Contence

P2. LABOUR OF LOVE: A RETROSPECTIVE LOOK AT THE LABOUR DAY CLASSICS

P3. Preveiw of Game 1 Ottawa @ Montreal

P4. Preveiw of Game 2 Winnipeg @ Saskatchewan

P5. Preveiw of Game 3 Toronto @ Hamilton

P6. Preveiw of Game 4 Edmonton @ Calgary

P7.-P9. Scores From the Past Labour Day Games

P10. CFL Power Rankings after week 10

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Written and Created By: Nelson H Creator of Nelsons CFL Predictions 05
this Magazine is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by the Canadian Football League, or any of the individual teams. All team names, logos are registered trademarks of those teams displayed.

copyright © 2005-2006

LABOUR OF LOVE

Hot, humid days of summer turn to crisp autumnal harbingers of an inevitable winter yet unseen but hardly anticipated. August’s dog days soon dissolve into September’s Indian summer. Frosty morning air gives way to warm -- occasionally overwhelmingly so -- aftternoons, to be replaced by cool nights filled with the promise of a new school year. The harvest moon glows ripe and large in the evening sky, highlighted by stars more brilliant in their appearance with the cooler air of the coming season. The rustle of leaves beginning to turn indicates the winds of change blowing over the city streets and country lanes. The answer to Christina Rosetti’s classic rhetorical poem “Who Has Seen the Wind” is evident everywhere. Out on the prairies, farmers begin yet another long grueling battle with Mother Nature and Father Time to gather their harvest. It is a beginning and an end. New possibilities abound, and the rebirth that will become more evident next spring begins its conception.

The winds of change, too, blow throughout the Canadian Football League, as the turning point in every season announces itself in the drama that is the annual Labour Day Classic. Or rather, Classics. Traditionally the midpoint in every CFL season, this one weekend demands that even the most casual observer of Canadian football sit up and take note. Like the very seasons themselves, this one weekend is a beginning and an end. It is the end of what may be the most protracted experiment in speculation. It is the end of all the “what ifs” and “maybes”. It is the beginning of “the time is now”. It usually signals what is to be, while giving homage to what has gone before. It is the beginning of the playoff races.

With the exception of the Grey Cup itself, it draws together longtime fans and novice curiosity seekers alike in a way nothing else can. A way that touches the very fabric of what it means to be a Canadian football fan, and, in one very real sense, what it means to be a Canadian. Yes we are all alike, but we are also different. We all of us make up that ‘distinct society’ that the late Prime Minister Trudeau spoke about. We gather together in stadia or around television screens across the country to reclaim a part of our past lost to our neighbour to the south - we did introduce them to the game, after all.

And yet it’s not lost, in that what the American game has become is as different to the Canadian game as we all are to “the great melting pot” below the 49th parallel. Someone once said the only way to tell the difference between an American and a Canadian is to point out to a Canadian that there is no difference. No truer words were ever spoken, particularly when it comes to football. No, rather than a reclamation, it’s really more of a celebration of our game and our heritage.

While their game is just getting under way, ours has already seen more than two months of battle to this point, merely to arrive at the crossroads that will determine the fates of players, coaches, teams and fans alike. It is this weekend, more than any other that challenges the collective psyche of football fans in Canada. Whether an “old-school” traditionalist or newly-born convert, this weekend and its results largely determine whether the casual fan sticks with the game for the rest of the season or not. It also tells the longtime fan in cold harsh reality whether or not it’s time to begin thinking of uttering that age-old mantra, “Wait until next year…”

Ultimately, it’s just another week in a long 18-game season. But it is also oh, so much more. It is a renewal of why we care about the CFL. The history and tradition of our game go back a century and a half, the roots of which are firmly planted in the first recorded game of rugby in North America even before Canadian Confederation. Long-forgotten, those roots have refused to wither and die, but rather have sustained the game despite the many foolhardy attempts which, in the guise of attempting to grow the game, have at times likened to sound its death-knell. And those same long-forgotten roots, lost in the mists of the game’s first century, spawned what might arguably be called the greatest period in the game’s storied history, namely its last half-century or so.

