Labour Day on the Prairie

For fans who live anywhere from the shadows of the Rocky Mountains to the shadows of the steel mills in Hamilton, there is one weekend a year that nearly tops Grey Cup.

There is nothing like Labour Day. I have been to Regina for six games.  This weekend will be my seventh, and fifth Labour Day. I can’t wait. Especially on the Prairies, Labour Day is insane.

This is not Edmonton-Calgary, where between hockey, football, baseball, and pretty much every other sport in existence, the two cities compete 20 or 25 times a year. This isn’t Toronto and Hamilton, although I’m more willing to believe Hamilton understands what it’s like.

Winnipeg and Regina have one team each. We both know what it’s like to watch people describe Canada as Toronto, Calgary, and a whole bunch of wheat in between. There’s one chance a year for bragging rights. Yes, the Banjo Bowl back in Winnipeg will be tremendous fun. But it doesn’t mean half as much as Labour Day.

Bomber fans and Rider fans understand each other on some level. Both teams have histories splotched with long periods of ineptitude. Both teams know what it’s like to watch Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal play in the Grey Cup every year, while we sit at home and wait another year.

Some day, you see, one side or the other of the prairies will rise again, and that wind that howls across fifteen hundred kilometers of open field come every January will feel a little warmer. We know the Bombers or Riders will win again. We have to know that, we don’t know any other way. And yet in our heart of hearts we know we’re resigned to seeing how they blow it this year.

It’s the life of a prairie football fan. The only questions are just how close they will get, and just how deep the knife will go this time. It’s been sixteen years for us, seventeen for them, and yet every spring we’re all determined that this year is the year. We know it’s not, but we pray it is.

What defines the CFL in Edmonton is excellence, and all too often in Southern Ontario it’s negativity. On the prairies? It’s heartbreak.

And of course, there’s nothing better then causing someone else’s. And nothing more painful than suffering it at the hands of someone so similar to yourselves. That’s what makes Labour Day so great out here. True rivals are often born from identical foes, and in so many ways, the Bombers and Riders fit that to a tee.

So what’s Labour Day about?

It’s about the ten year old kid that flips me off every year from the top row of Taylor Field’s sunny side. Just for wearing a Bomber jersey, you understand.

It’s the roar of 6000 Bomber fans holding their own during player introductions. Until the first hint of a green jersey is seen, and a twenty thousand strong green tide sucks away any prayer you have of hearing the PA announcer.

It’s grabbing a beer after the game with five friends. Four are Rider fans, and the six of us hail from Winnipeg, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Vancouver, and Wisconsin. Two of them will drive in excess of fifteen hours one way, for a football game.

It’s the Rider fan who deadpan replies, “Yes, but we don’t have to live in Winnipeg” to a particularly spirited burst of trashtalk out the passenger window. Oh, and we were both going 70 kilometers an hour at the time.

It’s about the longest five hour drive in existence, every time the Bombers lose. Nothing speeds those agonizing kilometers up.

It’s getting up so early on Sunday morning that you don’t see the full sunrise until you’re most of the way to Brandon.

It’s the chills you get running down your spine when you think about the next Labour Day game. Even though it’s February at the time.

It’s about living on the Prairies.