| abstract
| - The Labour Day Classic is a particular week of the Canadian Football League schedule that is played over the Labour Day weekend. This particular weekend, typically the tenth or eleventh week in the season, is known for its matchups that do not change from year to year, unlike other weeks of the CFL schedule, which are also rivalry games (with the exception of the BC-Montreal game which just takes place during the absence of Montreal's traditional rival Ottawa (both the Rough Riders and Renegades played in it). It is also only one of two weeks (the Thanksgiving Day Classic being the other) in the CFL schedule that the league plays on a Monday. Scotiabank is the event's presenting sponsor as of 2011. The traditional Labour Day weekend matchups involve the Winnipeg Blue Bombers visiting the Saskatchewan Roughriders on the day before Labour Day, while on Labour Day itself, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats are at home against the Toronto Argonauts while the Edmonton Eskimos visit the Calgary Stampeders. The Montreal Alouettes face Ottawa to round out the weekend. The BC Lions have no Labour Day rivals and have had a bye week on Labour Day in the past. Because Ottawa has been dormant since the 2006 season (and will remain so until at least 2014), the Alouettes have usually played the Lions during these times of dormancy, creating a "Coast-to-Coast" rivalry; also during these times, the Alouettes have received an annual home game in the Thanksgiving Day Classic in most of these years. During the early 1980s, the Montreal Concordes instead played the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as their Labour Day rival instead of the Ottawa Rough Riders. Due to scheduling conflicts, the Tiger-Cats temporarily revived its rivalry with the current incarnation of the Alouettes in the Labour Day game for the 2011 season; the change in opponents led Hamilton to dub the game the Labour Day Classique in reference to Montréal's Francophone community. While in 2011, this automatically resulted in Toronto and BC facing each other, in the 1980s, the three teams (Toronto, Ottawa and BC) rotated each year. Ottawa and BC would face each other during the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The Tiger-Cats' hosting of the Labour Day Classic is in jeopardy for 2013 due to a schedule conflict at the team's home stadium. Some of the teams wear special third jerseys or throwback uniforms if they play at home. Although not associated with the Labour Day Classic, the week after Labour Day often has a repeat match-up of the Bombers vs Roughriders (see Banjo Bowl), Stampeders vs Eskimos (see Battle of Alberta), and Tiger-Cats vs Argonauts, (a rivalry which began in 1873) with home field advantage now to the team that did not have it during the Labour Day weekend. While this did not occur for the 2008 Classics, it was brought back in 2009. As the league has been increasing in popularity in recent years, print ads for the Labour Day Classic try to evoke the tradition of watching Canadian football on the last weekend of summer. Slogans include "Long Live the Rivalries" and "Watch the Team You Love Play the Team You Love to Hate". The rivalries between these pairings are long-standing, based on both the physical proximity of the competing cities and the relatively small number of teams within a league that has existed for so long. Fans of each team regularly claim their matchup to be the Labour Day Classic, as if there was only one game.
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