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An all-Canadian offensive line? It just doesn’t happen in the CFL, right?

It has happened, it does happen … and it will happen, again. The Ottawa Redblacks will go into Calgary to face the Stampeders in their regular-season opener Saturday with each of their five offensive linemen carrying Canadian passports. From left to right, it’ll be Mark Korte, Evan Johnson, Alex Mateas, Nolan MacMillan and Jason Lauzon-Seguin. While there’s skepticism from the outside, the Redblacks are confident it’s a solid plan.

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“I don’t want to get into any dissertation on it,” said Redblacks coach Rick Campbell, who suggested it’s sometimes a money issue where, because of the salary cap, it’s difficult to line up five Canadians at the position. “I don’t want to get on a tangent. It’s not really a talent issue, sometimes it just doesn’t work out where you can afford to pay all those guys.”

GM Marcel Desjardins remembers it working very well for the Montreal Alouettes when he was the assistant GM there. “We had (Jeff) Perrett and (Josh) Bourke at the tackles, we had (Bryan) Chiu, we had (Scott) Flory, we had Paul Lambert.”