Courtesy The Globe and Mail:

When Don Matthews stopped coaching the Montreal Alouettes on Oct. 4, 2006, it was almost as if the CFL coaching legend vanished.

And since that day when Alouettes players arrived at practice to learn their coach had resigned without warning, Matthews has been completely out of sight from the football world at his home in Oregon.

But on May 16 in Ottawa, Matthews will make his first public appearance in 19 months when he attends a luncheon organized by Jeff Hunt, the local entrepreneur who heads up the city’s expansion ownership group.

Such an occasion, with Alouettes president Larry Smith as the guest speaker, might seem an odd way for Matthews to end his exile. But it turns out he and Hunt have been spending a lot of time together on the telephone since the CFL granted Ottawa a conditional expansion franchise in March.
Montreal Alouettes head coach Don Matthews adjusts his CFL Eastern Conference championship hat after the game against the Toronto Argonauts in Toronto, Nov. 20, 2005.

“As we’ve been going through this process, I have found it necessary to have people to call upon for advice and guidance,” Hunt said. “A mutual friend hooked me up with Don and we had a couple of conversations which I found very helpful and in the process we started up a bit of a friendship. When he heard about the event I was having with the Montreal Alouettes and Larry Smith, he offered to come up to lend his support to the Ottawa initiative to come back to the CFL and the Alouettes hosting this year’s Grey Cup.”

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