*Warning, this is a serious research paper with references and it's 15 pages long. You can access a pdf version here for printing and bedtime reading.     

Hamilton, Toronto and “Argos Suck!”: History and Rivalry

 

 

Introduction:    

 

During the 2004 Grey Cup playoffs, a controversy erupted in Hamilton and quickly spread across the nation regarding the appropriateness of the phrase “Argos Suck!” It all started when freshman owner and expatriate Hamiltonian Bob Young abruptly forbid employees of the Tiger-Cat organization from partaking in the chant.[1] Mr. Young then proceeded to leave the terra firma of the businessman’s prerogative and entered onto the much shakier ground of censorship and big brother-ism by campaigning with both carrot and stick to extinguish the “Argos Suck!” chant among fans as well. In due course, $1,000 was plucked from deep, deep pockets and offered to the person who came up with the nicest, most polite, non-offensive, good-natured replacement cheer, while those who previously enjoyed bellowing “Argos Suck!” were castigated as “crude” purveyors of “bathroom humour.”[2] However, it was the insinuation emanating from Mr. Young that there was a direct correlation between the now-forbidden chant and drunken fan violence that finally stirred the board of directors of www.argos-suck.com into action.[3] Via the Globe and Mail, the FAN radio network, CH News and many other media outlets, www.argos-suck.com leapt to the defense of the millions of decent and semi-decent Canadians whose only crime was an affinity for a chant expressing not just humour and good sportsmanship, but also a deep sense of history and culture.

 

     Incredibly, support for “Argos Suck!” began to pour in from coast to coast. Fans across Canada posted missives on www.ticats.ca praising the chant and its adherents. Even Argo fans, sensing their witty riposte of “Ticats Suck!” (that they made up all by themselves!) could easily be next on the chopping block, came to the defence of the beleaguered cheer. Former Tiger-Cat players waxed nostalgic about the many Hamilton-Toronto matchups at Ivor Wynne Stadium where the “Argos Suck!” chant reigned down on the boatmen so furiously that it had a palpable effect on the outcome of the game. Even the head coach of the Argos publicly stated that Hamilton just wouldn’t be Hamilton without its unique chant. By the spring of 2005, a sheepish-sounding Bob Young told the Hamilton Spectator that the $1,000 was still unclaimed, and that the whole anti-chant campaign had not only been a flop, but also a wholly unproductive public relations move.[4]

 

     Thus, the saga had a happy ending. The pro-“Argos Suck!” demographic was free to ply its trade, and came out of the ordeal with perhaps more perspective regarding those around them that may not share their fondness for the chant. Mr. Young and the Tiger-Cat management team meanwhile learned a valuable lesson about fan boundaries, yet benefited from the enormous amount of national publicity generated for a franchise that otherwise had been ousted from the playoffs and therefore the sports pages as well. Throughout the adventure though, a recurring question was posed by those on both sides of the debate: what is the origin of this deeply philosophical, anti-Hogtown mantra “Argos Suck!,” and where does it fit in the larger historical rivalry between Hamilton and Toronto? We’re all familiar with the old “working-class Hamilton vs. corporate Toronto” dichotomy, but historical research undertaken by www.argos-suck.com at the height of the controversy has unveiled a mutual antagonism stretching back into the mists of time. Furthermore, previously untapped documentary sources obtained from the National Archives of Canada and other repositories show that the exclamation “Argos Suck!” is but the modern culmination of a 3,000-year-old quest to encapsulate all that is wrong about Toronto in a handy epithet capable of fitting on a button, banner, etc. Ultimately, what this suggests is that the expression “Argos Suck!” is not something that can be turned off like a tap or forbidden by special decree, because it is organic, as real as the Escarpment, or the Toronto Islands, or Lake Ontario itself. The following will therefore detail some of this history in the hopes that those who formerly condemned the chant will in turn be enlightened about its deep cultural heritage and sophistication.     

