CFL’s game ‘a mirror of what our country is all about’
Grey Cup tradition has woven its way into fabric of our nation
One of my earliest Grey Cup memories was of Russ Jackson quarterbacking the Ottawa Rough Riders to victory against a team I hated: the Saskatchewan Roughriders of Ronnie Lancaster and George Reed.
The Roughriders hadn’t done anything especially evil, but my mind ranked them low because they always seem to beat my beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers, so I was happy when Ottawa won 29-11 at the Autostade in Montreal on Nov. 30, 1969.
Those same sentiments remained seven years later, so I was equally satisfied when the last-minute touchdown pass from Tom Clements to Tony Gabriel gave the Rough Riders a 23-20 triumph at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium.
Younger fans may someday share a first Grey Cup memory of Ernest Jackson’s juggling catch of a Henry Burris pass for the overtime touchdown that lifted the Redblacks past the heavily favoured Calgary Stampeders 39-33 in Toronto last Nov. 27.
Coincidentally, I know an Ottawa guy named Linas Pilypaitis who was in the stands for both Clements-to-Gabriel and Burris-to-Jackson. How’s that for memorable?
The point is this: Everyone has a Grey Cup memory.
Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell says Grey Cup week is on the schedule “because of a football game on Sunday. But, when you experience this week, you see that it’s bigger than that. It’s really about Canada and all the people in Canada. You see people from all over this country celebrating Canadian football, but also celebrating Canada.”
Burris, who overcame a pregame knee injury before the Redblacks defeated the Stampeders last year, retired as a player two months later, making his last pass ever a Grey Cup winner.
“To me, the CFL game is a mirror of what our great country is all about,” Burris, an Oklahoma native and now permanent resident of Canada, said this week.
“We are people that don’t ask for a lot. All we want is love, all we want is something that we can have a passion for and all we want to do is to enjoy life together.
“That’s why we come together once a year to celebrate what to me is the greatest game on the planet. To see people coming from coast to coast, wearing their different colours and cheering on their teams, simply just to get together with friends, just coming out and enjoying this once-ayear event.”
Then there’s Tyler Holmes, born four months before the 1988 Grey Cup game in the national capital and absent from the most recent, in 2004, when he was a Merivale High School student. Now he’s a fifth-year offensive lineman with the Toronto Argonauts heading into his first CFL championship contest against the Stampeders on Sunday night.
“My wife and I are both from Ottawa, so (it’s nice) getting to play in front of family so they don’t have to travel to see us,” Holmes said Thursday.
“I have a lot of friends here that get to see me play and a lot of people that helped me along the way to get to where I am, so it’s great to be able to play in the city.”
The Stamps have two players from the capital region on their roster: defensive back/linebacker/returner Tunde Adeleke of Ottawa and fullback William Langlais of Aylmer.
“It’s exciting to see the impact of the CFL on the whole city and the fans coming from different parts of Canada to watch the game,” Adeleke said. “It’s great to see the fans come in, and the whole aspect of the Grey Cup, but, at the same time, I have to keep my attention on the game, so I try not to pay attention to all that.”
Langlais’s dad attended last year’s Cup in Toronto, but his mom also has a ticket for this year’s contest in Ottawa.
“Now that I’ve experienced it, of course it’s way different,” said Langlais, 27, whose earliest Grey Cup memory was watching his favourites, the Montreal Alouettes, with his father when he was eight or nine. “It’s still fun, but it’s more preparation, more focus. There’s some stuff you’ve got to make to win the big game. You’ve got to be willing to make the sacrifices, yeah, that’s it, but it’s still fun. The process is still fun. It’s just a little more work than just watching the game.”
Blue Bombers running back Andrew Harris caught Grey Cup fever in 2006, when his father took the Winnipeg native to see the B.C. Lions defeat the Montreal Alouettes 25-14. His most impactful experience, though, came as a second-year CFLer in 2011, when the hometown Lions downed the Blue Bombers 34-23 at B.C. Place stadium.
“I don’t think you realize what type of atmosphere Grey Cups are until you actually go to one. I went to that one in 2006 and then played at it in 2011 as a player and went on to win the game,” Harris said Wednesday.
“After going through that, I remember coming back to my hotel after the game and just being completely exhausted and overwhelmed. … The whole week leading up to it, all the media, all the appearances, all the things going on, it just adds to the whole experience, and it’s definitely one I’ll never forget.”
The Redblacks’ Brad Sinopoli has had Grey Cup highs, lows and sugar rushes. He was then a third-string quarterback when the Stampeders lost 35-22 to the host Argonauts in 2012, and, after shifting to receiver, missed Calgary’s 20-16 triumph against Hamilton at Vancouver in 2014 because of injury.
However, he twice returned to the CFL’s showcase event as a Redblack, enduring their 26-20 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos at Winnipeg in 2015 and savouring the high from last November’s win against the Stamps.
Sinopoli received the game’s outstanding Canadian player award after catching six passes for 94 yards.
“You walk (around) Grey Cup week and you see guys with capes on with all the different teams on their capes and just celebrating the league. It’s just a celebration of people who love football, love the Canadian game and they all come together and enjoy the week,” Sinopoli said Wednesday.
“We were just a football family. My mom is a huge fan. She’d bake a Grey Cup cake every year . ... My dad, obviously, was a coach and a player. You just feel the passion they had for the game.”
That shared passion was on full display when I visited the Grey Cup fan zone Thursday.
Before the day’s first fan shuttle bus headed toward Lansdowne Park, I stood among people in the colours of B.C., Calgary, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg. On Elgin Street, the bus rolled past two Tiger-Cats fans.
In what would have been the shadow of the stadium if not for thick clouds, Margaret Brunet of Medicine Hat, Alta., wore a green Roughriders cap, Ben Penate of Vancouver an orange Lions jersey, and a gang of eight donned “posse coats” in tribute to the Blue Bombers, Stampeders and Ticats. One woman also wore a button supporting the longdefunct Baltimore Stallions and a second saying, “Argos Suck,” no further explanation required.
Serina Tourangeau, a youthful resident of Burlington, Ont., is also in Ottawa for what is only her second Grey Cup week family excursion. Her first was five years ago in Toronto.
Tourangeau conceded that experiencing Grey Cup firsthand has changed her perception of it.
“Before I started, it was, ‘Ahhh … Grey Cup … it doesn’t matter. It’s a Canadian team,’” she said before attending a Friday morning fan forum with CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie at the Shaw Centre. “But, once you actually get into it and get the entire experience, it’s so much better, and it becomes so much more.”
As for Doug Oneschuk, Grey Cup week has a more personal tone. His father, Steve, was a CFL champion in 1957 as a halfback and kicker for the Tiger-Cats.
“His name is on the Grey Cup, which I saw once,” Oneschuk said. “So, it’s a family thing. My kids played football, I coached football. It’s more than football, it’s a … geez … an emotion. It brings back memories. It’s something that we really take part in, not playing football, but we’re part of the whole experience.”
Maybe, then, the best way to describe Grey Cup is that it means as much or more to the people in the stands and watching on television or the internet than to those few individuals between and on the sidelines.
It’s an idea worth considering, don’t you think?