Ackie returning to Montreal Alouettes
Cambridge native prepares for life after football during shutdown
The stadium lights will eventually go dark and the football career will come to an end.
Chris Ackie isn’t there yet, but the personable Cambridge native took advantage of last year’s COVID-19 shutdown to prepare for the inevitable.
With an end goal of working in the financial industry, Ackie put his mind to good use when he wasn’t training or performing community work with the Toronto Argonauts, a team he signed with last winter but didn’t see action with because of the pandemic.
“I know some guys might have struggled with missing the season, but it was nice because it gave me a lot of time to focus on other things. I did a financial designation, I did a couple of other courses, I did my CSC (Canadian Securities Course), and I want to work on my CIM (Chartered Investment Manager) next,” the 29-year-old Ackie said during a break from his current job as associate commercial director for InfoTech Research Group in Toronto.
“And even though it was a COVID summer, it was my first summer off since high school and it gave me a chance to do a lot of outdoor sports, enjoy myself. I played a lot of basketball, beach volleyball, a lot of fun activities.”
Ackie’s focus will soon return to the Canadian Football League in the city his professional career started.
Unable to reach a deal to stay in Toronto — he said he turned down a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer — Ackie recently signed a two-year contract to return to Montreal. The Alouettes drafted him with the fourth overall pick of the 2015 CFL draft after a stellar four-year run at Wilfrid Laurier University.
“I understand this is a year where guys are taking pay cuts, but the contract they offered me, it wasn’t for someone of my calibre who’s going to come in and start,” Ackie, a six-foot-two, 205-pound linebacker said of the Argos’ offer.
“It finally got to the point where I was hearing from other teams and Montreal was showing a lot of love. I got calls from the GM, the coaching staff, players on the team, saying how they wanted me back there, saying they were upset I left. It’s one of those things that you gotta go where the love is, you don’t want to play somewhere where you don’t feel 100 per cent wanted.”
Ackie has played 65 games in five CFL seasons, with all but three of them in an Alouettes uniform. He was traded to the Ottawa Redblacks near the end of the 2018 campaign but returned to Montreal the following year as a free agent.
He was one of six defensive players signed on the first day of free agency earlier this month by the Alouettes, a team that finished with a 10-8 record in 2019 and lost in the first round of the playoffs.
“We’re building something good there and I can’t wait to get back on the field,” said Ackie.
If all goes according to plan, CFL training camps will open in May and the regular season will begin June 10 in Hamilton. The 108th Grey Cup is scheduled for Nov. 21, also in Hamilton.
The pandemic, of course, might force CFL officials to tinker with dates but commissioner Randy Ambrosie was quoted earlier this month as saying owners were committed to staging a season.
Ackie is cautiously optimistic the season will happen, although possibly not in June, and believes he has a few additional seasons ahead of him before calling it a career.
“I can play another four or five but that will depend if I want to. As I said, there are other areas I’m interested in outside of football and there are a lot of good opportunities on the table right now,” he said.
“I’ll take it year by year and re-evaluate whether I want to leave or stay for another one.”
Ackie was a first-team all-Canadian and OUA first-team allstar in 2014, his final season at Laurier. In 2019, he was inducted into the Golden Hawk Hall of Fame.
He previously played at Preston High School and with the Cambridge Lions.