100 Grey Cups
Page 1
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Brunt
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Brunt, Stephen
100 Grey Cups : this is our game / Stephen Brunt.
eISBN: 978-0-7710-1746-9
1. Grey Cup (Football)—History. 2. Canadian Football League—History. 3. Canadian football—History.
I. Title.
II. Title: One hundred Grey Cups.
GV948.B78 2012 796.335′648 C2012-900975-X
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012932354
All photos courtesy of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame except this page, this page, this page courtesy of the Canadian Football League; this page courtesy of Ryan Enn Hughes.
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
One Toronto Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2V6
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword by CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Our Game, Our Stories
1909: The Building of a Legacy
1935: The Yanks Are Coming
1942: Keeping the Home Fires Burning
1948: The “First” Grey Cup
1957: Tough as Steel
1964: West Coast Rising
1969: O, Canada!
1978: Commitment to Excellence
1983: The Argos Bounce Back
1995: Baltimore, Canada
2001: The Montreal Renaissance
2007: Rider Pride
Epilogue
Appendices
Year-by-Year Grey Cup Results
All-time Grey Cup Standings
Grey Cup Coaches
Grey Cup Awards
Grey Cup Officials 1909–2011
Grey Cup Team Records
Grey Cup Individual Records
Index
THE GREY CUP REFLECTS US ALL
We Canadians are proud of our heritage, and the Grey Cup is one of our country’s most enduring icons.
We celebrate excellence, and so, too, does the Grey Cup, for only the names of champions can grace it.
We are sometimes defined by our weather, and Grey Cup lore is thick with snow and mud and ice and fog.
We are all shaped by our past, and the history of the Grey Cup is very much our history.
We are confident about Canada’s future, and the Grey Cup mirrors that confidence, as it is about to boldly launch into its second century.
But above all, the Grey Cup reflects our ability to come together, as Canadians.
The Grey Cup has been called the nation’s glue, for it has joined us together – whether we be Canadians by birth or Canadians by choice, young or old, easterners or westerners – for as long as any of us can remember.
So the 100th Grey Cup is not only a chance to celebrate the great game of Canadian football, tremendous championship contests, and our own league, the Canadian Football League.
It’s an opportunity to celebrate something that is uniquely, passionately, and unapologetically ours.
It’s a time to celebrate Canada.
And Stephen Brunt is distinctly qualified to help us do just that.
An accomplished author and award-winning journalist, Stephen is one of our country’s pre-eminent storytellers. What’s more, he’s a diehard fan – a Hamilton kid who grew up idolizing the Tiger-Cats at what was then Civic Stadium, and a columnist whose coverage of every major sporting event in the world has confirmed his deep-seated conviction that the Grey Cup championships are second to none, and truly something special.
We at the Canadian Football League will cherish this book. And we will proudly share it with our fellow Canadians for years to come, because this celebration is as much a renewal as it is a retrospective. This is not the end. It’s just the start of the next chapter.
Today, the Grey Cup is attended by tens of thousands, watched by millions, and revered by Canadians from coast to coast to coast, as well as by Canadians living abroad.
It is bigger and better and stronger than ever, giving us every reason to be confident that our Grey Cup, like our Canada, has a future even brighter than its past.
MARK COHON
Commissioner
Canadian Football League
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the assistance of the outstanding researcher Paul Patskou, who unearthed a treasure trove of contemporary newspaper accounts, and also allowed me access to his vast collection of historic film.
Larry Robertson also provided help filling in some very specific details.
The two most significant works on the history of Canadian football were invaluable resources. They are: The Grey Cup Story: The Dramatic History of Football’s Most Coveted Award by Jack Sullivan (Greywood Publishing, 1972); and 100 Years of Canadian Football by Gordon Currie (Pagurian Press, 1972). Also consulted was Heroes of the Game: A History of the Grey Cup by Stephen Thiele (Moulin Publishing, 1997).
Thanks to everyone at McClelland & Stewart, to the folks at the Canadian Football League offices, and to the staff of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
A portrait of Earl Grey which resides in the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame.
INTRODUCTION: OUR GAME, OUR STORIES
Albert Henry George Grey, the fourth Earl Grey, liked to stroll through the streets of Ottawa, or at least that’s how legend would have it. He was anything but narrow in his outlook, especially in the context of those early days of the twentieth century. In fact, he was a bit of a Renaissance man who, during his tenure as Canada’s governor general, greatly expanded the role of the Crown’s representative in the Dominion. He travelled the whole of the vast country at a time when that was no simple proposition, and visited the colony of Newfoundland as well. He became friends with the American president, Theodore Roosevelt. He promoted the idea of a national culture, was a patron of the arts, set up awards for music and drama, and was a champion of social reform. Appalled by anti-Asian rioting in Vancouver, he arranged for Prince Fushima of Japan to come to Canada, the nation’s first important foreign royal visit. And his wife, Lady Grey, the first governor general’s better half to be granted the title Her Excellency, sponsored competitions for the most beautiful gardens in her adopted hometown. Any one of these achievements would have made him a notable figure, and collectively they certainly left their mark in the Canadian history books. But it is almost by accident that Lord Grey lives on as a household name.