 

Part I: The First Few Millennia

 

     Although the written record of geographic Hamilton and Toronto extends back less than 400 years, archaeological evidence from the Golden Horseshoe suggests the rivalry between these two regions was extant from the very first time that humans settled in the area. Interestingly, Hamilton and Toronto were originally founded by two distinct cultures that began to appear several thousand years ago. The first Hamiltonians are known to archaeologists as the Princess Point culture, named after the remnants of a settlement found at the northwest end of the city.[5] Picture Coote’s Paradise in your mind’s eye, but replace the carp with pristine Atlantic salmon, the purple loosestrife with old-growth maple and oak trees and the pond scum with wild rice, and you’ll get some idea of the beauty of the first Hamilton. Furthermore, the first Hamiltonians were no less impressive than the landscape in which they settled. Constituents of the Princess Point culture were among the most advanced peoples in North America at the time. Their technology, manifested in pottery and agricultural tools, spread throughout the region due to its unparalleled utility and craftsmanship.[6] Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the first Hamiltonians was the introduction of corn into North America, an event comparable today with refrigeration and microwaves in terms of its social and economic impact.[7]

http://maps.google.ca/maps?ll=43.271112,-79.897320&spn=0.010849,0.019656&hl=en

Map 1: Years before Google Maps, the Princess Point Culture selected this location for a modern society
Click Here to interactively explore the area in  your internet browser.

    To the north and east of the Princess Point settlement however, things were not nearly so rosy. What we now call “downtown Toronto” was a gigantic swamp, full of pestilence and disease. The people occupying the region, known to archaeologists as the Pickering culture, could be identified by their inferior pottery and relatively poor tool-making ability. Much like today, the early Hamiltonians at Princess Point considered proto-Toronto to be an uninhabitable cesspool, but also found that business and trade with outlying regions sometimes made passing through a necessary evil. This explains why the only habitation near geographical Toronto in this era was at the intersection of the Humber River and Lake Ontario, near the foot of present-day Dufferin Street. In a trick that would characterize it as a region well into the future, the proto-Torontonians would hang out in their swamp and wait to enrich themselves on the swag passing through from places like proto-Montreal and proto-Hamilton. Perhaps it is just coincidence that thousands of years later, almost every Argo G.M. would employ a similar tactic to steal player personnel. Perhaps not. In any case, ethnohistorians continue to speculate on whether or not early Hamiltonians hurled derisive catch-phrases at the people across the lake. Aboriginal languages that trace their roots back to this era contain words for both “Toronto” and for “disdain”, evidence that is highly suggestive of an “Argos-Suck!”-type chant in existence at least 2,500 years before the birth of Leon McQuay. However, due to the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record, the conclusive evidence undoubtedly stills lies buried somewhere at the end of  Longwood Road and Macklin Street in modern day Hamilton, Ontario.  

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Examples from the technological toolkit of the Princess Point culture. Note the decorative striations on the pottery, a skill that the rival culture in geographic Toronto was never able to master.

 

 

Part II: European Contact with Toronto

 

     In a development that may seem strangely familiar to many present-day Hamiltonians, human failings such as greed and avarice had become elevated as virtues in early Toronto to such an extent that by 1300 CE the nefarious influence of the Pickering culture had washed away the advances of their more sophisticated neighbours. This ushered in a sort of Golden Horseshoe Dark Ages, which was not lifted until the advent of more familiar Aboriginal groups like the Algonquin and Iroquois. Even then, what sketchy documentary evidence exists indicates that the Toronto region had lost none of its corrupting influence. A perfect case in point is the saga of French explorer and original coureur du bois Etienne Brulé. By all accounts, Brulé was an affable enough young man who had the good fortune to be adopted by the Huron, a native group renowned for its liberal disposition, slowness to anger, and hospitality towards strangers. On or about September 19^th, 1615 however, Brulé visited the future site of downtown Toronto and present-day Scarborough, and came back a changed man.[8] Several years later, the arrogant and offensive Toronto attitude that he had picked up led to his murder at the hands of the erstwhile friendly Huron, whose “moral standards, indulgent though they were, he had succeeded in outraging” according to historian W.J. Eccles.[9] Both Aboriginal and early French Canadian oral tradition holds that the tag of “Brulé!” was thereafter applied to all who displayed similar Toronto attitudes, thereby marking it as one of the original forerunners of the chant “Argos Suck!”

 

 

 

Figure 2: Artist’s rendition of Etienne Brulé in Toronto

getting sassy with his hosts, circa 1615.

