Bev Lancaster received some life-altering information on July 29, 1963 — 60 years ago on Saturday.
Her husband, Ron, conveyed the news that he had been traded to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
The transaction was hardly a surprise. For three years, Lancaster and Russ Jackson had handled the quarterbacking for the Ottawa Rough Riders. The situation had reached a point where there was a chasm, even though the two future Hall of Fame signal-callers got along famously.
“I think the fans started to get divided in terms of who they wanted the coach to play,” Jackson said in a 2006 interview. “I always felt there was a lot of pressure to go in and perform immediately because if you didn’t, you had the idea that maybe you’d be taken out.
“I think that rests in the back of your mind when you start a football game with another quarterback who is equal to you sitting on the bench.”
It was clear that a trade was percolating when Ottawa embarked on a western swing during the 1963 pre-season and left Lancaster at home. While the team was away, he joined Bev and the couple’s two children (Lana and Ron Jr.) in Springfield, Ohio.
In short order, the deal was done. Lancaster was dealt to Saskatchewan for $500. Ottawa opted to keep Tommy Lee, whose CFL career would ultimately consist of four games spent with the 1963 Rough Riders, as the backup to Jackson.
“Lee shows better potential than Lancaster,” Rough Riders Head Coach Frank Clair told Al Hooper of the Ottawa Citizen. “It’s that simple.”
The trade wasn’t quite as simple as a straight cash deal. There was the accompanying assurance that he would be sent back to Ottawa if the Roughriders decided to trade him to an eastern team.
“Ottawa didn’t want him to go to Montreal,” Bev Lancaster recalled the other day, “and Montreal was interested.”
Hurriedly, the 24-year-old quarterback made plans to travel from Ohio to Saskatchewan. The family was to remain in Springfield.
“He told me, ‘Don’t worry. I probably won’t be there very long,’ ” Bev said. “He asked for Number 16, which he had worn in Ottawa. They gave him Number 23 and he said, ‘Quarterbacks don’t wear 23.’ The equipment guy told him, ‘Don’t worry. You’re not going to be here very long, anyway.’ ”
In terms of geologic time, perhaps.
Lancaster was Saskatchewan’s starting quarterback for 16 years.
By the early 1970s, he held most of the CFL’s career passing records.
Twenty-three was an iconic number with the Roughriders and across the CFL, as was 34 — which was awarded to fullback George Reed when he, too, joined the Green and White in 1963.
Whereas Reed was a member of the team from the outset of training camp, Lancaster was acquired barely a week before the regular-season opener.
“We became pretty good friends right away,” Reed said. “He didn’t have a car, so I gave him a ride. We stayed at the old Kitchener Hotel.”
Although Lancaster arrived with three seasons of CFL experience, the quarterbacking situation in Saskatchewan remained muddied.
Veteran Bob Ptacek, a solid signal-caller who in 2001 joined Lancaster in the SaskTel Plaza of Honour, was on hand.
Journeyman M.C. Reynolds had just joined the Roughriders, having been claimed on waivers from Edmonton only two days before the Lancaster trade.
Rookie Larry Cline was also part of the equation, but a four-interception showing in a 40-0 pre-season loss to the B.C. Lions had not helped his chances.
“I saw in the paper where Saskatchewan got the heck beat out of them — 40-0 — in a pre-season game, so I figured, ‘Sure enough, they’re going to trade me out there,’ and they did,” Lancaster said in an interview on May 1, 2008, just under five months before he passed away at age 69.
Lancaster jokingly described the compensation as “a broken helmet with no face mask.”
He landed in Regina on July 31, 1963, two days after the trade was consummated.
“I wasn’t too knocked out about it,” he said of the deal, nearly 45 years later. “It took a while to get used to.
“I got off the airplane and nobody was there to meet me. Someone was supposed to meet me there and take me to practice. I had to get a cab.”
The Roughriders, meanwhile, were hoping for a quarterback who could drive the offence.
Ptacek was highly capable, but the coaches wanted to take advantage of his versatility and use him on the other side of the ball. A Western Conference All-Star defensive back in 1961, he would also make the select squad as a linebacker in 1964.
“It was relatively a big deal when Ronnie got here,” former Roughriders teammate Dale West remembered. “We had Bob Ptacek, who was a pretty good quarterback, but he was one heck of a defensive player.
“The added bonus with the trade is that we got a fantastic offensive player from Ottawa and also got a fantastic defensive player (by being able to use Ptacek on defence).”
Lancaster made his first start with the Roughriders on Aug. 15, 1963, when the team played its third game of the season.
He completed nine of 20 passes for 127 yards in what the Regina Leader-Post referred to as a “rain-soaked thriller” against the visiting Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Saskatchewan won 5-3.
Although Bob Shaw started Lancaster for six games in succession, the Roughriders’ Head Coach was hardly wowed by the new arrival.
After an 8-2 loss to B.C., Lancaster was left at home for a road game against the Calgary Stampeders.
“I drove him to the airport,” Reed said, “and picked him up when the team got back.”
Newly acquired Lee Grosscup started at quarterback in Calgary, only to be pulled after going 2-for-10 for 14 yards in what would be his only appearance with Saskatchewan.
Ptacek finished the game at quarterback as the Roughriders and Stampeders muddled their way to a 4-4 tie.
