VIEWING TIMES:

TSN — Thursday, 5:30 p.m. MST
TSN2 — Friday, 8 p.m. MST
CTV Two — Saturday, 7 p.m. MST
CTV — Sunday, 9:00 a.m. MST
TSN2 — Wednesday, Nov. 21, 9 p.m. MST

SYNOPSIS

Rivalry. Conflict. Alienation. Competition. The late-1970’s through early-1980’s was a special era not just in CFL football, but Canadian political history as well.

“Western Swagger” will explore the genesis of an East vs. West rivalry both on and off the football field that reached a fever pitch in November 1981.

As the mighty Edmonton Eskimos embarked on their unprecedented Grey-Cup winning streak, former Eskimo and Alberta Premier, Peter Lougheed, was in a battle off the field: helmet-to-helmet with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau over the National Energy Program – the implementation of which could send the Alberta economy into a dangerous tailspin – and locking horns with his fellow premiers during the constitutional crisis that had the country on the brink of chaos.

At its core, the film will examine what it means to be a family: the band-of-brothers football family that needed to battle adversity and pull together through if they were to become the greatest CFL team ever; and the family that is Canada: provincial brothers battling each other at the negotiating table with the fate of the nation in the balance.

And at the centre of it all was Edmonton. Its football team, its premier – both of whom carried a swagger that would ultimately make Canadian history.

Full Press Release
Edmonton Journal Article