 

    

     Other early European explorers in the region such as the missionaries of the Sulpician Order attempted to settle in Toronto as early as 1669, but detested the place so much they wrote letters to their headquarters back in Paris begging to be relieved of duty.[10] Although the Sulpicians considered suffering to be a virtue, forced habitation in Toronto was too cruel even for them, and in due course a letter arrived from the head of the Order, M. Louis Tronson, giving permission to abandon the grim bog and fall back to the Bay of Quinte.[11] In other letters, Tronson worried about “the very disturbed mental state” of his officials who had been exposed to Toronto, and summed up the misadventure with the statement “if this goes on the house will perish.”[12] Although this phrase lacked the crispness and punch of “Argos Suck!” it nonetheless stands as the earliest documented attempt in Canadian history at creating an anti-Toronto buzz-phrase.

 

     Simultaneously, the Canadian-born explorer Louis Jolliet departed Quebec and came down to Fort Frontenac (present-day Kingston) to prepare for a voyage to the Ohio Valley and beyond. According to historian George M. Wrong, Jolliet’s initial plan was to quickly pass through “the west end of Lake Ontario where now stands the city of Hamilton” and eventually hook up with the Mississippi River.[13] In September of 1669 however, as a French expedition that was set to meet Jolliet in Ohio pulled up to the shores of the future Hamilton, they found that he had not made it any further than that. The former home base of the Princess Point culture had by this time been re-established as the Seneca village of Tinaouataoua, one of the jewels of Aboriginal settlement in the area. The great food, pleasant hospitality, and abundant tobacco in the town so impressed Jolliet that he waylaid his travel plans, and in essence became the first Hamiltonian of European descent. In contrast to Brulé, exposure to the Hamilton region seemed to cultivate a sense of humility and respect in Jolliet, and in due turn the Iroquois arranged for French passage through the Head of the Lake district, a privilege that had been previously revoked in the wake of the Brulé debacle.[14] 

 

     By comparison, the settlement at Toronto, a dingy little trading outpost known as Teiaiagon (which roughly translated means “place to meet but not to stay” as well as “trees growing out of swampy water”) was again the bane of the area.[15] The locals lived off what they could pilfer from those travelling down the Humber River on the way to more lucrative settlements in outlying regions.[16] A particularly illustrative encounter with the Toronto district at this time was that of René Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle. Renowned as one of the first Europeans to visit Toronto, an interpretive plaque can be found near the C.N.E. that marks the site of this historic stopover. What the plaque omits to mention though is that LaSalle was a most reluctant visitor. Late in 1678, he set sail for the first time along the north shore of Lake Ontario, but with no intention of going anywhere near Toronto. However, an incredibly harsh storm that threatened to destroy his ship forced him to seek shelter up the Humber River.[17] Yet only a few days later, LaSalle was so frightened at the prospect of becoming ice-bound and getting stuck in Toronto all winter that he re-embarked straight into the eye of the continuing storms in order to get away, whereupon he sought out the greater utility and beauty of the Hamilton region’s sheltered shorelines.[18] Incidentally, LaSalle would only return to Toronto one more time: on 10 August 1680, as he fled from creditors and business partners similar to the ones who would eventually murder him in 1686.[19] Vehicular breakdown, severe financial hardship, and/or the threat of death – even today many Hamiltonians can relate to these reasons as being the only ones necessitating an extended stay in Toronto.

 

Part III: The Emergence of Modern Toronto

 

     As Teiaiagon faded into history, the first vestiges of modern Toronto appeared in 1726 with the construction of a crude stockade known as the “Magazin Royale.” This glorious-sounding name helped disguise the fact that the French military were essentially using Toronto as a garbage dump. Appropriately enough, by 1750 the location was renamed Fort Rouillé, in honour of the director of France’s notoriously corrupt Ministry of Marine, but the change from dump to fortification owed more to semantics than reality. Historian Arthur Pound’s description of “York” (as the dump site was renamed in 1793) at the advent of the nineteenth century poignantly conveys the repulsive nature of Hamilton’s emerging nemesis:

 

In its early years its streets were quagmires…Mosquitoes bred in its swampy creeks and malaria hung over the town…(In 1797) the town was still little more than a collection of crude huts in the center of mud and desolation.[20]

 

In contrast, Pound describes contemporary Hamilton as picturesque and “superbly located,” while McMaster University historian John Weaver has noted that “adventurers and artists” were drawn from far and wide to its “scenic locales.”[21] But, as had occurred so many times in the past, “lusty York would soon rise to overshadow it to the north,” a by-now-familiar occurrence that yet again upset natural trading patterns in the region and brought hard times and depression for all.[22]

 

 

 

Figure 3: “A collection of crude huts in the center of mud and desolation.”

