For Lori Cosh, visiting the old Mosaic Stadium to claim her piece of history, a bench, was nostalgic.
“My kids grew up on these benches. When we first started coming, we had three babies, basically, came with two diaper bags. Now we buy them beer,” Cosh said.
Most of the stadium has been auctioned off, including turf, benches and signs.
“The hundreds of stories that you hear, of people coming in here who have been in those seats for 50 years, the signs they’ve always wanted. They had a chance to buy it and did buy it,” Dwayne Bender, McDougall Auctions’ spokesman, said.
Cosh used to drive for ten hours on game day from her home in Macklin, Sask.
“When the auction started, I said I don’t care what happens, I want my bench,” Cosh said. “This was our second home.”
“Someone tried to outbid me with eight minutes left in the auction, so I put in a bid of a hundred bucks,” she said.
She got it.
“We’re going to make a smaller bench and on game days when it’s away, we’ll pull the bench up to the TV, and the kids can watch the game on the bench,” she said.
Those who bought a bench can pay a fee for its removal or sign a waiver and get the tools out.
“They’re pretty stuck into the concrete,” Rider fan Shane Keller said. “I know a lot of people who thought you’d just pick them up to go or a ratchet wrench to get them out, but a lot of them are permanently on there.”
“They’re heavy old wood seats, you don’t think about it sitting on them. They have a lot of years.”
The city doesn’t know how much it made from the auction yet, but the proceeds will go towards the demolition of the old stadium, Jill Hargrove, City of Regina’s facility management services director, said.
“There will be no wrecking ball. There will be no implosion. Certainly we have to respect the integrity of the stadium, and the east and west side will come down in pieces very much like how it was built,” Hargrove said.
The money from the auction will be split between the Roughriders, the city and the auctioneer, she said.
The jumbotron was sold for $100, but its removal costs thousands, Bender said.
As for Cosh, she’s happy the Taylor Field story will live on around the province.
“It was hard saying good-bye that last game, but it’s good, the new one’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that that’s ours.”
The final collection day is Aug. 31.
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