George Reed and Ron Lancaster, both of whom are honoured by statues outside Mosaic Stadium, collaborated on hundreds of long drives during their illustrious careers with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Some of those excursions were in the direction of North Dakota.
“There was no cable television in Regina, for years,” begins Lana Mueller, Lancaster’s daughter. “So, every year, the Lancaster family and the Reed family would go down to Bismarck so that Dad and George could watch American TV.
“We’d check into rooms, by the indoor pool, and Dad and George would watch the U.S. college bowl games every day, from Boxing Day until Jan. 2. The rest of the family used to swim in the pool and shop at the malls. The staff at the hotel knew us, because we used to visit at the same time every year.
“Dad used to say, ‘I don’t get it. They can put a man on the moon, but we can’t get cable past Weyburn.’ ”
Mueller is able to laugh at the memory at a sad time.
I reached out to her shortly after hearing the devastating news that Reed had passed away on Sunday, one day shy of his 84th birthday.
Oct. 1, 2023 was too reminiscent of Sept. 18, 2008, when we lost Ronnie at age 69.
In 2008, we mourned a Roughriders icon leading up to a Saturday home game.
Fifteen years later, it feels much the same — with the Roughriders preparing to play host to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Saturday (5 p.m., Mosaic Stadium). Leading up to the game, a plaque was unveiled beside the Lancaster-Reed statues on Tuesday.
“When I heard about George, I thought back to when Dad passed away,” Mueller says. “He wasn’t just someone who belonged to you and your family. Everybody felt like he belonged to them.”
Such is the degree to which the principals in the Ronnie and George Show have always been revered.
To the football fans of Saskatchewan, No. 23 and No. 34 were like part of the family for most of the 1960s and well into the 1970s.
Lancaster and Reed both joined the Green and White in 1963. Reed played for 13 seasons, amassing 16,116 yards and 134 touchdowns along the ground. Lancaster quarterbacked the Roughriders for 16 seasons, rewriting the CFL’s passing records along the way.
Between them, they have won three of the four CFL Most Outstanding Player awards that have been presented to a Roughrider.
Reed received the league’s most prestigious individual honour in 1965, after rushing for a team-record 1,768 yards. Lancaster was honoured in 1970 and 1976.
Since then, only one Saskatchewan player has been decorated as the MOP — that being quarterback Kerry Joseph.
Joseph capped his MOP season by guiding the Roughriders to a Grey Cup victory on Nov. 25, 2007. Just 3½ months later, he was traded to the Toronto Argonauts.
The Roughriders, who debuted as the Regina Rugby Club in 1910, did not win a title until Nov. 26, 1966.
That afternoon at Empire Stadium in Vancouver, Lancaster threw three touchdown passes and Reed rushed for 133 yards (including a 31-yard major) as Saskatchewan upset the heavily favoured Ottawa Rough Riders 29-14 to end a championship drought that had swelled to 56 years.
The Little General remained behind centre with the Roughriders for 12 more seasons, including another nine with Reed as the fullback.
George and Ronnie. Ronnie and George.
It was difficult to refer to one without mentioning the other.
“A lot of people just assumed that the families were always together,” Mueller says.
“When the shoe deals first came out with Puma, Dad and George both had a deal, so we’d go down to the bus depot to pick up the shoes for Dad.
“Somebody would usually hand us George’s shoes and say, ‘Take the shoes for Lancaster and Reed.’ We’d say, ‘We can’t just take them. How do we know that a member of George’s family isn’t coming by to pick them up?’
“But they’d always try to give us George’s shoes to give to him. I’d mention it to Mom and she’d say, ‘They do it all the time. Angie says the same thing.’ ”
George and Angie raised their three kids — Keith, Vicki and Georgette — in Regina.
Likewise, Ron and Bev Lancaster had three children (Lana, Ron Jr. and Bob) who spent their formative years in the Whitmore Park subdivision.
Hence the need for four hotel rooms in Bismarck — two suites for the parents and two more rooms for the kids.
“One year, the Harlem Globetrotters stayed at the same hotel,” Mueller says, “and we got to play mini-golf with them.”
Another year — 1979 — was especially noteworthy on the Regina high school football front.
The Campbell Tartans introduced a rookie quarterback named Ron Lancaster Jr.
His teammates included Keith Reed (a game-breaking running back) and a dominating lineman named Ed McQuarters Jr.
In 1988, Ed McQuarters Sr. — a Roughriders defensive tackle from 1966 to 1974 — joined Lancaster and Reed in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
Keith Reed wore No. 34 for the Tartans, of course, and the younger version of Ron Lancaster was No. 23.
“I remember being at those high school games, and Dad and George would be there, watching,” Mueller says.
When they were together, hilarity would typically result.
“George would stop by on Christmas Eve and him and Dad would start talking,” Mueller says, “but the two of them would be laughing so hard that you couldn’t tell what they were talking about.
“They’d say a name or just blurt out something like ‘B.C. game,’ maybe mention a year, and just start laughing.
“We could only piece together a couple of words. It didn’t mean anything to us. But to them? Oh my goodness.”
There must have been something about special occasions.
“I’m not sure of the year but, one time, Angie and Bev decided to throw a birthday party for George and Dad,” Mueller says. “George’s birthday is Oct. 2. Dad’s is Oct. 14.
“The deal was that Dad was to take George for a beer because Angie was throwing George a surprise party, but George was told the surprise party was for Dad.
“Well, they were late to their own party, because they were enjoying the beers and talking, just the two of them.”
Ronnie and George.
George and Ronnie.
“I like to think that he and Dad are up there solving the world’s problems,” Mueller concludes.
“Well, maybe not the world’s problems, but everybody else’s problems.”
