Jacques Chapdelaine first came to Burnaby as a starry-eyed 18-year old some time ago. He returns as the SFU football team’s new head coach this year, almost 34 years after first stepping onto Terry Fox Field.
Then, he was a slotback for the Clan — and things were quite different in 1980. Mount St. Helens had just erupted, Quebec barely remained part of Canada, and you could still smoke on an airplane.
“I remember sitting in the non-smoking area, which was immediately behind the smoking section,” says Chapdelaine, of his first trip to both Simon Fraser University and the West Coast. “I was thinking how, in a plane going some 700 miles per hour, is smoke not coming into the non-smoking section?”
Chapdelaine ended up on that plane after committing to SFU without ever having visited the campus. “It was an interesting process,” says the Sherbrooke, Quebec native. “I went to an evaluation camp with the [CFL’s] Montreal Alouettes way back in the day, put together [to showcase] players as a recruiting tool.
“The only school that contacted me was Simon Fraser, and that was all I needed to hear.”
“The only school that contacted me was Simon Fraser, and that was all I needed to hear.” – Jacques Chapdelaine
Chapdelaine freely admits it took longer than he would’ve liked for his college career to get going: “The first few games I didn’t play, so that wasn’t so good,” he laughs. “But when I finally got on the roster, it was [better]. It was a great decision at the time, and I’ve never regretted it.”
He has little reason to. After starring as a receiver for SFU, he was drafted fifth overall by the BC Lions in the 1983 Canadian Football League (CFL) draft. Despite an up-and-down playing career, he excelled on the sidelines as a coach of several teams at varying levels.
Chapdelaine has over 20 years of CFL coaching experience, but in 1999, as head coach of the University of Laval Rouge-et-Or, Chapdelaine took the school — now one of the premier programs in Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) — to its first Vanier Cup title. He also has three Grey Cups to his name, the most recent as offensive coordinator of the BC Lions in 2011, a position he held from 2010-13.
Needless to say, winning is something Chapdelaine has grown accustomed to.
The same can’t be said for the team he joins, however. The Clan football program is at a precarious point in its development, having stagnated somewhat last season after exceeding expectations in 2012. Dave Johnson, who Chapdelaine is replacing, had gone just 20–44–1 in seven seasons as the Clan’s head coach, split between the NCAA and CIS.
Clan fans are hungry for a winning season and Chapdelaine believes this year could be the year. “I really think we have the ability to have a winning record,” he says, cautiously. “I think we can challenge and compete to be at the top of the conference, but so many things have to fall into place for that to happen. [We] have to have a little luck on our side.
“It doesn’t help when we get 11 guys to run at each other and see who’s going to come out healthy.”
He’s not speaking out of hand, either. Chapdelaine studied the Clan thoroughly throughout the hiring process, and is familiar with the type of competition his squad will face. For instance, BC Lion linebacker Adam Bighill, who joined the Lions during Chapdelaine’s tenure with the team, is a two-time CFL all-star and played for Central Washington University, one of the Clan’s biggest conference rivals.
Clan fans are hungry for a winning season and Chapdelaine believes this year could be the year.
“Throughout the process, I had a fairly solid understanding of the calibre of the conference, of the skill that’s here at SFU [. . .] and perhaps even some of the things I’d look at changing,” he says.
Members of the SFU football program have been preaching a need for change for a long while. Chapdelaine’s winning experience could be the life raft for a program that’s been treading water for too long, but it was a loss that spurred on the decision.
Chapdelaine’s Lions’ season ended in a 29–25 defeat at the hands of the Saskatchewan Roughriders during the West Semi-Final in Regina. “We were chartering back to BC [after the loss], and actually an SFU alum, [TSN’s] Farhan Lalji, was sitting right behind me [. . .] He told me the SFU job had opened up, and he knew I had an interest in college jobs in the past, so I took some time to think about things.”
The Lions’ last game was on Nov. 10. Three-plus weeks later, and Chapdelaine had left the club. On Feb. 4, Chapdelaine was hired as head coach of the Clan.
Apparently, there’s something about this guy and fateful flights out West.
