Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home seems to be a phrase that I am not quite familiar with in my 30 years. I think ever since I started there was always talk of having to move out of one facility to another.

Lets start but talking about Exhibition Stadium. It was a great place to call home and was not only the site of where we played games but had our practices. We used to practice on the stadium turf for some time. It was great to be able to step right outside our back door to our field. Although we were the first there, we were very happy to share it with the Toronto Blue Jays. Even when we were doing our practice on a field set up for baseball we had a decent relationship with our roommates. After all it was a SHARED facility.

We would practice at the now site of Medieval Times and would only have to practice elsewhere during the Indy of CNE. hoping on a bus seemed like a big task at the time but we got used to it I suppose.

When the talk started about the construction of the SkyDome we knew that we would be playing our games in a multi-purpose facility and there would be some sacrifices but never what would come later. We knew that we would move in and move out each home Argo game. From 1989-1997 we had the luxury of having our day before the game practice at the SkyDome. The locker room would never really be our home while we paid rent at the SkyDome.

When we moved to a new practice facility, we were had some stability. University of Toronto Mississauga was a place we would call home from 1996-2014. Our relationship was best with our roommates when we were owned by the same owner. We shared resources and the facility from 1995-1999. There were some changes once we changed ownership but it all came tumbling down in 2000 when Rogers purchased the Toronto Blue Jays and the President was Paul Godfrey. Who was known as one of the main ringleaders to try and bring NFL to Toronto and demolish the historic Boatmen. In 2004, Rogers bought the SkyDome and made it the Rogers Centre. That's when the relationship changed dramatically. It was almost as though we were the kids on the playground that they wanted away. The faster they can make us unsuccessful, the better it would be for them. They brought the Bills Series which they believed to be the beginning of NFL to Toronto and the death of the Double Blue. Then the facility branding was Toronto Blue Jays from February to October and then Bills from November-December even when we hosted an East Final.

We are now in our last year of existence at the Rogers Centre and off to what was our original home back in the 70's and 80's. The last few years of schedule assignments for the Argos were signals as to how poorly we were viewed by the landlords.This past season we have had to play our first 5 games on the road and then we would play a large chunk of games in October. That's not ideal but its something we would make work for this last year. However with the Toronto Blue Jays success we are forced to likely look for a new venue to play our remaining season games. We could end up playing a total of only 5 home games at the Rogers Centre this season. Not exactly the way I imagined our farewell tour to end. This "Move Out" takes the cake on the biggest move out I've experienced in my 30 years with the club. So for the winningest team in Toronto, the first team to wear blue, the oldest franchise with the same name in North America and the team that has the most players staying in town to do community appearances, we'll just have to grin and bear it.

I won't let that take away from the joy I have of seeing the Jays successful, but I can still be saddened by the way we are treated. Aside from some fans at BMO field that don't want us returning to our original home, I am looking forward to sharing the facility with TFC and sharing in their success on the field. Hopefully, we will finally call somewhere "Home Sweet Home".