City’s lack of interest doesn’t spoil fans’ party
After all this week’s bellyaching about how Toronto couldn’t bring itself to get into the Grey Cup with the same enthusiasm as other Canadian cities, the big day got here and people in Toronto partied accordingly — even if it wasn’t necessarily Toronto doing all the partying.
Indeed, although Toronto Argonauts gear was well represented during pre-game events in and around Sunday night’s final CFL matchup of 2016 between the Calgary Stampeders and the Ottawa Redblacks at BMO Field, local Grey Cup celebrations seemed to be getting their biggest jolt of energy from other points around the country.
“We’ve run into nothing but lovely people. Toronto’s been great. But honestly, to go to a sports bar and have them ask you ‘Is there a football game going on?’ you kinda realize the city’s not aware, right?” said Gabby Amero, a Calgary resident temporarily putting aside her Stampeders fanhood to have a couple of cocktails with old pals in Redblacks jerseys at the “VIP Warmup Party” at Muzik nightclub on the CNE grounds.
“Just to give you an example, we came here by Uber and our Uber driver had no concept that there was a special football game tonight,” offered her pal Monty Montgomery, from Ottawa. “He knew there was a game, that’s it.”
“Yeah, two staff members here asked me who was playing,” chimed in R.J. Walsh, another Ottawa fan at the table, nevertheless adding that while he wished Toronto “would have stepped up more, just as city,” he got what the Grey Cup was up against. “It’s understandable, too. You’ve got the Leafs, you’ve got the Blue Jays, you’ve got the Raptors, you’ve got the CFL. There’s a lot of competition in Toronto that other Canadian cities don’t have.”
Enthusiasm for the Grey Cup appeared to peter out the further one got from BMO Field, however.
The bars in nearby Liberty Village were predictably hopping pre-game, but of five surveyed at halftime only one looked even one-third full.
A quick tour of normally sports-friendly establishments in the vicinity on King, Queen, Dundas and College Streets — 10 were visited in all — demonstrated a fairly noncommittal attitude towards the game on downtown Toronto’s part. Most were nearly empty, in fact, in stark contrast to the standing-room-only attendance they enjoyed during events like the Euro Cup and the Blue Jays’ recent playoff run.
Backstage while a small crowd gradually trickled into Muzik for his afternoon performance, Halifax rocker Joel Plaskett himself confessed he wasn’t the world’s biggest CFL fan (“For me the sport that I’ve gravitated to because I’m so tall and skinny is basketball,” he said, “but I like the finals of anything”) but felt confident that his easy-fit brand of classic-rawkin’ Canadiana might actually go over pretty well with the room.
“It’s a bit of a high ticket so I don’t know if my fans are comin’,” he said. “It’s CFL fans, though, a lot of whom I’m sure are probably rock-music fans and we play rock music so I figure it’ll put me in front of some people who’ve never seen me before ...
“They look like really nice folks out there and they’re probably coming from all over and they’re, like, ‘Let’s go down here and check this out be- fore the game’ and they‘re making a day of it. So we’re part of the day of it.”
Everyone seemed to be making do with the fun at their disposal down on the Exhibition properties on Sunday, regardless of whether they’d landed at Muzik’s $175-a-head preparty with Plaskett or the scattered, slightly more “traditional” tailgaters going on with no major discernible interference from the local constabulary in the other parking lots around the stadium.
“Basically, the Grey Cup is a big, unifying national party and you see people you see once a year and you hug, you high-five and you’re best friends for five days and then you don’t see them again for 360 days,” said Dave Hanni, in from Medicine Hat, Alta., for the weekend. “It’s like adult Halloween, basically. You can leave the wife and kids at home and just come out and light it up.”