Heritage Regina is a proud contributor and supporter of the new Tracy Youck Foundation Memorial Scholarship at the University of Regina, which will be award to a student in either the elementary or secondary streams of Arts Education in the Faculty of Education. The scholarship is in memory of Tracy Youck, who passed away in 2023; many of you will know her husband, James Youck, who is a friend of Heritage Regina and has spoken at our Lecture Series several times in recent years. For more information about the Foundation, or to donate, you can visit their webpage.

IN MEMORIAM

The Gordon Block (1912-2023)

The Novia Café pictured in 1975, seen from Victoria Park. Photo credit City of Regina Archives, CORA-A-1306

After a difficult retirement, the Gordon Block – the former home of the beloved Novia Café – passed away at the age of 111 in a tragic incident of arson. She had been a recluse for over a decade.

Gordon Block opened at 2170 12^th Ave, on the north side of Victoria Park, in 1912, right as Regina was rebuilding from the devasting 1912 Tornado. The Novia Café, once a beloved downtown staple, opened in the building in 1918. Initially a fine-dining establishment, the café underwent a renovation in the 1960s that transitioned the restaurant into a more casual dining atmosphere. It was an iconic downtown restaurant, even surviving a frightening incident in 1982, when a metal I-beam from the implosion of the McCallum Hill Building smashed through the east wall of the building, into the Novia. After 93 years of hospitality, the beloved café ultimately closed its doors in 2011.

In 1996, the building was designated a Municipal Heritage Building as part of the creation of the Victoria Park Heritage Conservation District. The bylaw that created the district created guidelines to “preserve and promote the distinctive heritage and character of the area surrounding Victoria Park and the Scarth Street Mall by facilitating the rehabilitation of the predominantly pre-World War I heritage buildings and encouraging the redevelopment of properties in keeping with the character of the adjacent heritage buildings”.

Heritage Regina supports the revitalization of the lot formerly occupied by the Gordon Block and hopes to see that it respects the Conservation District’s guidelines, which stipulate that any new buildings “should relate to the design elements of the heritage buildings in a way which enhances the existing heritage character”. The presence of so many buildings surrounding the Gordon Block within the District that predate World War I means that careful attention must be paid to the character and history of the district whenever development projects are undertaken.

Throughout its life, Gordon Block had its doors open to the community. Now, with her gone, the space will continue in that spirit, with an outdoor recreation space being planned for the site where she once stood.

Cremation of the building has taken place. In lieu of flowers and in memory of the Block, please consider attending a Heritage Regina event to learn more about the history of our city, or talk to your city councilor to advocate for the preservation of Regina’s cultural and built heritage.

Photo by Troy Fleece, National Post.

Our education and advocacy work is funded in part by our members. For a list of membership benefits, or to join our community, visit our membership page.

The Regina Leader-Post shows the results of the municipal election on June 23, 1963, including the referendum on Sunday Sports (second column). Retrieved from newspapers.com.

By Tom Fuzesy

In American football, Sunday gameplay was commonplace as soon as the sport was introduced in the late nineteenth century. In Canada, however, it was once quite different. Various laws and social norms dictated that playing professional football on Sundays was not permissible, a position that did not change until the late 1950s and 1960s. How did this pivot in policy come about?

Initially, football and rugby matches in Canada occurred primarily on Saturdays and statutory holidays. For the Regina Rugby Club, renamed the Regina Roughriders in 1924 , there were only a handful of games to be played in any given season. Scheduling them on Saturdays, Thanksgiving, and Remembrance Day made it convenient to accommodate all matches before ending the season with playoffs in late November. Games were usually set for 3:00 PM, which allowed them to finish before nightfall, while giving each team time to travel to and from the games.

This Saturday and holiday format worked well until the late 1940s, when the growing number of games per season required having two matches in a single week. Monday was chosen as the additional day, and games were played in the evening or, if it was a holiday, in the afternoon. Newly renamed in 1946 as the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the team played eight games in 1946, increasing to 12 games in 1948 when it became a provincially owned and operated club, and eventually reaching 16 games in 1952. That year, the Riders had six occasions where they played the first game of the week on Saturday, and then played again the following Monday.

This comparatively grueling schedule—two games played two days apart—resulted in more injuries because of a lack of recovery time between matches. Nevertheless, this intense routine continued throughout the 1950s. To address the problem, the season was scheduled to start earlier in the year and included midweek games to space out each match. This prompted all nine Canadian Football League (CFL) teams to explore the option of scheduling Sunday games.

Prior to 1959, no Canadian football games were played on a Sunday. The only exceptions were rare occasions where Canadian teams played in the United States, an example of this being when the Regina Roughriders played an exhibition game against the Minot Panthers on Sunday, October 1, 1933. Sunday gameplay in the United States was a weekly occurrence and had been commonplace for professional football from very early on. The biggest reason for this was the overwhelming popularity of college football in the U.S., which traditionally took place on Saturdays. To avoid competing for fans, professional football games were scheduled on Sundays. In Canada, however, there was no equivalent competition, and strict Sunday bylaws often prohibited certain activities. The federal Lord’s Day Act of 1907 specifically banned paid spectator sports and other commercial transactions on Sundays. This clash between sports fans and the status quo was on full display when CKCK-TV first aired in 1954. The network aired that year’s Grey Cup game on a tape delay, meaning it was broadcast the following day, Sunday at noon. This timing clashed with many Sunday church services and led to objections from local church leaders.

A Leader-Post article from November 30, 1954 describing tensions over Sunday football between CKCK-TV and local church leaders. Retrieved from newspapers.com.

Starting in 1959, Canadian teams slowly began scheduling Sunday games as various Sunday sports bylaws and restrictions were relaxed. Toronto was the first team to play on Sunday when they played Ottawa at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium on Sunday, September 13, 1959. Other teams slowly followed, and by 1967 all CFL teams’ schedules included some Sunday games.

As televised Sunday sports became more common over the years, the debate over changing the Lord’s Day Act, which effectively banned Sunday football, reached a boiling point. People began to realize that Sundays were becoming just as important for sporting events as Saturdays, while views about holding paid spectator sports on Sundays were becoming obsolete. The issue was finally brought to Regina’s electorate on June 23, 1965, after getting the green light from the provincial government. With a 2-1 margin, the Sunday sports restriction was struck down, which finally allowed for Sunday home games for the Roughriders and any other sports teams charging admission to their games. Thus, on Sunday, October 17, 1965, the Riders played their first Sunday home game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The federal Act remained law until it was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1985. As a result, certain sporting events kept restrictions on what time of day the games could begin. Curling briers, for example, started Mondays and wrapped up by the following Saturday in order to avoid Sunday altogether. Football, though, as an afternoon and evening game wasn’t affected after 1965.

The October 18, 1965 edition of the Regina Leader-Post after the Riders’ first Sunday game, retrieved from the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan. The review from the sports editor? “If this is what Sunday football does, forget it.”

The Grey Cup championship followed suit four years later, with the first Sunday championship game occurring in 1969. Although it briefly moved to Saturday in 1970, it switched back to Sunday in 1971, where it has remained a staple of the day ever since.

Tom Fuzesy is a volunteer for Heritage Regina and is an avid sports fan, researcher, and local historian.