins and to chat. Eventually, Lee found the coverage to ask Miriam out on their first date.
“I took her to a pub,” Lee says. “She was not impressed. She didn’t drink beer. She liked to go to the coffee houses on Yorkville.”
Both Miriam and Lee have also made many other friends at Ryerson.
Journalism professor Don Gibb, who’s been close friends with Miriam for the past 13 years, says he and the rest of the department are going to miss Miriam.
“She’s been a friend and a really close confidant,” he says. “It’s going to be quite strange when she’s gone.”
And Stan Bowen, the school of business management’s directly of faculty affairs, says Lee will be missed around the business building. “He’s certainly always been very supportive of all student activity,” Bowen says.
But one thing Bowen, who also retires this year, won’t miss is his job of editing the spelling and grammar in Lee’s weekly column in the faculty’s newsletter.
“He badly needs assistance for editing,” Bowen says with a laugh. “He is an ideas man, no question.
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