Next on the agenda was a home game against Edmonton. Leading up to that contest, the Roughriders renewed ties with Frank Tripucka, who had been a star quarterback for the team in the 1950s.
By 1963, however, Tripucka was in his mid-30s and the power in his once-formidable throwing arm had diminished.
“I’ve only got 10 good throws in me,” Tripucka memorably quipped. “Do you want me to use them up in one quarter?”
Tripucka hadn’t even been back in Regina for two full days when he entered the Edmonton game after Lancaster threw an interception. Tripucka served up two picks of his own before Lancaster was reinserted during the fourth quarter, with Saskatchewan trailing 4-1.
The cause appeared to be lost when, late in the fourth frame, the Roughriders were backed up to their one-yard line. Undaunted, Lancaster proceeded to march the offence 109 yards in 16 plays, the last of which was an eight-yard TD pass to West.
Reg Whitehouse’s convert, with 1:35 remaining in the fourth quarter, proved to be the difference as Saskatchewan won 8-7.
Shaw still wasn’t sold on Lancaster. Over the next three games, Tripucka received most of the playing time behind centre.
The last straw was a 26-6 loss in B.C. on Oct. 12, 1963. Shaw again turned to Lancaster and was rewarded with a sparkling showing in a 33-33 tie with the visiting Stampeders on Oct. 19.
On the opening play from scrimmage, Lancaster found West for an 86-yard TD bomb. That was the first of three TD passes for Lancaster, who threw for 311 yards. One of the scoring tosses was to newcomer Hugh Campbell, who was playing his fifth game as a Roughrider.
Beginning on Oct. 19, 1963, Lancaster was the Roughriders’ No. 1 quarterback for the next 15 calendar years.
He reached legendary status on Nov. 26, 1966, when he threw three TD passes in a 29-14 Grey Cup victory over the Jackson-quarterbacked Ottawa side.
Leading up to the game, Jackson had been named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player for the second of three times. He also received the league’s most prestigious individual prize in 1963 and 1969.
Lancaster, the runner-up to Jackson in 1966, would be named the MOP in 1970 and 1976.
“Ronnie and Russ were always great friends,” Bev said. “They were both competitors and both wanted to be the Number 1 quarterback in Ottawa, but it never affected their friendship.”
After the first Grey Cup victory in Roughriders history, Lancaster was so entrenched as the team’s starting quarterback that overtures from the NFL did not compel him to leave his home in Regina.
“After the Grey Cup win, the Pittsburgh Steelers called and asked him if he’d like to try out,” Bev said. “He said, ‘No, I’m happy where I’m at. I don’t have anything to prove.’
“That kind of surprised me, because the Steelers were always his team.”
Lancaster grew up in Clairton, Pa., which is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. But he wanted his young family to grow up in Regina.
Bev, Lana and Ron Jr. spent the 1964 football season in Regina before moving back to Ohio. Leading up to the 1965 season, the family decided to become year-round residents of Regina.
Lancaster, who had earned an education degree at Wittenberg College (now Wittenberg University) in Springfield, was hired to teach at Central Collegiate in Regina.
A third child, Bob, arrived in 1968. For more than a decade thereafter, the Roughriders’ star quarterback could be found at various venues in Regina, cheering on and/or coaching his children.
“I liked Regina — I still do,” Bev said. “The people there were very friendly. We never had any kind of a problem. Our neighbours were very nice.”
The Lancasters remained in their home on Emerald Park Road until 1984, when the move was made to the Hamilton suburb of Ancaster. By then, Lancaster was part of a CBC telecast crew that also included Don Wittman and Leo Cahill.
“Leo once said that we moved to Ancaster so Ronnie could find his way home,” Bev remembered with a chuckle.
Regina is still home for Lana and her husband, Larry Mueller. Their son, Marc, is in his 10th season on the Stampeders’ coaching staff.
Ron Jr. became a CFL assistant coach with Edmonton, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Toronto. He was on his father’s coaching staff when the Tiger-Cats won a Grey Cup championship in 1999 — back in the days when Marc Mueller would spend summers with his grandfather in Hamilton.
On Nov. 20, 2008, Ron Jr. accepted the Commissioner’s Award — recognizing outstanding contributions to the CFL — when it was posthumously awarded to his father.
Ron Jr. was only 50 when he passed away in Hamilton on March 26, 2013.
Bob resides in Salisbury, N.C., where he coached defensive backs at Catawba College for 17 seasons. He now teaches and coaches at Jay M. Robinson High School in Concord, N.C.
Bev lives in Grimsby, Ont., which is part of the Hamilton metropolitan area, and stays in close touch with Lana and Bob.
Life is treating Bev well — except for the extreme humidity that accompanies a southern Ontario summer.
She marvels at how the time has flown by, as evidenced by the 60 years that have elapsed since the trade to Saskatchewan.
It seems like only yesterday that her husband was bringing home a projector in order to scout future opponents.
“He’d look at the film on the wall in our family room,” Bev said. “The first time, I remember thinking, ‘This is great. I’ll watch the game with him and give him my opinion.’
“So we sat down and he went over the same play 10 times — back and forth, back and forth. I said, ‘Are you kidding? I can’t take this!’
“I got out a book and started reading.”
Ron Lancaster, meanwhile, kept writing a unique chapter in Roughriders history.
