Gar Leyshon (Damian Warner's Coach)
Gar Leyshon recently turned 61 but doesn’t look a day over 60. And Gar is not even his real name, it is an acronym. Gar retired last June after teaching for almost 25 years. He first taught English in Taiwan in 1985 and swore he would never do something so ridiculous again. His mother, sick of the sight of him returning home broke yet again, had other plans, and signed him up for teacher’s college while he was traveling in South East Asia. His snake of a younger brother took his physical and faked the photo so that upon Gar’s return he was railroaded off to teacher’s college in the Excited States of America. The experience was not a total loss as he met his future wife, and made some teaching contacts, one of whom invited them to come over and teach in London England with her. To clarify she meant they would sleep on the floor of her squat while supply teaching on a day-to-day basis in a endless string of squalid east end schools with a dearth of indoor plumbing and a glut of breathtakingly monstrous children. Thinking Scotland would be better they spent the second half of the year in Dundee trying to understand what the hell everybody was saying. Returning home to teach in London Ontario would have been, needless to say, a huge relief, if not for the fact that the teachers and government were at war. But after a mere 3 years of supply teaching, at an estimated 43 different schools, in 3 countries, Gar finally signed a contract in 1998. Gar coached Damian for the first time in 2006, taught him grade 12 English in 2007 and then blah blah blah The Olympics.