 

 

   

     This hostile takeover of the region by Toronto was delayed however when the United States invaded the Golden Horseshoe in 1813. When the American fleet landed at York’s Sunnyside Beach on April 27th, the townspeople (great-great-great grandparents of many of today’s Argo fans) capitulated without resistance. Even worse, in their haste to flee they accidentally blew up their own munitions stockpile, killing the handful of loyal defenders that had chosen to stay and fight.[23] Those citizens unable to run away, in particular the wealthy upper-class York aristocracy, rushed instead to the American invaders and gave their promise in writing not to oppose the continuing invasion of Canada or the looting and pillaging that followed.[24] Several even turned traitor and helped the Americans pilfer and burn government buildings, including the Legislature of Upper Canada.[25] Interestingly, the town was eventually saved by its own repulsiveness: by May 3^rd the Americans became so sick of the place and its groveling inhabitants that they departed on their own accord after a last round of despoilment. Anticipating the rallying cry of “Argos Suck!” that would not emerge for another century or more, Upper Canada resident Stephen Jarvis suggested that a fitting slogan for York at this time would have been “to the everlasting disgrace of the country.”[26]

 

 

Figure 4 (leg lock): During the War of 1812, Torontonians literally and figuratively burned their

 bridges behind them. In this contemporary depiction, it happened to be one over the

Don River (National Archives of Canada, c 6147).

 

     Meanwhile in the Hamilton region, tattered remnants of the British army formed up alongside some local farmers, itinerant Newfoundlanders, Six Nations warriors and a corps of African Americans (who had previously escaped from slavery in the United States and who were among the first to volunteer for service in defence of Canada) in a desperate, last ditch attempt to hold the Head of the Lake.[27] Thanks to the poor showing by the Torontonians, it appeared Thomas Jefferson’s earlier prophecy that invading Canada would be a “simple matter of marching” was about to come true.[28] The Americans reasoned that since taking the capital of York had been such a cake walk, the rag-tag band of about 700 Hamiltonians that were now caught in a pincer movement by U.S. forces would also give up and come begging for mercy. Much to their surprise however, on June 6^th this people’s army of Hamilton, led by Stoney Creek farm boy Billy Green, traveled by night over fifteen miles from Burlington Heights to the other side of town and launched a ferocious midnight bayonet assault on the encamped American troops. Not only did the Hamiltonians rout the 2,000-man U.S. force, but in the process they repelled a formidable cavalry charge, captured two American brigadier generals, and pushed the invaders all the way back to the Niagara River.[29] Almost 100 years before the first steel plants would appear in the region, the distinction between the multicultural, hands-on, hard working people of Hamilton and the elitist, delicate, whitebread constituents of Toronto was already apparent.   

 

 

Figure 5: Graphic depiction of the Battle of Stoney Creek. Note the hand-to-

hand tactics that were later made famous by the Barton-Sherman gang.

    

     It is a curious but little-known fact that both regions would be invaded again later that summer, and once more the distinctions between the two communities would be glaring. On July 29^th, a crack force of several hundred amphibious troops under the American Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott (who had almost single-handedly captured Queenston Heights the year previously) landed at the west end of the Hamilton beach strip, but quickly departed after getting a glimpse of the fearsome defenders forming up on the heights.[30] Therefore, the Americans decided to try their luck again with the Torontonians, and on July 31^st they “re-invaded” York, disembarking at present-day Coronation Park, a landing that was (surprise, surprise) completely unopposed. Again, instead of resisting, the Torontonians helped the invaders carry off “several hundred barrels of flour and provisions, five artillery pieces, and eleven boats,” as well as a huge stockpile of military supplies. [31] Meanwhile, the town’s leadership went into hiding just as they had during the previous invasion, and upon emerging used the same excuse about how they had intended to fight, but alas, someone had to stay behind to “look after the ladies.”[32] From John Strachan, the crypto-fascist Anglican dictator of old York, to a certain ineffectual Argo wide receiver, the reflex of blaming women for your own personal shortcomings appears to have a very long history in Toronto.

