Ron Lancaster’s statue vandalized amid statue defacing trend

Outside of Regina’s Mosaic Stadium, an unknown person has vandalized the Ron Lancaster statue. An (illegible) phrase written in large text was graffiti-ed onto the football that the statue of Lancaster bears in its hands.

Likely done recently, the act of vandalism was noticed and reported Wednesday afternoon. 

Lancaster remains a beloved quarterback in Saskatchewan, where he played 16 seasons for the Saskatchewan Roughriders and helped win the team their first Grey Cup in 1966. 

Not only was Lancaster a star player, but he also later coached the Roughriders for a short period, before taking an eleven year break. After this, he coached the Edmonton Eskimos from 1991 to 1996. Under his leadership, the team achieved a record breaking regular season in 1993 and went on to win the Grey Cup.

After his time with the Eskimos, Lancaster was made the coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1997. Between 1998 and 2003, the team won two Grey Cups (1998 & 1999). Lancaster was made coach of the Tiger-Cats one again in 2006, in order to fill the gap left after coach Greg Marshall’s firing.

At the time Lancaster died of a heart attack on September 18, 2008, he had 142 career wins, thereby making him the fourth in overall career wins.

Overall, Lancaster was a very positive figure for Canadian football. It makes little sense why someone would vandalize the statue.

Although some on Twitter joked that the vandal must be a Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan, it is far more likely that the vandal is simply following the current trend in ‘statue defacement.’

Although most protesters target historical figures on the assumption they are racist, it may not be that incredulous to think that someone simply wanted to get in on the action and chose to scribble over any statue they could find.

The statue was unveiled back in 2017 and will be cleaned in the coming days by stadium staff.