Since 1948 the game has seen its most productive and potentially destructive eras, yet the traditions these years have created have ultimately sustained both the game and us alike when it seemed the game would die. And no greater tradition exists than the annual clashes on Labour Day weekend. It is this weekend that gives us the great rivalries in sport – the Toronto Argonauts, the oldest continuous professional team in North American sport versus the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, themselves a proud and storied team with roots extending further back than their hated rivals. It gives us the Edmonton Eskimos versus the Calgary Stampeders; a rivalry no less storied, dating back to 1892, and if anything, even more heated than the Toronto-Hamilton rivalry. It gives us the Saskatchewan Roughriders versus the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, a pitched battle for prairie supremacy. In past years the Montreal Alouettes and Ottawa Roughriders would square off, with both teams splitting the bragging rights, and now with the rebirth – there’s that word again – of the Renegades in the nation’s capital, at least the potential for yet another storied rivalry exists once more.

And now, with the advent of internet chat rooms and web sites both professional and fan-created, another tradition has arisen, or rather a means of carrying on a certain tradition never before attained, namely that of the heated interchange between fans of one team with those of another. Not even the Grey Cup spawns the colourful rhetoric witnessed on sites like 13thMan.com. At most times, if not exactly respectful, it is at least civil. But come Labour Day, the “in your face” crowd descends on these sites with all the tenacity of a pit bull on a chuck roast. The more moderate posters will attempt to keep some semblance of order at these times, but even the occasional one of these can tend to lose it once in a while. And it’s great!

This interchange of opinion that not so long ago did not exist is a welcome addition. One could argue that it is the very proliferance of the World Wide Web that has helped save the CFL itself. As late as 1997, the league was in such dire straits – what with fans turning away in droves, media harping left and right about everything that was wrong with the league, while at the same time offering nothing in the way of how to fix it, and a general malaise and apathy among the CFL governors – that the league had to go hat in hand to the NFL for help. But it was people in these chat rooms and others like them creating fan sites that helped the faithful stay in touch with each other, and with why they love the CFL in the first place. They helped spread the word, at first by preaching to the choir, and later selling the positive aspects of the game, and soon new fans became aware of what so many in this country began to take for granted: namely a product that is entertaining, affordable, accessible, and above all, ours. Slowly, fans started to come back to the game. And nothing seemed to sell the game more than the interchange involving the Labour Day games.

That another seemingly innocuous event that took place at that time went on to become the start of a renaissance for the league, may simply be a quirk of fate. Yet it is to some degree another chapter in the tradition of the CFL. In what has now become a storied part of CFL lore, the 1997 Eastern Division Semi-Final had to be played in Molson Stadium due to a scheduling conflict at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. The band U2 was scheduled to play the same date, so it was decided to move the playoff game to the 19,000-seat facility on McGill University campus. The resulting near sell-out convinced the Alouettes’ management to move to the facility on a permanent basis, creating a demand for tickets in a market that had seen its team fold a decade earlier, only to return to crowds of 6,000 or so at cavernous Olympic Stadium. But what it REALLY did was force a return to the team’s roots, the stadium having been the site of so many great Montreal football successes in the past.

And it is in the past where the CFL’s future lies. Not by turning back the clock and wishing for long gone days of glory, but by keeping an eye on its past and building on its traditions while looking to the future. A new franchise in Ottawa, and new ownership in both Toronto and Hamilton have begun to reconnect with fans by building on the tradition of football in general, and the teams in particular. In B.C. the Lions have brought back their tradition in the person of Bob Ackles and fans are once again attending games in markets that were thought dead or dying.

With all the upheaval and conflict the past two decades has seen for this league, there remains one constant: the Labour Day Classic weekend. Even the Grey Cup game saw changes, what with dwindling crowds in Toronto and Vancouver in the early nineties, and the Baltimore Stallions taking Earl Grey’s celebrated mug across the border for a brief stay in 1995. One might argue it was this event that finally turned a lot of people away from the game, it being the proverbial final straw that broke the camel’s back after so many years of turmoil and mismanagement. But it was the Labour Day weekend that always made people come back, if only for that one weekend a year. It is the one weekend of the year that sees the highest attended games in every city. And it is still the weekend that defines Canadian football, and its fans for what we are: resilient, tough and devoted to that which we love.