 

     After the hostilities ceased, button-like medallions were struck to commemorate citizen defense of Canada in the War of 1812, and many thought that affixing some kind of anti-Toronto slogan would be entirely appropriate. This ultimately proved to be too hot for Late Georgian era sensibilities, but, in a brilliant end-run, the design committee opted for the phrase “Upper Canada Preserved,” with the stipulation that the medals be issued only for “extraordinary incidences of personal courage.”[33] Not surprisingly, no act of bravery or personal courage in the Toronto region was ever brought to the attention of the committee, and not one resident of York was ever awarded or even nominated for a medal.[34] In the Hamilton area however, many could be seen wearing the button-shaped metal discs upon which a slogan was emblazoned that, if only by default, excluded Toronto. The “Argos Suck!” button was but a moment in time away.     

 

 

 

 

         Figure 6: A direct descendant of the “Argos Suck!” button

 

 

 

Part IV: Toronto the Tyrannical

 

     No sooner was the American invasion over than an all-too-familiar assault began again. By 1834, the town built on a swamp (and “still deep in dirt and mire” according to Arthur Pound) had now officially adopted the name “Toronto” and began to pour merchants and bankers into the Hamilton area in order to take control of the regional economy.[35] Furthermore, the Toronto oligarchy (or “Family Compact”) that had cowered during the invasions of York moved to consolidate its power by hypocritically portraying pro-democracy reformers from outlying towns (such as Hamilton, London and Guelph) as America-lovers and traitors to Canada. Allan MacNab, a power-hungry Torontonian, was installed as the puppet governor of Hamilton, whereupon he built and operated the manor house “Dundurn Castle” with Hamiltonian slave labour, and then used it as a base of operations to hunt down reformers so they could be jailed and/or hanged in Hogtown.[36] Meanwhile, as if local totalitarian control was not enough, the Toronto dictatorship also installed a puppet regime in Quebec City known as the “Chateau Clique,” a development that would have a profoundly negative effect on future ethnic relations in Canada.

 

 

Figure 7: The Empire strikes back: the Caroline breaking up above

Niagara Falls (a pro-democracy rebel supply ship whose destruction

was orchestrated by Torontonian Allan MacNab).

 

        When the citizens of French and English Canada joined together as one in 1837 and rose up against this evil empire, Toronto and its people would deliver to the rebel forces a particularly cruel one-two punch. First, the Torontonians on the rebel side under William Lyon Mackenzie botched their end of the operation so badly that the Toronto dictatorship was able to run roughshod over the entire Golden Horseshoe. Even worse, this poor showing allowed the dictatorship to march its Toronto-based army into the Montreal region, where they destroyed a score of villages like St. Denis, St. Charles and St. Eustache, opening a chasm in French-English relations in Canada that exists to the present day.[37] At the beginning of the rebellion, St. Benoit resident Jean-Joseph Girouard had designed a battle flag that included not only the maple leaf but also the Muskellunge, that predaceous leviathan that cruises the St. Lawrence River and recognizes no border between French and English Canada.[38] After the events of 1837 however, the cruel rampage of foot soldiers unleashed from the gates of Toronto combined with the bumbling Hogtown arm of the rebellion gave rise not only to ongoing French-English strife, but also to an anti-Toronto chant that by 1838 was being sung throughout the taverns of Montreal: “Crush these Ass-Lickers!”[39] Far from “bathroom humour,” it must be admitted that “Argos Suck!” is in fact one of the more genteel anti-Toronto chants in Canadian history.  

 

 

 

 

Figure 8: Torontonians descend on the French Canadian community of St. Eustache, ruining things

for everybody for generations to come.

 

 

    

Part V: Hamilton, World-Class City

 

     After pro-democracy rebel forces finally triumphed in the 1840s and 1850s, Toronto refocused its effort to dominate the Hamilton region. The swamp people attempted to take credit for the first railway engine built in Canada, and a Toronto newspaper libeled the Hamilton Spectator whilst launching an editorial hissy fit in 1852 because Hamilton ship builders were producing higher-quality vessels, making the capital look incompetent by comparison.[40] Ironically enough, Hogtown even tried to take credit for inventing Canadian bacon, which incidentally was created by chefs at Hamilton’s Royal Connaught Hotel.[41]

 

     Already desperate to obtain “world-class city” status, Hogtown invited as many European dignitaries as it could to come and visit and spread the word about “Toronto the Good.” Unfortunately for them, most visitors seemed to prefer Hamilton, such as the Englishman Samuel Phillips Day, who wrote in 1864 that:

