Hold one, and THEY WILL COME
Colin Bartman captures it in one sentence.
“You see these people once a year and it’s like you saw them yesterday morning.”
The Edmonton native is one of hundreds and hundreds of Canadians — and a few Americans, too, a
Baltimore Stallions’ two years in the CFL — who are part of a durable national subculture.
They are the CFL fans who travel to the Grey Cup every year, no matter where it is and whether or not their own team is in the game.
The football component is clearly important to them, but the real magnets are all off the field. In the hotel lobbies, at the large musicdriven spirit rooms that most CFL cities — the teams or standalone committees — set up during Grey Cup week. At the consensus placeto-be local bar. At hangover-heavy morning breakfasts sponsored by the Spirit of Edmonton or the Calgary Grey Cup Committee. On the downtown streets. In the stadium concourses.
For them, it’s a social and cultural festival, the Woodstock of three downs, an annual phenomenon of familiar and instantly renewable They dress for it sportfriendships. ing buttons and scarves, Grey Cup merchandise, or their own team colours, or all of the above. It’s Canadiana in nine jerseys, Confederation with some of the regional ge but none of the rancour. What residents of each host city discover by Grey Cup Saturday night, these nomads discovered long ago: when Canadians get together, and do it right, our differences can be unifying rather than separating.
“I have a friend who calls it The Grand National Drunk, but all jokes aside it really is a big national party. It is what every other professional sports championship weeks aspire to be. Because 73 years ago, a bunch of celebratory Calgarians trained and partied all the way to Toronto rode a horse into the hotel loband by,” says Connie Fekete, of Calgary. “It’s a CFL family reunion and there’s a group of people I generally only see at a Grey Cup.”
Fekete and Bartman will both arrive in Hamilton Thursday, and so will many of the friends from across the country they’ve each made over Grey Cup trips — the last doztheir en for Fekete, and for Bartman, from 1984-89, and every one since 1
The pandemic pushed the date back three weeks, forced a scaleddown social agenda, and caused uncertainties around travel restrictions and stadium capacity. But the annual caravan is expected to resume in full force for next year in Regina and 2023 back in Hamilton.
“It won’t be quite the same, but it’ll still be fun. It’s always fun,” says Fekete, 51, who will join friends Tanya Zolis and Belinda (Bo) Mitchell at the Grey Cup. “This is our big ‘girls trip’ every year. We go to the Grey Cup.”
Bartman, who’s retired from his first career at a chemical plant and his second as a cabinet maker, starting taking his 18-year-old son, Bryan, an will with be him here in 2007. this week, Now 35, as Bryaa will Bartman’s close friend and Grey Cup travelling partner Claude Chamberland.
The seed of Grey Cup travel often gets planted while fans are supporting the hometown team or attending a Grey Cup hosted in their own city. When Bartman was 14 and already a big Edmonton CFL fan, his uncle took him to the Grey Cup game in Calgary. Feteke, who is a loyal Stampeders’ supporter, started at the 2009 Grey Cup in Calgary and revelled in archrival Saskatchewan losing on the infamous 13thman penalty. In 2019, in Calgary The Spectator encountered a number of fans in their 20s who had decided to travel to the Grey Cup because they’d become enamoured with the 15-3 Ticats and of the atmosphere at Tim Hortons Field.
“We’ll get to see the Box J Boys in Hamilton,” Bartman says. “There won’t be as many spirit rooms as usual, but it is what you make it. I told the ticket guy that I’ve never been to a Grey Cup in Hamilton and he said, ‘Because we haven’t had it in 25 years!’ And now you’re going to get two out of the next three.”
Feteke sums it up this way: “I don’t know that if you’re a Canadian, and you are a football fan, that you can get through life without
oing to a Grey Cup at least once.”
‘‘ It is what every other professional sports championship weeks aspire to be.
CONNIE FEKETE ON ATTENDING THE GREY CUP