A touch of green and gold gets city’s Grey Cup bash rocking
Spirit of Edmonton hosts unofficial kickoff to celebrations
It’s beginning to feel a lot like ... Grey Cup.
The Spirit of Edmonton saw to that. This plucky group of Albertans are painting the town, not red, but green and gold, the colour of their beloved Elks (the gridiron artists formerly known as Eskimos), but every hue and pigment of the football spectrum was proudly emblazoned upon all manner of scarf, T-shirt, hat and other attire at the first bona fide Grey Cup Week party of this, the 108th.
Even the hated Cambridge blue of the team at the other end of the QEW was not being hidden shyly.
“You can’t print what I was told to do with my scarf,” said Argonauts fan Rob Aguis, in unapologetic (and why not?) Argos neckwear and hat.
“Someone suggested I wet it with ...” — we’ll leave it to your imagination.
He attended the famous annual Grey Cup Spirit of Edmonton party Thursday, held at Industria
Pizzeria on John Street South. His friend Tyler Atkinson was there in Argos jersey.
“(The insults) are all part of the rivalry,” said Tyler, who was at the East final last weekend. “We all missed last year when there was no football.” So, now is a time to be grateful, he said. “I’m rooting for the Ticats (in the Grey Cup game),” he admitted. “I’m glad you said it first,” chimed in Rob, also rooting for the Ticats. No bitterness.
This, said Spirit of Edmonton co-chair Mark Curtis, is the spirit of the Spirit of Edmonton, a party that fans from Alberta’s capital have been throwing at Grey Cups since 1974, regardless of the host city or the teams in the game.
“Ticat and Argo fans laughing together, the whole country coming together. That’s the CFL. That’s the Grey Cup,” he explained.
The beer and music were flowing as fans and partiers made a mighty noise at Industria, especially after the B.C.based Booze Brothers, in their black suits and black fedoras and sunglasses, Elwood-andJake-ed their way into the room with rousing cheers.
The party started with MC Hammer’s signature “Can’t Touch This,” playing on the PA, with Julie O’Connor and Ken Thomas, in from Vancouver, cutting it up on the dance floor, Julie’s jacket having “Hammer Time” written across the hem.
“My clan (the O’Connors) landed in Hamilton from Ireland,
and my dad was born here,” she explained, but work brought dad to Edmonton and the whole family is crazy lifelong for green and gold. Julie and Ken, an army brat who moved around but spent formative years in Edmonton, have season’s tickets for the Lions games but they’re still diehard Elks fans.
The place was crawling with Ticats fans but, really, you had to say it was a west side story, as Alberta was “representing.”
A west side story where the
Jets and Sharks all got along, and the Lions lay down with the ... lambs? ... Elks?
If white is the combination of all the other colours, I guess Grey is the combination of all the CFL colours, harmonizing, not clashing as they do on the field, and even some outliers — Wally Walker, huge Ticat fan, was there in his Dick Tracy yellows — and even that other hated blue, of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
But no room for hate at the Spirit of Edmonton party.
All were in good cheer, or else fond reflection — Jim Cimba, from the Tiger Town Council was there, with friend Tom Hart, remembering Angelo.
And Brian Melo gave a live knockout performance and even took time between songs to make a prediction for me — final score 27-20. But for whom?
“Ticats, of course.”
We’ll see.