I’ve been thinking lately how this was one of the best and most important posts ever on ticats.ca. So, imagine my surprise as I search through our collective history, only to find important elements cleansed from the record, a la Orwell’s 1984. Topical posts involving muffins, squirrels and nuts have abruptly disappeared, thus erasing one fan’s humorous imprint in our people’s history. An important contribution to a discussion on Marty York’s personal baggage vis. the Ticats has also fell victim the purge. An entire thread dealing with the international incident currently swirling around the Ticats (due to fallout re: the forbidden topic) has even been expunged!!
Other threads are flaming so hot they’re getting locked down in less than 10 posts, and many of them are neither topical nor coherent, yet even they do not get stricken from the record. This is as it should be though, as our history then reflects who we really were, and not who an electronic editor retrospectively decided we should have been. By the same token, deleting posts and threads that have violated no rules and have broached no forbidden subjects unfairly alters the historical essence of the contributor. It is understandable to have rules and regulations, but why are they constantly mutating in pursuit of such a sizeable and good-natured proportion of the fan base?
Well, I know it'd be too much work to take the 150,000+ posts archived in the orginal forums and integrate them into these forums. But I do like the idea of there being a link to http://archive.ticats.ca in a section here. The period from late 2003 until about May 2006 was quite interesting and I still sometimes go back there to see the fans' documentation of what happened then.
The forums have become so Vanilla that they are completely un-interesting. Unless a thread has to do with what your favorite player, jersey or sock colour was over the years, it is deleted. Nothing controversial is allowed to be here. I tried talking about the "forbidden topic"..it was erased in less than 5 minutes...then I tried to talk about the fact things were being censored...again deleted by the MAN.
I love the Cats and I think Bob has been a miracle worker...but talking on this forum about anything meaningful is impossible. This thread will be deleted soon as well, wait and see. Go ahead Big Brother delete this one as well...sorry it doesnt fall within your acceptable propaganda.
I agree in principle with the idea of preserving historical essence, etc.
But I have one small problem.
This is a football fan site. It is hardly the stuff that will be of interest to future historians. No one will ever write a PhD thesis on "The Evolution of ExPat's Personal Belief System as Evidenced by Ticats.ca Postings". Sadly we, collectively, are probably not that interesting to pretty much anyone besides ourselves.
(Note: I write this post with full understanding of its inherent irony/hypocrisy, since I seem to spend more time on this website than any other.)
I don’t disagree with this. The posts we came up with then may not mean much to those who do not participate in these forums. But to the Ticats.ca community, it certainly does matter. Years from now, some might be wondering what was posted during those times. I sometimes wonder what might have been posted had these forums existed years before they came into existence.
Oh so true. An archive like this is gold to a researcher. Scholars go especially ape sh*t for material that contemporary folk consider to be “hardly the stuff that will be of interest to future historians.”
As just one example, A Canadian historian named Colin Coates wrote a book awhile ago on Laura Secord, and it had a section about the public reaction in the 1950s when “Laura Secord” marched in the Grey Cup Parade wearing hot pants. He woulda killed to have access to documented public opinion on the issue, such as exists now with the ticats.ca forum.
Another Canadian historian who studies the nazi era built his career on a pile of documents from the basement of a bar that were tied up like old newspapers and labeled “various papers of little to no interest.” Turns out they were verbatim transcripts of bar conversations that had been compiled by undercover gestapo agents posing as drunks. I realize the Ticats may not be as historically significant as nazis, but the point is you never know what’s of value and what’s junk when it comes to these things.
They say that Google is (perhaps inadvertently) performing a service to humanity and to future historians by archiving the entire Internet. Try doing a search on something you posted to the old site - chances are Google has it cached. Things that get removed from live sites live on indefinitely in the Google archives.
…In the 1950s, Laura Secord the chocolate company attempted to re-brand itself by sexing up the representation of Laura Secord herself. They hired a model, gave her a hairdo similar to the Laura Secord image on the chocolate box, put her in hot pants, and had her march in the Grey Cup parade whilst twirling a baton. The company received alot of negative feedback, and the faux Secord received alot of offside remarks from parade spectators, so the Co. went back to the more wholesome Laura Secord image.
I have a picture of it somewhere; I’ll try to dig it up and post it.
Agree and respectfully dis-agree, a large part of the old archives should be permanently deleted so future generations won’t know what we were really like
but some (like the post below) are gold to fans that appreciate and respect the rich history of this franchise.
It’s still one of the best posts I’ve ever read on any CFL forum.
