He left his mark on the Kamloops golf community and a whole generation of high school students but friends and colleagues remembered Nick Kalyk for his spirit and individuality Sunday.

“He was a visionary. He saw things in that property that nobody else would,” Dave Coombs, former owner of The Dunes At Kamloops, said when he learned his longtime friend died while playing tennis at Riverside Park Saturday morning. Kalyk was in his early 70s.

“Nick was always an honorary member of the course. He had a house right on the first hole. He was a fixture at The Dunes.”

Coombs bought The Dunes from Kalyk halfway through the development phase, finishing the last nine holes in the mid-’90s. Kalyk may not have realized his dream of completing the course himself but his touch was all over it.

“He knew every inch of that land. . . . We built the last nine holes but he had his hand in their design. He influenced the whole property,” Coombs said.

Coombs and Kalyk played golf together, which is where some of Kalyk’s quirky nature came though. He brought his guitar along on men’s nights and played music he wrote himself.

Many of these songs reflected his active roll in the federal Liberal party.

Bill Bilton knew Kalyk prior to buying The Dunes from Coombs earlier this year.He said Kalyk remained active despite having health problems the last few years.

“I just got back from an annual golf trip where 20 of us go. Nick usually goes but he didn’t come this year for some reason,” he said, mourning the loss of his friend.

The two first met when Kalyk was starting out as a teacher. Kalyk taught during the school year and ran his own business collecting and selling junk — mostly copper wire and railway ties — during the summer.

“Nick was a hell of a guy. He marched to his own beat,” Bilton said.

He had three daughters with his ex-wife, Margaret Kalyk. Bilton said they divorced several years before he died.

Kalyk’s other legacy was cultivating a love of agriculture in students.

Gordon Lloyd knew Kalyk while principal at Kam High, now South Kamloops secondary. Kalyk taught there from 1961 to 1979, teaching math, science and chemistry for much of his career.

“In his later years he was more focused on agriculture,” Lloyd said.

“Nick’s claim to fame is starting the Kam High rodeo and Kamloops secondary Cattle Company.”

Kalyk ran the rodeo out of a property he and and friend Mack Bryson purchased in Barnhartvale. The event eventually affiliated with the B.C. High School Rodeo Association and National Rodeo Association and continues today. Kalyk was the B.C. director of the national association for 10 years, he said.

“One of the highlights was a staff contest to see who could milk cattle the fastest,” Lloyd said, laughing.

“He wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill staff member. He had a high level of drive and introduced students to agriculture in a practical way. The students loved him.”

Dusty jeans and scuffed cowboy boots.

That's how many who knew Nick Kalyk will remember him. He was a man who, although not originally from here, was a real Kamloops kind of guy.

"He looked like he was right in off the ranch all the time," said local lawyer Candace Cates of the man who died Saturday while playing tennis, which was just one of his many interests.

Kalyk already looked like he was just about to saddle a bronco back in 1968, when he helped Len Marchand to ride to victory in the federal election that swept Pierre Trudeau and his Liberals into power.

In fact, it was Kalyk who helped persuade Canada's first-ever Native MP - and the last Grit to win a seat in Kamloops - to take a stab at running for office in Ottawa.

At first, Marchand was reluctant to take the job, but fellow UBC aggies - graduates of the School of Agriculture at the University of British Columbia - finally persuaded him.

Kalyk, as Marchand recalls of his longtime friend, was the most persistent: forgetting about the three-hour time difference to Ottawa, where Marchand lived at the time, Kalyk kept calling when Marchand was fast asleep in the small hours of the morning.

Later, Kalyk became Marchand's campaign event co-ordinator and organized Trudeau's visit to Kamloops that year.

That's how Cates, then barely in her teens, came to know Kalyk. She, along with other students her age, participated in that pivotal campaign. She remembers the former Kam High teacher as being a "tireless worker" for the campaign who spent up to 16 hours per day in the office.

Kalyk, a lifelong Liberal, always had an interest in politics. Usually, he worked behind the scenes, as in Marchand's many election campaign.

In 1966, however, he stood as a provincial candidate for the Liberals, but finished third behind Socred Flyin' Phil Gaglardi and New Democrat Lance Randle.

But primarily, Kalyk was an organizer and activist. He just had a talent for that. It started at UBC, where Kalyk exhibited greater interest in campus activities than classroom lectures.

"He was a very bright guy. But he was an activist. He was involved in all kinds of campus things. Attending classes was not always at the top of his list," said Marchand.

As a result, Kalyk failed first-year English, said Marchand, adding with a chuckle that he himself failed math at one point.

One of the events Kalyk helped organize was the annual Farmers' Frolic, which the UBC faculty of agriculture put on every spring. Being too busy organizing, Kalyk had no time to woo a date, so Marchand arranged one for his friend with an old acquaintance from Vernon High.

After graduating, Kalyk moved to Kamloops, where he became a teacher at Kam High and got to know his future wife, Margaret Borsato.

The couple later divorced.

It was in Kamloops where the transplant from the Lower Mainland became the cowboy his friends and former students remember.

Marchand recalls the days he went up to Kalyk's property in Barnhartvale and the many hours spent in the saddle. Although Kalyk was not born in the saddle, he became a good rider after he had moved to Kamloops.

His love for the western lifestyle also led Kalyk to help found the Kamloops High School Rodeo.

That event is still held today.