‘It’s our truly, only pure Canadian sport’: Grey Cup party begins anew

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This article was published 9/12/2021 (201 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HAMILTON, ONT. — The horse clopped into the bar an hour or so after dark, arriving just a few minutes after the Grey Cup, and it was difficult to say, in that moment, which was the bigger attraction.

The Grey Cup shone bright under the low lights; the horse, surrounded by people snapping photos, stood at patient attention.

“Is there anything more beautiful than the horse, in the bar, with the cup?” sighed Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan Anna-Marie Smith, as she sat at a table full of CFL fans from across Canada, some of them old friends and others new ones just met.

This is the heart of the Grey Cup, its usual travellers will tell you.

Not just “this,” as in the Calgary Grey Cup Committee’s reception party at a Hamilton sports bar Thursday night, though that’s part of it, too. “This,” as in the nomadic fan village that springs up around the CFL’s ultimate weekend — the Blue Bombers face the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Sunday — and the bonds they carry across generations.

At the next table over from Smith, Bombers fans Hank Huewen, Victor Switzer and Dave Kolochuk thought about how long they’ve been sipping beers at events just like these. Combined, they have 73 Grey Cup visits between them; Huewen went to his first in Winnipeg in 1991, and was hooked.

“People are just so friendly,” Huewen said, adjusting a hat laden with dozens of Grey Cup pins. “You can just walk up to a stranger from B.C. and start chatting with them, and 30 years later, you still see them.”

They didn’t see each other last year, of course. That was, in a way, the hardest part about the season that was lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, the CFL title game is back, and its social quirks, too, but the shroud of COVID-19 hangs over the week. Some famous events, such as the Bombers’ annual Touchdown Manitoba party, are absent; others have been tweaked.

But fans are making the best of it, rolling the bitter pandemic experience into humour.

At the Calgary Stampeders-linked party, an organizer handed out pins. “Here’s one from 2020, which didn’t happen,” he said cheerfully, “and here’s one from 2021, that did.”

Or there was the moment when Bombers fan John (Cooch) Couture settled down to chat with Huewen. As he greeted a reporter, he lifted the signature rubber chicken that hangs from his neck, and squeezed a honk from its chest: “Even the chicken’s got a mask on,” he said, pointing at the shroud of fabric over its head.

In a room full of Grey Cup regulars, Couture was one of the most familiar. He’s been to 48 Grey Cups, by his count, though it’s slightly more accurate to say he’s been to every one that’s actually happened since 1974.

“I’m including last year, ‘cause it ain’t my fault,” he said, as his friends roared with laughter. “I still drank enough booze, even though there was no Grey Cup game.”

That was hardly the same, though. Because like everyone else here, Couture’s love of this event isn’t really about the football.

In a way, that’s the pretense, the spark that lights the whole shebang into a cozy and quintessentially Canadian fire, but it’s the people that fuel the flames.

“The game itself, it’s important, and it’s not important,” Couture said. “You know what I mean? Because the Grey Cup for me, right now, is all the friendships, and everybody getting together. It’s our truly, only pure Canadian sport. It’s just us.”

So to be back at the Grey Cup is the “best day of my life,” Couture said, before he remembered his wife was somewhere at another table, and quickly amended: “No, I shouldn’t say that. The best day of my life was when I got married. The second best day of my life was this Grey Cup week.”

By the way, talk to all these regulars for awhile, and one begins to wonder: is it ever anyone’s first Grey Cup?

Consider a quick poll of fans, aboard a Thursday morning Swoop flight to Hamilton. One man said he’s been to a dozen Grey Cups; another twice that number; one woman in head-to-toe Bombers gear said it’s “only” her sixth. Daryl Godwin, who lives in a small village in Saskatchewan, said he’s been to every title game weekend since 2007.

As Godwin boarded the plane, his Riders sweater carving a conspicuous patch of green in a sea of Bombers blue, the other passengers broke into jokes, playful gasps and good-natured boos. Godwin’s mask covered the lower half of his face, but the twinkle in his eye showed he was smiling.

“Next year,” he called out, as he made his way to his seat. “Next year.”

Godwin knew the ribbing was coming, of course. It’s “all in good fun,” he said, after landing in Hamilton; there is, after all, so much more that unites CFL fans than divides them.

He and his Bombers fan flight seatmate bonded over fishing, and above all, over the game and the league they so dearly love.

“It’s our league. It’s the only league we have that’s Canadian, that we can all be proud of,” Godwin said. “It’s our game.”

This is the event within the event; a world, within a world. There’s nothing like the Grey Cup, as those who know insist.

Still, it’s worth remembering not everyone knows: on a drive into downtown Hamilton, an Uber driver hummed for a moment when asked if the locals were excited about the Grey Cup.

“I have no idea,” he said, with a shy laugh. “Is that something to do with hockey?”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca