by Colin Oakes
University of Manitoba
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Bob Irving, (ed.), Blue & Gold: 75 Years of Blue Bomber Glory Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2005, 149 pages. ISBN: 1894283597, $39.95 (hardcover).
From inauspicious beginnings in 1930 as the Winnipeg “Winnipegs” of the Western Interprovincial Football Union to the dynasty years of Bud Grant through to the recent Dave Ritchie era, Blue & Gold: 75 Years of Blue Bomber Glory takes readers on a journey through seventy-five seasons of Winnipeg Blue Bomber triumphs and setbacks.
Edited by Bob Irving, a well-known Winnipeg sports broadcaster who has covered the Blue Bombers for the past thirty-two seasons - and primarily written by a group of Winnipeg sports journalists including Hal Sigurdson, Bob Picken, Roger Currie, Paul Friesen, Don Wittman, Jim Bender, Joe Pascucci, Ed Tait, and Judy Owen - Blue & Gold attempts, in the words of former Blue Bomber player and General Manager Paul Robson, to “dispel the myths, catalogue the facts and maintain the fantasies that surround and amplify the story of a truly unique relationship between a province, a city and a football team.” The contributors selected to write in this volume are in the best position to satisfy Robson’s lofty vision for the book because they are able to provide a truly unique perspective to the reader. This is due to the fact that most of the contributors are describing events from the point of view of someone who was there at the time.
Blue & Gold is full of dozens of photographs spanning the seventy-five year history of the team, including pictures of all ten Grey Cup winning teams. The book also includes a section that lists the complete team statistics for the club. For example, there is a complete list of all Blue Bomber players, builders, and coaches who have been elected to the Bomber and the Canadian Football League’s hall of fame; there is a list of the team’s Presidents, General Managers, and Coaches for every season in the team’s history; there is a win-loss record compiled for every season along with the position the team finished in the Canadian Football League’s standings; and there is a complete list of the date, location, and outcome of every bomber playoff and Grey Cup game.
Blue & Gold also features profiles of Winnipeg football heroes past and present. Examples of the profiles include the following: Head coach Reg Threlfall, who led the Bombers to Cup championships in 1939 and 1941, Fritzie “Galloping Ghost” Hanson, who still holds the Canadian Football League’s record for amassing 300 yards in punt returns in the 1935 Grey Cup game, and contemporary heroes like Milt Stegall, arguably one of the best receivers in Canadian Football League history.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is a feature called “short yardage,” which describes interesting and often humorous tidbits about the Bomber’s past. For example, one short yardage explains how the 1962 Grey Cup game in Toronto, dubbed the “Fog Bowl,” was the only Canadian Football League game that had to be played over the course of two days - December 1st and 2nd. The fog became so thick that, with 9:29 remaining in the fourth quarter, the game had to be finished the next day. Fortunately, the Bombers were able to hang on for a 28-27 win over Hamilton. Another humorous short yardage describes how Bomber receivers would play “rock, paper, scissors” in the huddle to determine who would play the last few plays of the game during blowouts in the 1980s.
For all of its pluses, Blue & Gold does have some limitations. For example, the book is extremely brief for a seventy-five year look at a major Canadian sports franchise. The actual text of the book is a mere 123 pages and nearly half of the 123 is filled with photographs, profiles, and other documents. For this reason, the book does not provide a very detailed look at the history of the team, particularly on the administrative side. The book is also heavily weighted towards the modern Blue Bomber era, as a full sixty pages are devoted to the history of the team from 1970-2005 while a mere eighteen pages are dedicated to the team between the years of 1930 and 1949.
Blue and Gold also has an inexplicable omission for a book detailing the seventy-five year history of a sports franchise. While including a great deal of Bomber team statistics at the end of the book, the publishers failed to include a section of Blue Bomber individual statistics. Bomber fans will be disappointed that there is no section listing such things as Bomber all-time rushing, passing, and touchdown leaders as well as how these records compare to all-time Canadian Football League records. Perhaps the thirteen pages of advertisements at the end of the book could have been excluded in favor of a section including these statistics.
As previously mentioned, the book could have been expanded to provide a more in-depth history of the Bombers. While giving the reader only a brief glimpse of what was occurring in society throughout the span of the football team’s operations, the book could have done a better job of describing what was happening in Manitoba off the field throughout the history of the team. The book would also have benefited from the inclusion of footnotes. The publishers thank the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, the Western Canadian Pictoral Index, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Archives of Manitoba, the University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections, and Jogo Canadian Football League Cards for their assistance in locating pictures and documents but it is never clear which source specific information in the book was taken from. This lack of citations makes it impossible to establish the veracity of the claims made in this book.
In the final analysis the positives outweigh the negatives. Blue & Gold is well written, beautifully laid out and put together, and holds the attention of the reader throughout. It is clear that this book will appeal to Blue Bomber fans regardless of its imperfections. It will surprise even the most ardent Blue Bomber fans with new facts and bring back memories for fans of all ages. It will also serve as a lasting keepsake for Winnipeg Blue Bomber fans and relate important knowledge of an important institution in the history of Manitoba.
Winnipeg Blue Bombers, 1961 Grey Cup Champions.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Museum Collection, #138.Page revised: 12 March 2023
