VANCOUVER -- The flight arrives tomorrow from Houston and Ezra Landry can't wait.
Since September, when they lost their home, their spartan real estate holdings and their business in New Orleans, his parents have been passed around from city to city, relative to relative.
"There are no possessions anymore," the smallest man in the Canadian Football League was explaining yesterday with deep emotion. "There is just family."
Ezra Landry, the Montreal Alouettes dynamic kick returner, left the team in a nearly frantic state less than three months ago, and even now he can't comprehend all the damage of Hurricane Katrina and how that has changed his life. The Grey Cup is his focus now ... but only now.
His home is gone. His parents' home is gone. His hair salon is gone. His friends are scattered throughout the south. The only place he has ever lived, ever really known, is in his words, "a ghost town."
Landry left the Alouettes and tried make his way home in early September. He was watching CNN from his Montreal apartment and saw a street deep in water.
"I saw the sign. I knew the street. It was three blocks from my house," he said.
"You don't know what that feels like, seeing your neighborhood on TV like that."
He doesn't know what his house looks like anymore. He doesn't know if he has a house.
When he left the team before a game against Ottawa, Landry attempted to make his way from Montreal to New Orleans but wasn't allowed in the city. No one was at the time. His parents were safe, but his grandmother was still missing.
"You don't know what that feels like," he said.
So he started driving and searching, searching and driving. The phones weren't working. The cell phones weren't connecting. Only a walkie-talkie system he had seemed to be able to communicate with some people he knew.
He drove to Baton Rouge and to Dallas and to Houston and finally met up with his grandmother, who was living in the Astrodome, but was unable to communicate with the rest of the family before then.
"It wasn't just my parents. It was my grandmother, it was my whole family. it was all my friends. All the people I love," Landry said.
"I come from a praying background and I did a lot of praying.
"When I saw my parents' faces in Dallas and I saw how much they lit up, I knew I did the right thing going home," he said. "I'm an only child. We're a very close family."
He knew he had to leave in the middle of the season and the Alouettes knew it also. They encouraged him to go home.
"I'm pretty well-known in New Orleans you know," said the 5-foot-5, 155-pound Landry. "I was a big high school player there and I played my college (at Southern University) 45 minutes away. Everybody knows me in New Orleans.
"New Orleans is an amazing city. It has everything -- great food, great jazz, great nightlife, no rules. I've been privileged to travel a lot, but it's the only place I want to live.
"I just don't know if we'll ever get back there again."
He doesn't know what he has left, doesn't know how much insurance coverage he will qualify for.
"When I get home, my mom tells me I've got lots of phone calls to make, lots of issues to deal with," he said.
But first comes his maiden Grey Cup voyage. The game on Sunday between Montreal and the Edmonton Eskimos. Mom and dad are on the way.
He is playing against the same Eskies team that a year ago couldn't find a way to put him on their active roster. They tried to hide him on their practice squad but, as small as he may be, Alouettes' general manager Jim Popp found a way to rescue him and give him a shot.
Born then was the professional career of one of the CFL's most exciting players.
"Who knows?" said Landry, trying to be philosophical. "The worst year of my life could end up being the best year, a year to remember. This is the Grey Cup, this is all that matters right now.
"My family is coming and we're going to the Grey Cup. What could be better than that?"
