APRIL FOOLS MEMORIES

With the world in the grips of a pandemic, we figured we’d take a year off from staging elaborate April Fools jokes.

However that’s not stopping us from remembering some of our best from over the years, to provide a chuckle at an otherwise depressing time. Here are some of the best ones, in no particular order:

2011 was the masterpiece. Courtesy of the Photoshop skills of my best buddy Jeff Armstead, we announced that Hall of Fame Roughrider Scott Schultz was coming out of retirement to sign with the rival Calgary Stampeders. Unfortunately the joke worked too well, as many people believed it was actually happening.
In the late-1990s we ran a story on the radio that Regina Exhibition Park and MacIntosh Computers had entered into a naming rights agreement for the Agridome, home of the Pats. The facility would now be known as The MacArena. Irate fans blew up the phone lines for hours.
In the 2000s we ran a story that the City of Regina and City of Moose Jaw were coming together to build an arena in Belle Plain, SK (in between the two cities), and it would be home to both the Pats and Warriors. The GMs of both clubs, Brent Parker and Chad Lang, even did interviews on the joke in advance.
Another great one was in the early-2010s when we announced the SJHL was placing an expansion team in Regina to play out of the Cooperators Arena (a dream I still hold to this day). The owners would be the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, and the team would be called the Regina Roughriders. I borrowed a logo from the Cedar Rapids Roughriders Hockey Club in the US to go along with the prank. A local millionaire businessman called me that morning and asked how he could get in on ownership of the club. When I told him to check his calendar, he hung up on me!