The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
One of the reasons, some eons past, why the rest of Canada so hated Hogtown (aka Toronto) was because it seemed to hog everything. The perfect example was the Grey Cup, which was played every year in the Varsity Stadium at the University of Toronto, every year, in Tranta, which is why we all hated it. And the Argos, in the days of Joe Krol and Royal Copeland and all that, of course ruled the CFL and we hated them. And, to make it worse, the late John Bassett, who owned the Argos as well as the Toronto Telegram, used to make it a pre-game practise of throwing a huge cocktail party on top of the Park Plaza Ð across Bloor Street in view of the Varsity Stadium gridiron and, um, some devoted football fans were so devoted to the gin that they never got to the game. We then move on the expansion of the CFL when the dinosaurs in Toronto acknowledged that Vancouver, not to mention Calgary and Edmonton, was a part of Canada. By this time, the greedy football patrons realized they could make more money by moving the Grey Cup from the cozy seats of Varsity Stadium to the barren wastes of Exhibition Park at the Canadian National Exhibition alongside Lake Ontario, where the November classic was forever whipped by frozen winds and rain. It was a dreadful sit. And where, in 1964, the B.C. Lions Ð Joe Kapp and Willy Fleming and all that Ð won their first Grey Cup by whipping the Hamilton Tiger-Cats while everyone who is anyone in Toronto froze their whuppies off. Later, in the same frigid stadium, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, dressed like a Parisian flirt in scarf and fedora, did the official kick-off, which he had practiced for weeks under the guidance of his press secretary, Vic Chapman, who had been the Calgary Stampeders' punter. Moving right along, Vancouver finally gets to host its first Grey Cup. And by this time, has built the first closed-dome stadium in Canada, its ballooned ceiling held aloft by hot air. See 'White' P.# Con't from P.# The Argos being the finalists, every hot-shot from Toronto was there. Premier Bill Davis, Metro chairman Paul Godfrey and the rest sat there in their shirt-sleeves in November Ð thinking Vancouver was bush-league Ð and decided immediately that Hogtown had to do this better. Which brings us to this day to SkyDome, the white elephant they stuck to the taxpayers, the world's first reversible-roof playpen that has proved to be a dud. In the eagerness to surpass Vancouver, the Hogtown brilliants have built an edifice that doesn't work any which-way. First of all, it is too small to qualify for an NFL franchise Ð that Godfrey has always coveted Ð because it has not the required 65,000 seats as is the NFL requirement. Secondly, it cannot qualify for the Olympic Games that Toronto (hello, there Mel and those cannibals) has twice tried for because it is too small to accommodate the mandatory 400-metre cinder track. And now, because of its in-between-size, it is an embarrassing crowd for the mere 19,000 who show up for the hapless Argo games. What goes around always comes around. And so, we have this week the University of Toronto and the millionaires who own Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment asking Ottawa Ð that's me and you Ð to pony up $25 million to help build a $120 million 'sports complex' which includes a 25,000-seat stadium for the Toronto Argonauts at Ð guess where! Ð at the Varsity Stadium site. John Bassett, up there in his executive seat in the Pearly Gates, would be laughing. X x x AND ANOTHER THING At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Dick Pound, the Montreal lawyer Ð himself an Olympic medal-winner in swimming Ð was encountered at a cocktail party hosted by the Canadian consul-general. He said, "I don't know if the Athens 2004 Olympics will ever be completed in time. But I promise you one thing Ð you'll never get a hotel room. The terrorists have them all booked already." He repeated the joke too much, in too many parties, which is why he lost his goal to be boss of the International Olympic Committee, losing it to a dull Belgian. The truth is always dangerous.