[i]
First, a couple of caveats. I don’t know how old you are, so I have no ides what you know from your own experience. Also, all of this happened 60 years ago, so my memory for dates may not be perfect. ( Perish the thought )
Let me start with background, including my own perspective to give something of a personal touch to it. During the war, the Big Four closed down operations.
At this time, I was in High School (Sept.1940 to June 1945) Entertainment was very restricted. In winter we would go to the old Barton Street Arena to watch Senior OHA games (Hamilton Tigers and Hamilton Pats) and the Junior “B” team sponsored by Aerovox and coached by Pinky Lewis. In summer, a very little baseball, but a lot of softball (none of that recreational activity called Slo-pitch) There was no TV, so on Saturday night we could listen to the radio, to get the Leafs game. Even this was poor, because the games started at 8:00 but the program didn’t start until 9:00 partway through the second period.
So, the field was open for the ORFU ( Ontario Rugby Football Union ) The core of the league consisted of Hamilton Wildcats, Ottawa Trojans, Toronto Indians, Balmy Beach, Sarnia Imperials. I believe Kitchener had a team in for a couple of years. There were also a couple of Service teams at various times. The best of these was H.M.C.S. Donnacona from Montreal. There was also an R.C.A.F. team which I believe played out of Hagersville or Jarvis.
Interest in the Wildcats was high. First, they were the only game in town. But they also used a majority of local people, whom we had watched in High School games. They also had a very colourful playing coach in Frank Gnup, a former U.S. Marine who seemed to always have a cigar in his mouth. Some of the players I specifically recall from those teams…the Lawson brothers from Westdale, Mel at QB and Gord atHB…The Hemingway twins, both TEs…Linemen Reg Bovaird, Reg Wheeler…QB Al Dekdebrun from Buffalo…Jimmy Simpson who played Flying Wing ( Do you remember when it was flying wing, not slotback…do you remember when a TD counted 5 points, not 6 )
At any rate , it was a very competitive league, and while the Wildcats didn’t win every year, there were always at or near the top.
All of this came to an end when the war was over and the Big Four recommenced operations. And so, starting in 1946, we had two competing leagues vying for the same customer. It was a bit of overkill, and in hindsight, couldn’t last. That it did last for four years was a testament to the crying need for entertainment in those times.
So, in '46 and '47 the Tigers played in the Big Four and did poorly. Meanwhile, the Wildcats were running roughshod over the opposition in the ORFU. Something was obviously not working, so the powers-that-be came up with the perfect solution???
We’ll switch leagues, they said. And so, the Wildcats moved to the Big Four and the Tigers to the ORFU. The result?? Now the Wildcats couldn’t seem to win a game, while the Tigers were winning easily in the ORFU. What this did of course, was to to point out the great discrepancy in the calibre of play between the two leagues. At this point, the writing was on the wall for the ORFU and after the '49 season, the ORFU had to go.
So we came to the point where, in Ottawa, the Rough Riders survived and the Trojans just disappeared. Similarly, in Toronto, the Argos carried on but the Indians and Balmy Beach were history. Why didn’t the same thing happen in Hamilton? Well, the Wildcats had the Big Four franchise, but if they were allowed to continue, the years of Tiger history would be lost and nobody was happy with that possibility. That’s when Ralph Cooper and his group stepped in and negotiated the amalgamation, which kept everybody satisfied. The Wildcats weren’t summarily dismissed, by having “Cats” added to the team name, and we didn’t lose the long Tiger history.
And change was the mood of the whole operation at the time. That’s when they brought in Carl Voyles who staffed the team with Sazio, Mazza, Vince Scott and others to start a dynasty. This was not as big a deal as it would be today. Don’t forget, TV in the States was still in its infancy too. TV had not created the giant that the NFL is today. The two leagues in the U.S. still had not combined to form the NFL, and it really was not a HUGE deal, but certainly a good one for us.
The next thing that seemed to jolt the operation was when Frank Filchok and Merle Hapes came to town. Our website refers to our team luring them north. OK, but the basic truth is that they were both expelled from playing in the U.S. because of “gambling irregularities” while playing for the New York Giants. They had nowhere else to play but in Canada. As an aside, our website includes Hapes in the all-time roster, but not Filchok. Oversight?
Well, buddy, that just about covers it. I hope I have helped to give you some insight into the times, even though from a personal viewpoint.
Let me know if there is anything I can add. would be happy to oblige. Cheers.
Oski-wa-wa[/i]
New fans arrive every year and I can’t help but think what a rip-off it would be to them if info like this was not available to them.
History is important, the peoples history needs to be retained. BTW the Forbidden Website’s History document should be awarded a Governor-General’s Literary Award.
Oh, here is the picture you are referring to (kinda reminds me of some pics I recently saw on a CFL business partners site)
