Loretta Hughes

Back by popular demand, Kids Help Phone’s Homes for the Holidays event is being held in Regina this year on November 20 – November 22.

Kids Help Phone volunteers have been working with local designers and florists to decorate five homes throughout Regina and turn each of the homes into a Christmas Fantasy.

Nov 20th 11am to 6pm

Nov 21st 11am to 5pm

Nov 22nd 11am to 4pm

Exit Realty Fusion Agents will be at 4519 Cudmore Cres (Lakeridge) providing tours of the beautiful home.

Our home theme is "The weather outside is frightful but inside it's so delightful!"

Come visit us & Happy Holidays!

Boxing had Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier. Hockey had Wayne Gretzky vs Mario Lemieux. The Second World War had the Nazis against the rest of the world. Regina has Fiacco against all those don’t want their hair to look like strands of melted tire. Albert Street and Saskatchewan Drive have drivers in a hurry against the red light. Southern Saskatchewan has Exit Realty Fusion vs all the rest. Great rivalries, every one of them, and the good guys always won. The ones with the most brains, most drive, most skills, most endurance and, above all the biggest dreams, and the tenacity to chase after them are the ones who take it all.

And now you’ve got the Saskatchewan Roughriders vs the Calgary Stampeders. It’s become the biggest rivalry in the Canadian Football League. There are those who rub their chins and figure that the Labour Day Classic between Winnipeg and Saskatchewan is the biggest rivalry. That’s not a rivalry, that’s an event.

But, Saskatchewan vs Calgary? That’s a rivalry. It became one, for the ages, this season. Events are like weddings. Everybody shows up, parties, and goes home happy. Rivalries are wars. Rivalries are fuelled by a genuine dislike for each other. And after playing each four times this season, once in the pre-season and three times in league games, the Stampeders and the Roughriders genuinely dislike each other.

It figures, After all, every one of those games has been a war. And, the Riders have yet to lose. Henry Burris has thrown everything he has at the Riders, and the Riders have thrown it right back at him. The rivalry boiled over when Saskatchewan went into Calgary and escaped with an electrifying 44-44 overtime tie that really was more of a win for Saskatchewan and a loss for Calgary. It got downright nasty when the Riders-out-gunned the Stampeders a few weeks later in a first-place showdown in Taylor Field. It was Saskatchewan’s first first-place finish since 1976, and half an hour after the game you could still hear the cheering of the crowd from backyards as far away as the Crescents area of Regina. It seemed almost a bigger win, in some ways, than Saskatchewan’s Grey Cup victories in 1989 and 2007. Because, you suppose, this win came at home. The fans, most of whom weren’t around 1976, weren’t sure how to act so they acted up.

“We’ll be back here in two weeks,” promised Henry Burris. Burris had once played for Saskatchewan, leaving the Riders to go play for Calgary. Both teams have won Grey Cups since that happened, but the fans never forgave Burris. Heck, it wasn’t Burris’ fault he left. It was stubborn stance taken by general manager Roy Shivers that forced Burris to go to Calgary. But, the fans in Saskatchewan take more delight than getting on Burris than they do any other player, or coach, in the Canadian Football League.

Rivalries have to have a lot of ingredients before they become special. Off the top, the games have to be close and they have to be last-minute deals before they’re decided. The teams have to have exceptional talent across the board. The coaches have to figure out ways to make them play as a team. John Hufnagel and Ken Miller have done that, and it hasn’t been easy for either one of those head coaches.

Burris had developed into one of the most complete quarterbacks in the league. It’s around his athletic ability that the Stampeders’ offence feeds off of. Darian Durant has more than proven that Ken Miller was right that Durant could become the next great Rider quarterback. He is like Ron Lancaster in many ways, the most obvious being that he seems to be at his best when the pressure is at its highest level of intensity.

But beyond all of that is these two teams just plain don’t like each other. Their games are played at a high level with little give and take on either side. The Riders haven’t really out-played the Stampeders this season as much as they have out-gutted and out-lasted them.

They will meet in the Western final for the first time since 1971 when Calgary swept the best-of-three series. But, now it’s sudden-death, a one-game shot that will in all reality tell who really won the rivalry in 2009.

As the doctor said when the fourth Dionne baby was born, “Don’t go away, this thing ain’t over with yet.”

