'He was the epitome of Cat football'
There will be a life celebration for Ron Lancaster at the Bay Gardens Funeral Home, 947 Rymal Road E. in Hamilton. It runs from 2 – 5 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Juravinski Cancer Centre.
Ron Lancaster fondly remembered as player, coach, GM and family man
September 19, 2008
Steve Milton
The Hamilton Spectator
Inside the Little General beat the heart of the enlisted man.
It's jarring, and depressing, to realize that today -- Game Day and, appropriately, Hall of Fame Game Day -- is the first day we are all forced to carry on without Ron Lancaster.
His huge smile and quick, smoky laugh no longer lighting up, and lightening up, Ivor Wynne Stadium? No more raucous stories of the greats and the goats of the Canadian Football League, back when it rivaled the National Hockey League for popularity?
He and Bernie Custis no longer cackling under the canopy in the east end zone, slapping each other on the back after their own jokes?
He and Bev Lancaster not welcoming friends on the sidelines, an extension of their living room, an hour before game time?
Impossible. All of it.
From coast to coast, the football world has been mourning the loss of a transcendent presence. Thirty years after their playing days, Lancaster and George Reed are still as Saskatchewan as wheat. Ten years after he won the franchise's last Grey Cup, Lancaster was still, as Zeke Moreno said yesterday, "a rock star in Hamilton. But down-to-earth too."
Lancaster was a tribal leader of that beautifully blessed breed: Americans who come north and become bigger boosters of the CFL than most Canucks. He did everything in and around the league: hall-of-fame quarterback, Grey Cup-winning coach; one of the best colour TV analysts the game has ever heard; general manager; community ambassador; oral historian; stand-up comedian.
And, in these parts, franchise saviour six years before Bob Young saved it again.
Lancaster became Ticat head coach in 1998, the year after the club went 2-16 and had no local cachet.
He brought quarterback Danny McManus and receiver Darren Flutie with him from Edmonton, brought his son in as offensive co-ordinator and within eight months they were a last-second Calgary field goal from winning the Grey Cup. They won it the next year, and haven't been close since.
"When I got to the CFL with B.C., in 1991, to me he was just a figure on the sidelines with Edmonton," Flutie recalls. "But he was a very intimidating presence. He never smiled, and I'd see him sneak a smoke.
"Then in '96, when I went to Edmonton and got to know him, he turned out to be a very caring, understanding man. He had played a long time, so the best thing he did was handle players. He knew when he needed to lay off, when you needed to be pushed.
"I think he recognized some kindred spirits in Danny and me. We were not too fast, we were not too big, but we played our asses off. So he gave me a lot of trust on and off the field.
"I'm very sad. It's like a member of the family has passed."
Which is exactly how McManus put it and, not surprisingly, he and his former batterymate handled the news the same way.
When Flutie was phoned about Lancaster's death, he immediately hung up because he couldn't maintain his composure. When McManus was told after yesterday's short Ticat practice, he hurriedly left the field in tears and walked around the stadium -- their stadium -- alone, before returning to talk about the man who'd been his coach, confidante, idol since 1996.
"The big thing was that first day, he said we were a Grey Cup team, and the team needed to hear the leader say that," McManus said.
"He was a father figure to me. But he was also a career saver.
"He took a chance on me in Edmonton to run his ball club."
McManus appreciated Lancaster's legendary bluntness. As a player, or a journalist, you could ask him a question but had to be prepared for an answer you didn't like.
"He wasn't going to sugar-coat it," McManus smiled. "He had too much respect for football to blow smoke up your rear end."
Better than most who've ever played in this country.
It's been a year of brutally impactful losses for Canadian football. Within the past 12 months the CFL has lost, among others, its most august commissioner, Jake Gaudaur, two pioneering broadcasters in Don Chevrier and Don Whitman (Lancaster's on-air CBC partner), player/broadcaster Lief Petersen, Lions' franchise cornerstone Bobby Ackles, the unique J.I. Albrecht, and thundering fullback Earl Lunsford.
And now, the Little General.
CFL commissioner Mark Cohon, and his assistant Matt Maychak, have become too good at writing obituaries. And they penned a beauty to Lancaster yesterday.
Most complimentary to Hamilton, Ron and Bev Lancaster chose to live here during his broadcasting career, and even after he finished coaching the Cats. He always said the Steel City reminded him of the people, and values, of his Pennsylvania.
"He is -- not was -- the epitome of Ticat football," said interim Tiger-Cats head coach Marcel Bellefeuille succinctly.
"A hard-working, down-to-earth person.
"He's a microcosm of this town."
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