Educator Profile

 

 

 

Louis-Azarias Doucet was born on July 23, 1918, in Petit-Rocher, N.B. where he attended elementary school and the Petit-Rocher Superior School from which he graduated. He then attended the New Brunswick Provincial Normal School graduating in 1937. From graduation until 1941 he consecutively earned second, first, first class superior and Grammar School teaching licenses. His post-secondary studies included a B.A. program at Université Sacré-Coeur (1953); studies at Laval University (1955) and the University of Alberta (1963). As well, he pursued a university level short course for school inspectors at Banff. In 1963 his alma mater, Université Sacré-Coeur, conferred an honorary M.Ed. degree on him. In 1983 the Université de Moncton conferred on him the degree Doctor of Education.

His teaching career included three years at the elementary level at Miscou Centre (1937-1938) and Petit-Rocher North Schools (1939-1941). This experience was followed by serving at Université Sacré Coeur as a mathematics teacher in the high school and Belles-Lettres and Rhetorique at the first-year college level (1941-1949). During this period he also served in the Canadian Officers' Training Corps achieving the rank of Captain. As well, he served as an instructor in the Cadet Corps at the high school level.

From 1949 to 1952 he served as Assistant Superintendent to the Gloucester County Superintendent of Schools, and in 1952 he was appointed Superintendent of Schools for the County. In 1965 he assumed a number of responsibilities for the Provincial Department of Education in Fredericton becoming successively Director of Administration and Associate Chief Superintendent of Education. Among his many tasks were: Executive Secretary of the Committee on the Organization and Boundaries of School Districts (Elliot-Finn Report); Coordinator of District Organization (Implementation of the Elliot-Finn Report); and Chair of the Departmental Committee recommending transfer of Teacher Education to the Universities (1971).

He also served the Department of Education and the wider provincial community as a member of a consultant firm studying reclassification of all provincial civil servants (1971-1972); as a member of the Canadian Delegation to a meeting of French-speaking countries at Madagascar (1972); as President of the New Brunswick Non-instructional Educational Employees Association (1972-1973); and as a member of the Interdepartmental Committee on Educational Planning based on the MacLeod-Pinet Report (1973). During its first year of operation (1977-1978), he acted as Secretary-Treasurer of Le Centre Communautaire Ste-Anne, Fredericton.

A much cherished honor was receiving the medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope John XXIII on November 16, 1962.

Following his retirement on March 31, 1983, he wrote at the request of the Minister of Education a brief history of public education in New Brunswick: Two Centuries of Progress (1974-1984).

M. Doucet passed away in Fredericton on November 11, 2019, at the age of 101. His beloved wife, Agnes, mother of their nine children, passed away on July 22, 2007.