McIntyres Journey

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a Saskatchewan Roughrider fan living in other provinces over a period of time after having initially resided in Regina .Bob McIntyre is the classic case of this exact situation having spent the first nineteen years of his life living at 1458 Retallack Street in the middle of the "North Central Zone " made famous by Macleans .



Bob was a season ticket holder since the age of ten and as a youth saw many a classic game at Taylor Feild. McIntyre like most Regina kids of the late fifties and early sixties if they wanted to go to University and stay in the province had to go to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.and drive down for Rider home games.


He remembers vividly in 1961 while attending the Uof S having three of his buddies join him in an all night trip to Calgary in mid October to see the Riders and Stamps in action and arriving in Cowtown with no cash except money for gas and beer.A local ex buddy provided his pad for shelter. The next task was to find tickets to the game and as one of his travelling buddies was a distant relative of General Manager Ken Preston.a call was put into the Rider GM and after hearing the tale of these loyal Rider fans making the long trek to Calgary from Saskatoon for the game Preston came up with four tickets on the fifty yard line as well as a cash donation for beer and gas.

The Riders were two and eleven at the time and were having a tough season which was epitomized by what happenned on the second half kickoff when running back Ray Smith who received the kickoff broke into the clear at the Rider thirty five yard line and appeared to be on his way for an easy seventy five yard touchdown run when he coollapsed and fell down on the Calgary twenty five yard line. as he had torn his achilles tendon and was thru for the year.The Stampeders went on to an easy victory and the many Rider fans who were in attendance were very dissapointed and it was a very depressing return trip to Saskatoon for the four students.

In between University years McIntyre would sell educational matertial to graduating teachers from the Provinces two teachers Colleges in Regina and Saskatoon and he recalls vividly that in order to get any reception on his car radio when he was in isolated areas of the province looking for prospects and wanted to listen to the Rider games he would have to find a spot where two power lines would intersect and he would park in that excat spot and attempt to get radio reception.

The first stop for McIntyre upon graduation in 1963 was Fort William ,Port Arthur which has since been renamed Thunder Bay. Bob says that most of the sporting fraternity there had very little interst in the CFL and the Saskatchewan Roughriders in particular.There were few CFL games televised at the time so in order to keep up with how the Green and White were playing in any particular game Bob would drive to the top of one of the local mountains ,a native holy site,to sit alone sipping a few beers with his radio on 620 hopefully CKCK Regina at full blast picking up the broadcast of the Rider contest as best he could. He was visited several times by the local police asking him what he was doing up there alone in his car and in most cases they were amused at his answers but did beleive him and on one occassion the questioning officer happenned to be a former Regina resident so he was quite understanding of McIntyres mission.



Then it was on to Toronto in the late sixties where he found it very tough to be a CFL fan as you were looked upon and pitied for choosing the CFL over the mighty NFL {remember this was during the Toronto major league hots ,before the Blue Jays} however the fact that you identified your self as a Rider fan by wearing Green and White paraphanalia resulted in a slight nod and a smile of "ah Canadas Green Bay"


The next move in his business career was down the Queen Elizabeth to Hamilton and he was there during the storied days of Faloney, Henley, Mosca etc. where everybody talked football and your freinds went to the games and listened to the pre and post game shows on radio with great concentration similar to the way the fans react in Saskatchewan today.You could park on a fans lawn a block away from the stadium by giving the local kid who was directing the parking a paper doll. You could hear the Ti-Cat fans chanting"Oskee We We Oskee Wa Wa Tigers eat them raw" coming from 20,000 vocal fans before the start of each home game and this was utterly aewsome . When Saskatchewan came to town the many ex Saskatchewan folks who were living in the Hamilton area. would get together for a pregame rally and don Green and White clothing and after the rally would march into Ivor Wynn Stadium in mass and sit together in three specific sections and scream at the top of their lungs when the" Green Machine" made a big play.

Vancouver was next on the McIintyre destination list in their cross Canada travels as he was transferred back West to straighten out a marketing situation and as these were lean years for the BC Lions a typical Vancouver Sports page in the summer/fall would cover in the following order ----boating ,fishing, tennis,lawn bowling,track,golf,baseball and oh ya"The Lions" .The word indifference sums it up,even McIntrye stopped going to the games except for when the Riders came to town. He called the majority of the season "the big snooze"for the crowd with the exception of the prairie transplants.The crowds were so polite or as the locals would say "cultivated" . Bob says other than when Saskatchewan were in town in that era the most excitement he experienced was when Pam Anderson a Vancouver gal walked up the stairs in a white tank top and this along with some other moves that were captured on camera launched her acting career.Bob says it was the most noise made by a BC crowd that year.other than when Saskatchewan were there.He is proud to say that he was there and it was awesome. He says the games against the Riders were an all together different story as once again the West coast Rider fans of which there are thousands would come out in large numbers helping create the largest crowds of the season and he would go from section to section where these fans were sitting dressed completely in green and white and lead them in cheering loud and clear whenever the Greeen and White made a positive play.

His second last destination on his cross Canada business tour was to Calgary to again straighten out a marketing mess He calls the Calgary .crowd a good sophisticated crowd.normally quiet except for"that damm horse"which during a legendary Rider ,Stampeder contest in which McIntyre ran onto the feild after a Rider touchdown ran into McIntyre and sent him flying.which resulted in a severely bruised shoulder. He organized the largest Rider alumni parties in the league in Calgary and once again suggested that Green and White be worn when the prairie dwellers were in town and as a result half the crowd was usually wearing some kind of green and white garb.

Today Robert Wayne McIntyre is retired and lives in Victoria and keenly follows the CFL and the Riders every move by computer.He says it was easy to be loyal to this team over the years. even though the media ,fans and freinds in other cities tried to influence him into giving up his allegiance to the sod busters. To top it off he returns to Regina this year on Friday July 13th to watch the Riders host the BC Lions.for only the second game he has seen at Mosaic Stadium /Taylor Feild in fourty three years.