CELEBRATING CANADA'S TEAM

Saskatchewan Roughriders' John Chick holds his award for most outstanding defensive player at the CFL Player Awards in Calgary on Thursday. Turn to Page D2 for the story.
Photograph by: Reuters, Canwest News Service

Call them the Rider Nation diaspora. Generations of people leaving Saskatchewan for other parts of the country have transformed the Roughriders into Canada's football team and guaranteed green-clad fans will be glued to Sunday's Grey Cup game from coast to coast -- and in at least one case, offshore.

"They are the perennial underdogs," says Lt.-Cmdr. Paul Francoeur, executive officer of the Canadian navy ship HMCS Regina. "They're not ones to brag, they're not ones to boast, they're not obnoxious big city folks, they're pretty humble people, but they agree on one thing and they're fairly passionate about it."

With the Roughriders set to face the Montreal Alouettes in Calgary this weekend, Francoeur's unit, home-ported in Esquimalt, B.C., threw down the gauntlet to Halifax-based HMCS Montreal. The losers will have to fly the winners' team flag for a week, he says, and together with their naval reserve units, they've put up $1,000 for a charity in the winning city.

"We have a lot of people that are hardcore, inveterate fans -- myself included -- but now suddenly (the others) are taking up the cause and they want Saskatchewan to win because they want another ship to have to fly our flag," said Francoeur, who grew up in Moose Jaw.

"It's a matter of pride now."

Harry Hiller, a sociology professor at the University of Calgary, says for the Roughriders, "every game is a home game."

Statistics Canada figures show that between 1971 and 2008, 885,000 people left Saskatchewan for other parts of Canada. More than half of those who left between 2001 and 2006 settled in Alberta, but significant numbers also landed in B.C., Manitoba and Ontario.

"In regions of the country where there is a significant out-migration, there's also a bit of guilt and sadness because everyone is leaving a place," said Hiller, author of Second Promised Land: Migration to Alberta and the Transformation of Canadian Society. "It's sort of like deserting a ship and people feel bad about that, so they develop this intense loyalty to a place as compensation for the fact that they're not there."

For many ex-Saskatchewanians, that wistful attachment takes the form of Rider football passion, he says, and while the province's economy and job prospects have improved in the last few years, Saskatchewan still occupies a scrappy underdog position in the Canadian hierarchy that mirrors its football team. And those fans put their money where their heart is, with Roughriders merchandise outselling the other CFL franchises.

"As an Atlantic Canadian, Saskatchewan's passion for their football team strikes a familiar chord. It's how we feel about 'our' Boston Red Sox," Fredericton resident Don Richardson said in an e-mail. "I felt an immediate kinship with people who love their team year in and year out, winning or losing, and who feel a lasting bond to the organization and its players."

He's a recent Rider convert who's never lived in Saskatchewan, but on a visit to Regina this summer he was won over by the fans' love and knowledge of the game.

"They're absolutely everywhere," Victoria resident Allen Lavoie says of his fellow Rider fans. "I have one of the club jackets ... I wear that and literally every day somebody has something to say, another fan identifies himself, I get the horns honking and the thumbs-up."

He left Regina 20 years ago seeking warmer winters and, like many Saskatchewan natives, better job prospects. Born on Grey Cup Day 46 years ago, Lavoie figures he was destined to be a football fan, and while he generally watches games in his memorabilia-filled "Rider room" at home, on Sunday he'll be watching at a bar with several dozen other fans.

Michelle MacAfee will cheer her team on Sunday in her Ottawa living room with a small group of family and friends, no Alouettes fans allowed and her one-year-old son, a fourth-generation Rider fan who will watch his first Grey Cup game wearing his own customized jersey.

"It's just this huge passion for a place that's so small," said MacAfee, who lived in Saskatchewan on and off through her childhood and young adult years but who has also lived in Montreal. "And the truth is, we don't have any other professional sports teams. People who like to razz me say, 'You've got nothing else to cheer for so of course you're a Rider fan.' That's partly true, but it's a great team to have if it's the only one you have."

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In tomorrow's Leader-Post we'll have comprehensive pre-game coverage from our Leader-Post team in Calgary: sports writers Ian Hamilton, Murray McCormick and Rob Vanstone and photographer Don Healy.
As part of that coverage, we've put together a special 32-page Grey Cup feature. Be sure you don't miss it!
Leaderpost.com will have online-only content about all the weekend's events, including immediate coverage of Sunday's game.

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