 

Few towns or people in Canada have impressed me more favourably than did Hamilton and its citizens. In point of construction and beauty the former is faultless, while the latter seemed to me a plain, honest well-to-do people…I am inclined to regard Hamilton as the modern “Arcadia” of British America, where the citizens dwell in happiness and brotherhood.[42]

 

Significantly, Day also commented that “the only predominant passion observable amongst the population resolves itself into a sort of harmless rivalry” with Toronto.[43] This same preference for Hamilton was also shown as early as the 1830s by keen-eyed visitor Anna Jameson, who had come to Canada to patch things up with her estranged husband, a British military officer stationed in Toronto. Like Brulé before him, life in Toronto had apparently turned Jameson’s husband into even more of a lout, so she ditched him and went vacationing by herself. While on holidays, Jameson was most impressed with Canada in general, but singled out Hamilton for particular praise due to the “exciting” time she had there, as well as for the “intelligent and good-natured” people she met.[44] In contrast, Jameson had harsh words for Toronto:

 

…A little ill-built town on low land, at the bottom of a frozen bay, with one very ugly church (that is)…built of staring red brick, in the most tasteless, vulgar style imaginable…I did not expect much; but for this I was not prepared…There is no society in Toronto…‘But,’ you will say, ‘what could be expected in a remote town, which forty years ago was an uninhabited swamp?…I really do not know what I expected, but I will tell you what I did not expect. I did not expect to find here in this new capital…the worst evils of our old and most artificial social system at home…and none of its advantages. Toronto is like a fourth or fifth rate provincial town, with the pretensions of a capital city. We have here a petty oligarchy…based upon nothing real, nor even upon anything imaginary; and we have all the mutual jealousy and fear, and petty gossip and mutual meddling and mean rivalship…(In Toronto) there is no getting out of the way of what one most dislikes: we must necessarily hear, see and passively endure much that annoys and disgusts.[45] 

 

Even as late as 1889, a group of discriminating English businessmen in Niagara Falls who had missed their train to New York inquired about where they could kill some time, and were told by locals that the best place to visit was not Toronto, but Hamilton. Taking the advice, the businessmen were so impressed that they stayed for weeks instead of hours, and concluded their visit by imploring the Hamilton Board of Trade to launch a major tourism campaign that would let the world know about this wonderful city.[46] 

 

Part VI: Hamilton, Toronto and the Emergence of “Argos Suck!”

 

     Thus we enter the more familiar 20^th century, when Hamilton municipal planners came up with the marvelous idea of ringing the northern border facing Toronto with a large number of steel mills in order to camouflage the city’s attractive features from the hungry eyes of Hogtown land speculators. Not only did this new economic sector stalemate Toronto’s bid for total domination of the Golden Horseshoe, but it also helped foster the impression that Hamilton was actually a stinky industrial brownland akin to an Etobicoke or a Malton. To this day, many a Torontonian contemplates the vista of the north end of Hamilton and pillories the city as a pollution-choked hell hole, all the while unaware that the industrial sector was specifically designed so that the prevailing winds would blow the effluent across the lake and up Yonge Street. The greenspaces, parklands, UNESCO world heritage sites and myriad waterfalls that lay behind this literal and figurative smokescreen in the beautiful city of Hamilton are to this day an open secret, as well as a testimony to the gullibility of Torontonians, kind of like when they thought Garth Drabinsky would make the Argos financially solvent.

 

 

Figure 9: The industrial core of Hamilton: not just an economic engine, but a kind

of Coote’s Paradise carp barrier for Torontonians.

 

     As for the official advent of “Argos Suck!,” the phrase originated at a specific nexus of history: the popularization of the term “suck” as an expression of derision, the transfer of cultural identification from the field of economics to that of sports, and the shady financial dealings that delivered ownership of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to Torontonian Harold Ballard in 1978. Descending from Hogtown like a curse upon Hamilton, with so much dirty money that his meddling in civic affairs was practically unstoppable, it was as if Ballard was the reincarnation of Allan MacNab. As historian John Weaver put it, “the purchase of the Tiger-Cats by Toronto’s Harold Ballard in 1978 fits into the proposition that Hamilton has continually ceded autonomy – financial, political and cultural – to Toronto,” and it was in the midst of the popular uprising against this secession that the cry of “Argos Suck!” was first heard pealing through Ivor Wynne Stadium.[47]   

