Stopping In At Home | Commissioner Randy Ambrosie

Randy Ambrosie made a pit stop in his good ol’ hometown today, and from the moment he stepped off the plane at the airport, his day was mapped out for him.

Now he fully understands this is how his new gig as the 14^th commissioner in the history of Canadian Football League is going to work. It’s something that he’s already discovered in a job that saw him be part of a ruling of a player suspension in his first day, and be bombarded with questions on some pressing issues since his introductory press conference.

But the 54-year-old Winnipegger – a proud product of Kildonan East Collegiate and the University of Manitoba – wouldn’t have carved out a successful career in business if he didn’t understand how to take a deep breath every once in a while and soak up his surroundings.

Especially here in River City…

“Back when I was with the Bisons, we used to do our training at Frank Kennedy Centre and my warm-up run was down University Crescent,” began Ambrosie in a 30-minute chat with bluebombers.com on Thursday. “And I was coming here in the taxi and it hit me that I can’t even count the number of times that I went up and down that road.

“That’s a long time ago.”

The Ambrosies grew up in North Kildonan – 565 Kingsford Avenue, to be exact – and if he had a moment to spare, the new commish might get the cab to roll by the old homestead. He and his brothers Rod and Tony spent their youths there and helped run the family business, Ambrosie Electric – now Ambrosie Electric and Lighting Services – that was started by his dad and a partner.

His mother was the company secretary, dealing with all the invoices for a company that brothers Brad and Tom still run.

“It was the classic family affair,” Ambrosie said. “My mom did all the secretarial work and my parents had a trunk line from the office to our home, and at the end of the day, my mom would answer the office line at our house for many, many years.

“We knew hard work. That’s a Winnipeg thing, right? We did a lot of work at night. If you were re-lamping a store, like Safeway, we worked at night. And then at 10 o’clock when the store was closed, we’d be in there and then have to be out at six o’clock in the morning as they were getting ready to open the store again.

“We felt a part of it. We had to work hard, but there were great rewards as the company grew. All this reminds me of how important they were to me. We are a great family… not ‘great’ in a boastful way, but family meant everything. In all the sports we played here in Winnipeg; hockey, football, soccer… mom and dad didn’t miss anything.”

“We had an amazing bond as a family.”

Ambrosie first started playing football to stay in shape for hockey. He began with the East Side Eagles before suiting up with the Fort Garry Lions and then the St. Vital Mustangs. That’s when he started to garner interest from universities, ultimately deciding to stay at home to play with his older brother, Rod, who was already a member of the Bisons.

Retelling these stories comes easily for Ambrosie, and it’s a big component to his appeal as the league’s new boss. His connections to the game and this league run deep. And in reminiscing and reconnecting in his first week on the job, his passion for the game and this league oozes out of his every pore.

He is thrilled to be back in his hometown, even if the stop is short, and has spoken of being back in Edmonton – where he finished his career – and wanting to visit the stall he sat in at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium when the Eskimos knocked off the Bombers in the 1993 Grey Cup game, his last as a pro.

Every town, every stadium, opens up a flood of those memories.

“I can do a tour in my mind and pick something from every place,” said Ambrosie. “I’m going to B.C. for next Friday’s game. I can remember in 1985, my rookie year, we were 0-5 and we went into B.C. and they were 5-0. I walked out of the dressing room into B.C. Place and there was a sign that the fans had put up that read, ‘Lions 5 Christians 0.’ How funny is that?”

“But we won that game. We were dramatic underdogs – the Lions ended up winning the Grey Cup that year – but I remember the sheer joy of my first win as a professional.”

“We also played B.C. in Calgary in our first regular season home game earlier that year. We were going up against Nick Hebeler, Rick Klassen, James ‘Quick’ Parker… and they were beasts. At one point, I got beaten so badly by Quick Parker and he started chasing Joe Barnes and I ran parallel to the line of scrimmage because I didn’t know what else to do because I had basically handed out a bus ticket to Parker. Well as I’m running, Joe threw a ball and I caught it, and of course, got flagged for being an illegal receiver.

“I came into the huddle and Joe grabbed me by the facemask and said, ‘Kid, your job is to block, not catch.’

“I played most of that game blocking Hebeler,” Ambrosie continued. “It was a pretty rough introduction to the CFL. We went back to B.C. for that sixth game and I played above myself in that game. As we were walking off the field afterward, Nick came up to me and said, ‘Kid, I have never seen a guy make that big an improvement from one game to the next. You’re going to have a great career.’ How cool is that? I’ll never forget that feeling. I’d love to see him at some point and tell him how important that was to me.”

“But, I could tell you a story like that from every stadium I played in; those moments that stick with you. Now I get to go across the country to do this and I’ll be soaking it all in.”

Ambrosie hung up the cleats for good after that 1993 season. He had been fighting through a knee injury that would require offseason surgery, and after a chat with then-Eskimos head coach Ron Lancaster, knew it was time.

“I was playing about two-thirds of a knee in those late stages of the season. But when I sat in my locker before the Grey Cup game I knew that was it, this was going to be my last kick at the can,” he said.

“I was going to have surgery in the offseason and just felt it was the right time to leave it all on the field and then get ready to move on.

“Coach Ron told me that for so many players, he would counsel them to play as long as they could. But he told me I was destined for big things in business and it was time for me.

“He told me, ‘You’re going to be the president of something big one day and I want to be able to say I told you so.’”

A few years later, not long after he had been named President of AGF Management Ltd, the phone rang at the office. His secretary popped into his office to announce that ‘somebody named Coach Ron is on the phone.’

“He said, ‘Randy, I’m in a real rush,’” Ambrosie recalled, ‘but I just wanted to call and say I’m really proud of you and I told you so.’

“I loved Coach Ron. He’s one of the greatest men I met in my life and God rest his soul. He was so good to me.”

Now make no mistake, Ambrosie knows his to-do list already has some meaty issues on it, namely the state of the Toronto Argonauts, growing the game with the next generation of fans, and player safety. He’s already head-first in educating himself on all of the above.

Still, excuse the man if he won’t take a few moments here in his first week on the job to reconnect.

This is a big job for him and a big moment for his family. And all of it isn’t lost on him.

He’s spoken often about his brother Brad hearing on the car radio that his brother had been named commissioner and had to pull over because he was overwhelmed with emotion on how proud their parents, both of whom have since passed, would have been of the moment.

Family comes up in every conversation with Ambrosie, too. He met his wife Barb when they were both kids in Winnipeg and later attended the U of M. They’ve been married for 31 years and have two daughters, both of whom knew immediately that when the CFL came courting, dad had to pass on the other opportunities staring him in the face to step into a job that would clearly mean so much to him.

“I was just talking to my wife about this… every moment is so fantastic that I’m not tired at all,” he said. “I did my last interview last night at 10 o’clock but then slept like a baby because there’s a feeling of contentment that has swept over me. I just look ahead at each day and the next day after that on my calendar and I don’t think that there’s a day that isn’t completely cool.

“To my wife and daughters, this job was the winner in their minds, hands down. It’s nice because they wanted this so badly for me. It’s the sharing of that experience and with my brothers that is special. This would have made my parents proud.

“I’ve done some cool things in my career, but I bet you have got 700 notes of congratulations. It’s like everybody thinks this is the best thing I could have done. And that gives me a lot of energy as well.”