The number 13 and saskatchewan seem to have a perverse attraction to each other.

Every Canadian Football League fan knows the heartbreaking story of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ last-second defeat at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes in the 2009 Grey Cup game at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium.

In fact, the ‘Riders had actually won the game. Time had expired on the official game time clock – except for the referee’s flag for “too many men”: 13, to be exact. That’s one more than the 12 players each team can have on the field at any given time.

Because no CFL game can end on a penalty, Alouettes kicker Damon Duval attempted his second kick with zero seconds on the clock. And, well… the rest is history. Saskatchewan snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, losing 28-27 – and all because of the 13th man!

But the 13th man is also the ‘Riders’ unofficial nickname for any rabid ‘Riders fan throughout the country, better known as Rider Nation. The number 13 is emblazoned on the back of the ‘Riders’ mascot, Gainer the Gopher, as well as on the jerseys of countless fans.

And far from trying to avoid the number, ‘Rider president and CEO Jim Hopson has positively embraced the damnable digits in the Roughriders’ marketing campaign. In what might be seen as an act of hubris, Hopson succeeded in bringing the Grey Cup to Saskatchewan in 2013, presumably hoping to extinguish the curse for all time.

Should the ‘Riders (who last won the Grey Cup in 2007, and lost in 2009 and 2010) actually get to the 2013 championship game in Regina and win, 13 would indeed become a lucky number for Saskatchewan.

Of course, Saskatchewan residents have many other reasons to feel that 2013 could be their lucky year. The weeklong Grey Cup Festival alone will generate an estimated $123 million for Regina and the province as a whole.

Coming off a year in which the province broke records for population, job growth and capital investment, and was first or second in the nation in housing starts, retail sales, manufacturing sales, wage growth and unemployment, Saskatchewanians have good reason to feel optimistic about 2013.

Based on the average among seven major forecasters, Saskatchewan is expected to have the second-fastest growing economy in 2013, with a growth rate of slightly less than 3%. The Conference Board of Canada is picking Saskatchewan to have the best performance among the provinces this year, with GDP growth of 3.4%.

Said provincial Economy Minister Bill Boyd in his yearend statement: “Saskatchewan’s economy was the envy of nearly every Canadian province in 2012, with more jobs, more people to fill those jobs and record levels of new investment coming into the province.

“Although some of the final data for 2012 has yet to come in,” he added, “2013 looks to be very promising for the Saskatchewan economy, with solid growth expected.”

Now, if only the ‘Riders could win the Grey Cup at home in front of 45,000 hysterical fans (and millions more on the tube), 2013 could be one of the luckiest years on record for Saskatchewan.

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