So, which team are they? Are they the Saskatchewan Roughriders who have won three of their last four games, including a pair of overtime thrusts that gave them the nickname, The Cardiac Kids. Or, are they the lameduck, lackadaisical, lackluster and disinterested group that never really woke up when the game kicked off in Hamilton last Saturday. Why, it may well have been the first time all season the Loyal Disorder of Rider Priders were able to comfortably take a nap at one in the afternoon, and not have to worry about missing anything.

For the longest of time, or at least since the overtime thrillers against Calgary in McMahon Stadium and against B.C. in Taylor Field, the Roughriders were being compared to the Roughriders of 1976. That, for the youngsters in the crowd, was the last time the Riders finished first in the Western Division of the Canadian Feetball League. It’s been 33 years since a Rider team has managed the feat, and after the debacle in Hamilton last Saturday, this might, after all, not be the year the drought ends.

That’s just the way things are in Saskatchewan. Why, just think about it. After a vicious winter, everybody looked forward to a fair spring and a hot summer. Never happened. We missed spring, and summer only winked wickedly at us as she blew by. So, then we figured we would get a great autumn. Well, there were those two weeks, but the euphoria of that was knocked aside by snow, rain, snow, wind, cold, and, well, you know.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…the farmers were quietly glowing over crops that would be the mother of all crops. They couldn’t wait to get on the fields. The two weeks of great weather in September sent the combines into feeding frenzy. But, as quickly as the crops were coming off, Mother Nature put up her hand, and brought the whole thing to a halt. As I write this, only about 70 per cent of the crops are off the fields, and that doesn’t pay all the bills.

And, then, fitting in with the theme of the year, the Riders got off to a so-so start, faltered here and there, and then suddenly seemed to blossom as one of the elite teams of the league. They scratched and clawed their way into the thick of the battle for first-place in the West, to the point where everybody was talking about the 1976 Roughriders, the last-gasp team of the glory years of Lancaster and Reed.

If indeed it is Miller Time in Saskatchewan, then the next three weeks will bring in the final verdict.

When Ken Miller took over from Kent Austin as head coach of the Riders in 2008, he had a huge pair of shoes to fill. In one year as head coach, Austin had made Kerry Joseph look like a Hall of Fame quarterback and the Riders won their third Grey Cup.

It’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what side of the wall you’re sitting on, but expectations now are much higher than they were when everybody was happy to just make the playoffs. Now, more is expected. Much more. The Loyal Disorder of Rider Priders has done their part. They lead the league in sellouts. Now, they don’t want to be sold out.

The Riders finish off the schedule against the Calgary Stampeders in Taylor Field in a twilight game on Saturday. They win, they finish first. They lose, they finish second. Finishing second isn’t good enough, unless they’re capable of pulling off a big upset in the semi-final and then in the final, just to get to the Grey Cup game. Don’t forget, if they are in the semi-final, then they are on a two-game losing streak. No longer, no more, are they considered favourites to do anything.

They are right back where they started. They have to prove just how good they really are. No more are the Loyal Disorder of Rider Priders sold on this bunch. There’s an old saying in sports, and it is so true. “You’re only as good as your last game.” And, in their last game, the Riders weren’t all that good.

What is scary is this. You expect at this time of the season, teams who are serious first-place contenders will play like they are just that, will show up at every game. That, the Riders did not do in Hamilton.

Now, it’s time for the real Roughriders to show up.

Or, they may be going home sooner than most expected a couple of weeks ago.

I was there on that chilly night in 1963 when Ron Lancaster guided the Saskatchewan Roughriders to an amazing playoff comeback victory over the Calgary Stampeders in the Western Football Conference semi-final, overcoming a more than three-touchdown deficit to win the total-points series by a single point. They dubbed it The Little Miracle of Taylor Field. The town and the province went crazy.

I was there at the last regular season game in Calgary in 1976 when Lancaster again led the Riders on an electrifying second-half comeback that had its Cinderella ending penned when Lancaster threw a last-minute pass to wide receiver Rhett Dawson in the dark of McMahon Stadium to seal a win that gave the Riders first place in the Western Conference. It was the first time in four tries that the Riders managed to beat the Edmonton Eskimos for first place. Home field was enough to give Saskatchewan the edge in the Western final over the hated Eskimos and send them to the Grey Cup. That Western final, played out on a field barren of grass, a game that featured dust flying from the cleats of those running the ball, bore a sad, tormented significance to it. It was the last time the Saskatchewan Roughriders would finish first in the Western Conference until . . .

Well, perhaps, until now. They beat Calgary in the last game of the season in Taylor Field, it’s theirs.

