Friday night will officially kick off Labour Day weekend in the CFL, with a slew of classic rivalries traditionally played during the long weekend.
Sunday its the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Saskatchewan to play the Roughriders. The holiday Monday double-header features two intra-provincial matchups: the Calgary Stampeders hosts their neighbours from the north, the Edmonton Eskimos, while the Toronto Argonauts travel down the QEW to play the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, hopefully in opening day at the nearly-finished Tim Hortons Field.
But a new rivalry – sort of – will clash this weekend for the first time in one franchise’s history, and twenty-first in the other. The Montreal Alouettes and Ottawa RedBlacks meet up Friday night at Percival Molson Stadium in downtown Montreal. This is the inaugural Labour Day weekend game for the RedBlacks, but number twenty-one for the Alouettes against an Ottawa team.
Montreal and Ottawa Renew Labour Day Classic Hostilities
First playing in 1949 in Ottawa, the Rough Riders beat the three year-old Alouettes 22-21. They didn’t repeat the matchup until 1952, where they would start a tradition of playing Labour Day games for the next ten seasons, until 1961. They skipped 1962 before resuming play in 1963, but after that their Labour Day meetups were scarce: 1967, 1971, 1975, 1978, 1996, 2003, 2004, and 2005. Montreal leads in the all-time record with eleven wins and nine losses.
Through the years, both cities have had numerous changes to their football clubs, with both organizations having stopped operations one or more times. The Alouettes, originally founded in 1946, folded in 1981 and become the Montreal Concordes, who played until 1986, when they were renamed the Alouettes for a single year. In 1987, the Alouettes ceased operations. Montreal got a football team back in the city in 1996, thanks to the relocated Baltimore Stallions.
Ottawa football has a richer history of folding and expansion. The original Rough Riders took the name in 1930 and played gridiron football until 1996, the year the history-filled franchise terminated their existence in the league. A revival came about in 2002 in the form of the Renegades, who lasted just four seasons before closing down in April of 2006.
Now the league is taking a third crack at a team in Ottawa, the Redblacks (officially the REDBLACKS, but if they want a logo they can buy an ad). After the game on Friday night, a total of five different teams will have played in the Ottawa-Montreal match-up, the original Alouettes, the revival Alouettes, Rough Riders, Renegades and RedBlacks. Big difference from the two teams that played in the upcoming 49th meeting between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and host Saskatchewan Roughriders on Labour Day Sunday.
However, the fire of a natural rivalry is still burning between football fans in the cities located 200 km away, a comfortable two-hour drive. The municipalities are almost completely opposite – Montreal has big buildings, crowded areas, a public underground city and the government believes French should be predominant and English is minimal. Meanwhile in the nation’s capital of Ottawa, small government buildings are erected, traffic is obsolete, the underground system they have is only for federal officials, while English is as equal as French.
There wasn’t much of a sports rivalry between the former and current capitals of Canada, until last year when the Canadiens and Senators met in the playoffs, a headline-filled, blood-spattered series topped by trash talk between the head coaches. In March, the Habs came back from 4-1 down with three minutes left to play to win 5-4 against the Sens, sparking a fan and player hatred that may last for a long time.
Both the RedBlacks and Alouettes are struggling teams right now. After this week’s game, one team will have to suffer with an abysmal 1-8 record while the other will pick up their second win of the season, which might be good enough to send them into second place in the East.
In a game between the two worst teams in the CFL, the only thing keeping fans inside the stadium is the tradition between the two clubs, unknown to some younger generation fans, but in some memories of the older generations. But for the first time since 2005, the Alouettes will play a team from Ottawa in a CFL regular season game and on Labour Day weekend. Time for another long succession of the long weekend games.
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