 

 

 

     With the franchise in critical condition after the Ballard era, it soon became clear that the last keepers of the flame of thousands of years of civic history and identity in Hamilton would be those Tiger-Cat fans with their brazen “Argos Suck!” chant. By using the chant to foster the same kind of “harmless rivalry” that had caught Samuel Day’s attention in Hamilton over a hundred years before, the board of directors of www.argos-suck.com and several thousand allied fans sent a clear message that, like their forebearers, they too would stand up to Toronto swamp culture. However, Toronto responded in the same spirit of “mean rivalship” chronicled by Jameson by jacking popular Tiger-Cat players like Wally Zatylny, and even attempted to steal Hamilton’s fans and gate revenue by turning the Argos and their new “Sky-Dome” into an alluring Hollywood spectacle. As the franchise teetered on the brink, the quick-thinking board of directors ran a candidate in the 1994 Hamilton municipal election in order to wrest control of the mayor’s office from the Toronto-influenced incumbent who was threatening to call in municipal loans and pull the plug on the Tiger-Cats.[48] Although running on a platform that promised to rid Hamilton of both the Toronto threat as well as (perhaps ironically) invasive, bottom-feeding garbage fish, a devastating smear campaign launched by Hogtown interests combined with a budgetary restriction of $14.00 meant that the “Argos-Suck!” candidate attracted even fewer voters than weed of wisdom advocate Rev. Michael Baldasaro, who had conducted his entire campaign from the Barton Street Correctional Facility.[49] By the middle of the decade, nefarious Toronto was finally poised to do the unthinkable: eliminate the chant of “Argos Suck!,” and with it thousands of years of Hamilton’s cultural heritage, by bringing down the Tiger-Cats themselves.

 

Figure 11a (top): Bob Morrow rips into the “Argos Suck!” party’s mullet-headed mayoral candidate during a debate in downtown Hamilton. Figure 11b (left): Campaign propaganda. Note the Mike O’Shea jersey, mere months before Toronto treachery forever sullied the number 59 in Hamilton. Figure 11c (right): “Argos Suck!” comes full circle, as the soon-to-be-defeated candidate campaigns at Princess Point, home of the very first Hamiltonians.  

 

     Yet, through the dark and apathetic years of the 1990s, as mesmerized Hamiltonians abandoned the Ticats for Jim Belushi and stayed home to watch the Blue Jays victory parade on T.V. instead of attending games at Ivor Wynne, the board of directors and their allies somehow found the strength to continue on. Novelty breakfasts made from non-edible materials were served in jest to Argo fans; little plastic blue-coloured, parachuting action figures were burned in effigy after having their orifices stuffed with firecrackers; anti-Toronto banners were unfurled across the QEW; but, most effectively, the cry of “Argos Suck!” continued to ring out loud and strong.

 

Conclusion

 

     This then brings us up to the present day, where pro- and anti-“Argos-Suck!” factions once again share a life of peaceful co-existence, and the ebb and flow of the Toronto threat is currently in a down-phase. Yet we must remain vigilant. Nowadays, there are few things that tangibly distinguish Toronto from Hamilton in quite the way that “Argos Suck!” does. This semi-irreverent insult is therefore by no means “crude” or “dumb,” but is instead the post-modern playing out of a cultural heritage that reaches back thousands of years. For our part, we at www.argos-suck.com are of the generation when the Tiger-Cats were most definitely not cool, when tickets could not even be given away, but we still supported the Cats unconditionally in the hopes that a “hero” would one day emerge to “save” the franchise. Now that this has occurred, we would like to reiterate that proper marketing strategy dictates bringing the “Argos Suck!” community back into the fold, rather than casting aspersions on our character and intentions. From the first humans to set foot in the region until today, the lesson is that we must stay united, for the sum of our parts in Hamilton is much greater than the hole Toronto. With the events of the past year and their resolution instilling in us a renewed sense of purpose, www.argos-suck.com feels that the judicious used of the chant during the 2005 season will be a key ingredient in propelling our beloved Tiger-Cats to yet another Grey Cup victory. Bob bless us, everyone.

 

Copyright by the Argos-Suck.com Board of Directors June 2005,
contact web_master@argos-suck.com for republication permission, in whole or in part.