The Roughriders have endured much and enjoyed much since that 1976 first-place finish. They went through fitful years when the product on the field and diminishing attendance in games at the Old Grey Lady on 10th Avenue threatened their very existence. Their hope was renewed when they won the Grey Cup in 1989, in a game many felt was the most exciting Grey Cup ever played, the 43-40 win over Hamilton. The icing came when Saskatchewan boys Roger Aldag and Bob Poley brought the Grey Cup into Taylor Field and hoisted it to the heavens on a cold November night, 24 hours after the game. They enjoyed moments when they found a way to the Grey Cup in 1997, where they lost to Doug Flutie and the Toronto Argonauts. They revelled in sheer joy when they won a Grey Cup in 2007, only the third in their history.

All those moments, and more, have galvanized the Rider fans, the Loyal Disorder of Rider Priders as I have called them on occasion.

But never, not ever, in all the years, make that decades, that I have followed this team have I ever seen anything like this season. In so many ways, this season has been a capsule of all the seasons that have gone before in the 100-year history of the Roughriders. It’s been The Good, The Bad and, Hey, They Can Finish First!

There have been the moments this year when the team seemed a wretched bunch, rudderless because they surely needed a quarterback capable of taking them to the Promised Land that is first place and the Grey Cup. Darian Durant, many sniffed, was not the answer. He was beginning to remind the Loyal Disorder more of Joe (747) Adams than he was of Ron Lancaster. And even coach Ken Miller seemed to feed that by yanking Durant from games and replacing him with whoever was standing next to him on the sideline. The fans turned snarly, but continued to pour themselves into Taylor Field.

The season turned when Miller quickly back-tracked on a quote that indicated he would pull Durant from any game that he wasn’t performing in. It was as if Miller decided that if the Riders were going to go anywhere, then they would have to hitch their wagon to Darian Durant. And, you know what? He answered the call. He has developed to the point where he is now seriously being considered as a strong choice to be named the Canadian Football League’s most outstanding player.

And, like Lancaster was his whole career, he has become a master of the improbable comeback. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the 44-44 overtime tie in Calgary and the 33-30 overtime win against B.C. in Regina. He was, to put it simply, simply amazing. In the Calgary game, with the teams heading into a boiling overtime session, Durant was seen sitting on the bench smiling and totally enjoying himself. He seemed drinking up the pressure as if it was a fine wine.

“That’s a great thing, when you see that,” Al Ford would tell me. Ford is the only Roughrider to win a Grey Cup ring in Saskatchewan as a player (1966) and general manager (1989). “He was having fun, loving it, and obviously couldn’t wait to get back on the field, no matter what was going on. That’s great, and everbody feeds off of it.”

The Roughriders are now one win away from clinching first place. A lot of it is because of Darian Durant and his evolution to a bonafide starter. A lot of it is because of the talent general manager Eric Tillman and scout Joe Womack have brought in. A lot of it is how Ken Miller has moulded the team and got the players to play for him.

But, most of it is because of the job team president and CEO Jim Hopson has done. When Hopson, a former Rider who played in the 1976 Grey Cup game, was named to head up the organization, there was a lot of head-wagging. He had been an educator for all of his working life. What could he possibly know about running a football team? Lots, apparently. After all, I’ve mentioned, he is a north-ender.

Under Hopson’s stewardship, the Riders have become the most successful franchise in the CFL, something they never achieved before. Under Jim, they just succeed. They make the playoffs. They’ve won a Grey Cup. They sell more merchandise than any team in the league. They sell out virtually every home game. They have become Canada’s Team in virtually every way possible. They are so successful, it is astounding. A few weeks ago, they opened a merchandise store in Saskatoon. People were lined up to get into the place.

And, they are getting back to the “old ways” of Riderville, when many of the players stayed here the year round, got jobs, became part of the community. Why, one of them is offensive lineman Marc Parenteau, who works at Exit Realty Fusion in Regina as a realtor.

The Riders of 2009 were never out of hunt in the early moments of the season. But, they never really seemed capable of leading the pack. And the finger of blame kept pointing at Durant. Once he took charge, once the coach gave him his head, the rest, as they say, is history.

There are only three more steps to be taken, albeit giant steps. The first will be the final game of the schedule against Calgary. Then, comes the Western final. And, finally, the Grey Cup game. And can there be a better place for the Grey Cup to be played in 2009 than in Calgary. Why, it will seem like a home game for Canada’s Team. And those who work at Exit Realty Fusion can hardly wait until the day Marc Parenteau comes through the front door waving the Grey Cup. Odds are, it’s going to happen sooner than later.