This is how old Stu Lang is: He ran back punts in the Canadian Football League when blocking wasn’t allowed — and he not only lived to tell the story, but flourished from it.
This is how old Stu Lang is: He played for the greatest team in Canadian sports history. He caught the last touchdown pass of Tom Wilkinson’s career. He played eight seasons dependably with what was then the Edmonton Eskimos and went to the Grey Cup seven different times, winning five.
This is how old Stu Lang is: He played for Hugh Campbell and with Warren Moon and Gizmo Williams, with Dan Kepley and Hank Ilesic and Larry Highbaugh. And a host of other Hall of Famers.
He was sports and life back then. Sports and life still, now retired after the age of 73, making a difference in what matters most to him.
You don’t hear this much about professional athletes, especially those who earned their livings in the CFL in the 70s and 80s, but you can hear this now about Lang. And it should be celebrated.
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He recently donated $6.1 million to Bishop Strachan School, money to be used to enhance the next generation of female leaders through an athletics and mentorship program at the Toronto all-girls school.
Lang worked only on football in his years catching passes for the Eskimos. But upon his retirement from the game, he went to work in the family printing business that he helped build into an international giant.
This is the opposite of so many football stories you might read about elsewhere. This isn’t a career gone wrong and money squandered along the way.
This is a former athlete giving back, so thankful for his CFL years, so thankful for his business acumen and family success, that he went to the University of Guelph and coached the football team without accepting a salary. Over a 10-year period, he donated more than $50 million to the Canadian university.
This is a new venture for Lang at Bishop Strachan. His sisters went to the school. A scholarship in his family’s name has been active at UCC, the private boys school, for years. Lang thought it was time to bring the something similar to BSS.
He talked to friends about donations and investment and where best to put his money. What mattered most to whom. The decision was made: Put the money in education and sports and leadership. And so he did.
“You get the biggest results investing in education,” said Lang, who graduated from Queen’s and the Eskimos, coached at Guelph and has maintained a lifetime involvement in advancement. “We want to expand and accelerate programs that are available at BSS.
“If you’re looking to find the next Prime Minister or the next person who can cure cancer, we want to provide opportunities and experiences to be available for these young (women).”
All this coming at a time when women’s sport is growing at a rate no one saw coming. The WNBA is having a monster first season with the remarkable Caitlin Clark. The PWHL had a superb, rushed first season under the leadership of Jayna Hefford. Women’s professional soccer in Canada and the United States is growing exponentially. That’s sport at the highest level.
Lang wants more opportunities for young women — not just connected to sports — than ever before.
And if anyone cared to listen — and many don’t these days — his years of CFL excellence are a helluva way to begin a post-university career. Who plays eight seasons for the same team and goes to the championship game seven times?
When Lang came home after retirement from Edmonton, he moved back to Ontario, bought a home in Oakville and a dog he quickly named Wilkie, after the veteran quarterback. Since then, he has kept one eye on the CFL from up close and afar and even put in place a plan last year to purchase the now-Edmonton Elks franchise.
He didn’t get the team nor, as someone outside the city, did he expect to get it. He figured the ownership would go local and it did.
But he’s watching as an alumni from as close as you can, hoping somehow that the once-proud, many-times dominant, former model franchise in professional sport can soon find its way again.
Sometimes you have to change the way you do business. Lang’s father started in the lamp business and almost accidentally tripped over the beginning of aerosol sprays in Canada. Soon lamps were out and aerosol was in and, after spending so much on labels, it was time to get out of aerosol and into printing. It has been printing ever since for the Langs.
“I think (in Edmonton) they’ve lost the plot somewhere along the line,” Lang said. “I’m sure everyone is committed to excellence, but there’s committed and there’s committed. It’s not always the same thing.
“I’m not sure they have any ties to the past. In the past, you had a Hugh Campbell or a Norm Kimball who could right the shop when it needed righting. I think they’re moving in the right direction now (with Larry Thompson as new owner). I hope they are.”
In the meantime, there is work to be done to develop the Lang Scholars at Bishop Strachan and take advantage of his generosity.
He believes in education — in the classroom and everywhere else you might find it.
It could be a lunch-speaker program at the school. It could be a mentorship program with individuals. It could be further development of the athletic programs at the school. The possibilities are endless.
“When I was the head coach at the University of Guelph, I used to tell the kids ‘There are two classrooms on campus. One in the class and one on the field. And you’ll more on the field than you will in the classroom.’”
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