Grey Cup vow remains intact after 30 years
CFL title games remain a special time for father, daughter to bond
When Harold Gutek’s 10-year-old daughter Patti was paralyzed in a ski accident three decades ago, he turned to football to ease her pain.
“She was injured and in the hospital and I wanted to do something that would take her out of her depression,” said Calgarian Gutek.
“I said, ‘We’ll go to every Grey Cup game, we won’t miss any,’ and I’ve honoured that.”
This year’s Grey Cup in Toronto will mark the 30th year Gutek and his extended family have made the annual trek.
“Patti’s only missed one year ... it’s been an interesting journey.”
Those trips have been a comingof-age saga, says Gutek’s daughter Patti Peck.
When she and her sister were small, they were fun, short getaways “and when you’re a teenager, you like the parties and now that we’re older, it’s like a reunion,” she says.
“It’s been awesome — not many people take their kids, it’s more of a guys’ trip.”
Those pilgrimages have included pushing his daughter’s wheelchair through the revelry of an impromptu Grey Cup parade along downtown Toronto streets in 1992 — one that Gutek was instrumental in sparking.
The hosts had cancelled the official parade.
An initial crowd of about 100 snowballed into considerably more marchers that ended up at some kind of party, involving a horse, he said.
“We preserved the tradition ... it was at a time when they didn’t have issues of security and you could do something like that,” said Gutek, 70.
That was the year the Doug Flutie-led Stampeders defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 24-10.
Gutek recalls the flight back to Calgary and sharing the plane with the triumphant Stampeder players.
“They relived every play for us and Flutie was climbing around in his stocking feet like a cat,” he said.
Probably the most memorable Grey Cup for the Saskatchewan native was witnessing the province’s beloved Roughriders win the game in 1989 in Toronto after 23 years without drinking from the Cup.
“They were coming out of that long, long drought,” he said.
Gutek said the weather was so bad during the 1996 game in Hamilton, they fled the stadium to watch the second half in their hotel.
And he emphasizes he’s no sports homer, insisting Edmonton’s contingent throws the best Grey Cup parties.
“They don’t charge and they’ve got the best bands,” said Gutek, adding at one festival, the Edmonton hosts loaded up their breakfast orange juice with vodka.
“We didn’t find that out until later when we asked them,” he said.
It’s those social aspects of the festival that always trumps the charms of the actual game, said Gutek, 70.
Peck says the best Grey Cup town has been Winnipeg — a city she’d never have visited if it weren’t for the game.
“Winnipeg’s Grey Cup was always the most fun — it was a good balance of partying and the best music,” she said.
The tradition has continued with her own family, with her three children becoming Grey Cup regulars.
“And we’ve got friends who’ve picked up the tradition,” she said.
She was injured and in the hospital and I wanted to do something that would take her out of her depression.