The Saskatchewan Roughriders were on a trip within a road trip when everything came to a screeching halt.
On Nov. 22, 1963 — 60 years ago today — a team outing in Vancouver was interrupted when the news arrived that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
“Everybody on our team knows where we were,” legendary Roughriders receiver Hugh Campbell recalls. “We were near the ski hill above Vancouver, on the team bus.”
One day before the Roughriders faced the B.C. Lions in the finale of the Canadian Football League’s best-of-three Western Conference final, the Green and White was on a team-bonding excursion that took them up Grouse Mountain.
The Bob Shaw-coached Roughriders had forced a deciding game by winning 13-8 on Nov. 20 at Empire Stadium, where the visiting team scored all 11 fourth-quarter points.
The Lions had opened the series by winning 19-7 at Taylor Field to begin what turned out to be a three-games-in-one-week whirlwind for both teams.
B.C. had finished first in the West’s regular-season standings with a 12-4-0 record. The third-place Saskatchewan squad (7-7-2) had advanced to the conference final by upsetting the second-seeded Calgary Stampeders (10-4-2) in the two-game, total-points West semi-final.
“Everybody thought we would lose to B.C. in two games,” Campbell says.
“The day before the third game, Bob Shaw told us to be on the team bus at some certain time. We all thought we were going to go to a practice or something.
“When we were all on the bus, he stood up and said, ‘I’ve talked to the bus driver and we have a good tour for you. I hope you enjoy your morning.’ Then he got off the bus and left us on the bus and the guy drove us up to Grouse Mountain.
“We went up on this mountain and then people got off and looked at the ski lift and all of that. A few of us had seen enough and went back to the bus.
“We were on the bus listening to the radio, waiting for all the players to come back to the bus. Then it was announced on the radio that President Kennedy had been killed.
“Everybody was thinking, ‘What does this mean? Has the world ended? What’s going to happen?’
“As I recall it, there was actually discussion about whether to play the third game or delay the game. Then it was decided that the game would be played.”
Across the sporting spectrum, there were differing opinions on what should be done.
National Basketball Association and American Hockey League games scheduled for Nov. 22 were postponed.
The National Hockey League did not have any games slated for that evening, a Friday. The schedule beyond that went ahead, as planned, with one game on Nov. 23 and two contests on Nov. 24.
One day after JFK’s fateful motorcade in Dallas, most U.S. college games were played — a notable exception being the tradition-steeped Yale-Harvard match. JFK graduated from Harvard in 1940.
At the time of the assassination, the National Football League was facing spirited competition from the American Football League, which was then in its fourth season of existence.
Mere hours after JFK was shot, the AFL called off its four games for Sun., Nov. 24. The NFL, however, opted to proceed with its seven contests — none of which were televised due to the networks’ around-the-clock coverage of the assassination.
The NFL went ahead, playing games on the same day JFK’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot and killed by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters.
A league-issued statement, released on Nov. 22, read in part that “it has been traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy.
Football was Mr. Kennedy’s game. He thrived on competition.”
Pete Rozelle, who was then in his fourth season as the NFL’s Commissioner, later said that the decision not to postpone games on Nov. 24 was the biggest regret of the 30 years he would spend in office.
Locally, the sporting calendar was seemingly unaffected.
In the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, for example, six goals by Gary Schaal propelled the Regina Pats to an 11-4 victory over the visiting Melville Millionaires. The game, attended by 1,100 spectators at Exhibition Stadium, was preceded by two minutes of silence.
In Weyburn, one minute of silence was held before the Saskatoon Quakers played to a 4-4 tie with the host Red Wings.
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, the Roughriders were preparing for a game that would determine the Western Conference’s representative in the 51st Grey Cup Game.
At the team hotel, and everywhere else, people were downcast and, in many cases, devastated.
“Everybody was sad,” says Dale West, who had a league-high 10 interceptions for the Roughriders of 1963. “It made you realize what kind of things can happen in this world. It was very disheartening.
“I haven’t been back to Grouse Mountain since.”
The Roughriders’ most memorable return visit to Vancouver was in 1966, when Empire Stadium was the site of Saskatchewan’s first Grey Cup victory — a 29-14 conquest of the Ottawa Rough Riders on Nov. 26, 1966.
The team also concluded its 1963 season in Vancouver, where the Lions won 36-1 one day after shots rang out at Dealey Plaza.
“Of course, there aren’t a lot of people my age but, if you talk to anybody my age, they do know where they were when we got the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated,” says Campbell, 82.
“We’ve forgotten a lot of stuff, but that’s one thing that most of us remember.”
