Snowy finish to a classic Grey Cup week in Ottawa
The 105th Grey Cup, a snow bowl special, is in the books, and not a moment too soon for certain allin participants.
The game itself will be remembered mostly for the snow and the arrival of halftime performer Shania Twain by dogsled. We’d have been more impressed if she’d travelled all the way from her native Timmins instead of the sidelines.
For some the Grey Cup is a one-day event. Nacho chips and a football game. For a select few thousand lifers it is an exhilarating, exhausting marathon party for the better part of a week.
Luckily, they have a year to recover before the chaos moves to Edmonton in 2018. The green masses from Saskatchewan will appreciate the proximity.
Hockey so dominates Canada’s culture that governor general Earl Grey’s Cup was meant to be a senior hockey trophy in 1909, but when the Allan Cup beat him to it, the Grey Cup became a football trophy.
Canada has revelled in its shiny glare ever since, although the party portion — the Cup festival — has been taken to another level in the past couple of decades.
Hockey may be Canada’s lifeblood, but with its back-andforth playoff series, it doesn’t sit still long enough to savour the flavour like the Grey Cup, the pause that plays havoc with livers.
No home team in the game? No problem. The party and concert halls rocked all week, leading up to Sunday’s tailgate events. Nowhere else do rival fans cavort so peaceably — weaving in their cups but friendly — in the name of this tradition.
Along with Cup Sunday’s official parties, where the Flutie Bros. were performing to VIP entrants, there were outbreaks of old-fashioned street tailgates.
A few hours before kickoff, we stopped by one on Thornton Avenue, about a football field away from the stadium, where the smell of fresh barbecue was drawing a willing crowd.
Neil Greene, one of the party proprietors, was entertaining guests around his reconfigured fire wagon, decorated inside in an Ottawa Senators motif, galley table included. Near the truck, an open fire burned.
Al Charron, recently inducted into the world rugby hall of fame, was just one of the familiar faces from the local sporting community who stopped in for pre-game nourishment.
And hey — wasn’t that Lucky Ron of the Château Laf fame belting out warm tunes on a chill afternoon?
Every 13 years or so — or however much time passes between Ottawa Grey Cups, they stage this party, firing up the smokers for the Welland sausages (no filler), myriad pounds of chicken and Arctic char, a tradition in honour of a late friend who always cooked the fish. Home made soup was also on the menu.
“It’s a real community event, that’s what makes it unique,” said Greene, beaming beneath his lumberjack cap. “Lucky Ron is a huge addition.”
Greene and associates expect to party outdoors again in a couple of weeks — for the NHL 100 Classic between the Senators and Montreal Canadiens at TD Place. Bets are off on the weather in store for Dec. 16, but stadium shovellers are in mid-season form after Sunday’s workout.
As much as anything, having the Grey Cup in Ottawa is a solid reason for celebrating Ottawa’s football history.
On the morning of the game, two Ottawa stalwarts were inducted into the Football Reporters of Canada Hall of Fame, although not before laughter ensued.
The late Ernie Calcutt, aka the Big Ern, and current Redblacks colour analyst Jeff Avery were honoured at the annual FRC breakfast.
Dave “The Voice” Schreiber recalled the time in 1980 that Calcutt was doing the play-byplay of what seemed a certain Rough Riders defeat, what with the Riders needing a last-second, 52-yard field goal, on a muddy Lansdowne field, to secure a playoff position for Ottawa.
“If Gerry Organ makes this field goal, in these conditions, the sun will rise in the west, and I’ll do a handstand off the top of the Peace Tower,” vowed Ernie.
Naturally, Organ made the FG, with Avery as the holder. As Schreiber recalls, first hand, “Ernie’s handstand off the top of the Peace Tower became a headstand on the Sparks Street Mall at noon hour, with Don Holtlby and I holding up his legs.”
Thirty-seven years later, we’re still waiting on that sunrise from the west.
Avery, who says he got into the broadcast business after a couple of beers at Hurley’s with Dean Brown in 1988, worked with some greats in Brown, Schreiber and now A.J. Jakubec.
Almost poetically, Avery was involved in all three Cup moments up for discussion Sunday — the Calcutt call, the Clements-to-Gabriel Grey Cup pass in 1976 (rookie Avery was the first to celebrate with Gabriel on the field) and the Redblacks second-and-25 miracle play of 2015, called by Jakubec and Avery in the booth at TD Place.
That play — a playoff launch, ended a run of horrible misfortune for Ottawa football — bad teams, two dead franchises for 15 dormant years, when the Grey Cup was an impossible dream.
In 2016, the Redblacks brought the Cup home.
This year RNation welcomed the nation.