I Love Regina!

The break and enter rates in...Regina, for instance, rank within the top 10 per cent of all American cities. The per capita robbery rates in...Regina would put (it) among the top 10 robbery-plagued metropolitan areas of the U.S.

Story: The worst and best of Canada | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features

Who says we don't need the CBC?

I'm sitting here watching CTV Newsnet on the Saturday three days before Christmas and story after story is about holiday spending and holiday air travel.  The problem is, each of these stories is American dressed up to look like it is Canadian. The id/sign-offs at the end have been chopped off ("This is Timmy for NBC News.")

So viewers might wonder if 3 in 10 holiday shoppers really are going to spend less this year. Our culture is different than that of the U.S. Sure you can debate those differences but you can't debate that our economies are different. It's just that they're not even trying. Why do they even exist on the weekends if they can't produce their own reports? Why not sign off?  I've got dozens of American channels I can watch those reports on, I don't need CTV Newsnet eroding away my Canadian identity.

Podcast: Rider fans erupt -- driving home from the hospital after missing the game due to the birth of my second child

Everyone in the city and province where James lives is a fan of the local professional sports team: The Roughriders of the Canadian Football League (CFL.) They've only won two championships in nearly one hundred years. The first time was the year James was born. The second time was in 1989 where a downtown-wide street party erupted and he met his future wife.

But the third championship (Grey Cup) came on Nov. 25, 2007. However, the birth of his second child threw a monkey wrench into his plans on watching the big game with his wife, who is also a life-long fan.

This edition of JamesPod is a brief recording of the drive home from the hospital on this remarkable day.

For more information, read the newspaper article about James and family being such fans and having to miss the big game due to labour. (link may go dead after a few days.)

LISTEN / DOWNLOAD MP3

GREY CUP -- WORST CASE SCENARIO COMES TRUE

What's the worst thing that could happen to an expectant couple who are Rider fans and who have been together since the street celebration after the 1989 Grey Cup?

The wife goes into labour on Grey Cup Sunday, that's what.

No one is more disappointed in the timing that my wife Janice (8 days past due.) We're listening to the radio pregame broadcasts in between contractions.

It's amazing how important the Riders are when a woman in labour is thinking more about them than having her second child.

Wish us luck, and for godsake, someone Tivo the game for us!

I don't know about Toronto (CFL) lang. warn.

I've heard enough, and I don't like what I'm hearing.

The Grey Cup at the SkyDome has fond memories for me, but I'm not sure Toronto should host the CFL's biggest event. I hate watching games there (in person or on TV.) But the Cup is different, because everyone in the crown isn't from Ontario. There are real people there too.

And I'm getting a little tired hearing Torontonians, particularly in the media, make fun of Regina and Winnipeg and prairie people in general. I'm starting to think it's not all in good fun. I'm starting to take it personally.

In fact, I'm getting a little pissed off. I hope Toronto does get an NFL team so I can watch them fold like a cheap pump tent after they deal with a Canadian dollar that will eventually drop back down and a stadium far too small to be profitable after the initial honeymoon is over. They won't fancy a losing NFL team in Toronto for too long.

You know what? Toronto's not good enough for the CFL.

Fuck 'em. They are smug, I know that first hand having lived among them. Let 'em think they're better than everyone else (too good for the CFL) and let 'em die a slow smoggy death in their concrete jungles as we dance happily through our golden wheat fields in clean, fresh air under the pure blue skies and sunshine.

WWOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

How 'bout them Riders!

When you're one day past your due date to have a baby it's hard to let yourself take something as a football game so seriously but we couldn't help ourselves.

Driving down Dewdney Ave. to pick up Chinese food after the game, everyone was honking. You've gotta love it.  If Toronto had won you wouldn't know it in Toronto unless you were at a sports bar within a block of the Skydome. (I lived there during the 97 Grey Cup, I didn't even see so much as a poster up anywhere.) In Regina, we're crazy...and we've only one the cup twice. 

I think it'd be a great idea to have a Via Train go from Saskatoon to Toronto just for Grey Cup fans. We'd booby-trap the empty seats before we stopped in Winnipeg. I was was a man of wealth and wasn't about to have a baby, I'd be on that train and stay drunk all week long.

Or we could setup up a party on the Man/Sask border.

It seems fitting that the Riders are going to the cup on the occasion of Jan and my second child about to be born. Jan and I started our relationship after the 1989 Grey Cup, in the celebration that ensued on Albert Street. Had it not been for that, we may have never got together.

However, what to do about this baby...

• We could put Jan in an inverted position to keep the baby in.
• We could get induced a couple of days before
• Or we could do nipple stimulation until the cows come home

Dang, next time I go knocking someone up, I'm going to do the math!

Riders End of Game Celebration: YouTube Video

 

I've been to a lot of big games, a lot of big late-game comebacks, but I've never seen it like this. Yeah, you would think we won the Grey Cup at home!