The story is that during his walks in the nation’s capital, Earl Grey would occasionally pass the Varsity Oval, where he sometimes saw a game being played that must have seemed familiar. As a product of England’s “public” school system –
he was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College – Earl Grey would have known of the type of football invented at the Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire. Rugby was a sport that had evolved from the myriad brands of organized and not-so-organized “football” whose roots reached back to ancient times when warriors kicked around the heads of vanquished opponents. Two distinct styles would emerge: one in which handling the ball was forbidden, which would become the passion of the working classes, and one in which players were allowed to pick up the ball and run with it, which would become the sport of England’s privileged elite.
The game played in Ottawa looked very much like rugby football, with fourteen or fifteen men a side, with scrums and lateral passes. But the truth was, it was actually a New World variant, already evolving into something distinct from its English antecedents, though still a long way from resembling what we now know as Canadian football. In 1909, Earl Grey decided that it would be a service to the nation to donate a trophy in his name, and so he commissioned a silver bowl to be made by Canadian jeweller, Birks, with an inscription composed by Rev. Dr. D. B. Macdonald of Toronto, one of those chosen as the new trophy’s trustees: “Presented by His Excellency Earl Grey, for the Amateur Rugby Football Championship of Canada.”
More than a hundred years later, that battered old mug is still being passed from team to team. The plates attached to its base bear the names of the champions of a game that has transformed into one distinctly Canadian. These inscriptions trace a nearly unbroken line that reaches deep into the nation’s sporting past. The trophy has come to symbolize a long-standing rivalry between the eastern and western halves of the country. The game and the festival surrounding it have evolved into a kind of national sporting holiday, a moment when the country stands still and, in many ways, celebrates itself. One day, the popular story continues, Lord Grey had a bright idea, and the next, somebody was riding a horse through a hotel lobby, Mud Bowls and Fog Bowls were entering national sporting lore, Pierre Trudeau was performing a ceremonial kickoff, Doug Flutie and Anthony Calvillo were working their magic, and ’Rider Pride was painting the Grey Cup green. Just like that.
It is a neat and tidy pocket history, but as anyone who follows the twists and turns of Canadian football can tell you, its story rarely moves in a straight narrative line. And that was true even at the game’s very origins, even in the time of Earl Grey, who may well have walked by rugby matches at the Varsity Oval in Ottawa, and who did indeed donate a trophy for the national champion of the game.
But it seems that was not his original intention. Apparently, during his travels, during his strolls, he also saw another sport being played. Following the lead of Lord Stanley of Preston, one of his predecessors as governor general, who in 1892 had had the bright idea of donating a challenge cup that would be symbolic of hockey supremacy in Canada, Earl Grey decided that he would donate a prize, too – also for hockey. The Stanley Cup was by now being presented to the best professional team in the land. Perhaps Grey could put his name on a cup that would be awarded to the best pure amateurs in Canadian hockey.
Problem was, Lord Grey wasn’t the only one to have that particular bright idea at that particular time.
As the Toronto Star reported on January 14, 1909:
Sir H. Montagu Allan, who is [honorary] president of the M.A.A.A., has taken a great deal of interest in the amateur hockey question and the formation of the Interprovincial Hockey Union. The latter so far has been without an emblem of championship. This Sir Montagu has offered to supply.
It is also reported that his Excellency the Governor-General Earl Grey may give a cup to be competed for by amateur clubs of the whole Dominion to stand to the amateur clubs as the Stanley Cup does at present to the professionals.
The associations qualified for the Grey Cup award would be the O.H.A., the largest amateur hockey association in the world, the InterProvincial, the InterCollegiate, the Manitoba, and the Maritime Province amateur teams.
There is no record of how that presumably embarrassing convergence of like-minded generosity was resolved. But we do know that the Allan Cup, which once nearly rivalled the Stanley Cup in importance, is still presented to Canada’s best senior amateur hockey team. Meanwhile, Earl Grey had a change of heart, or had one forced upon him: perhaps a football trophy would be the way to go. He commissioned a cup that would be presented to the champion of Canadian amateur football – though in a sport that was mired in ongoing jurisdictional disputes, even deciding who that was would prove to be a bit of a challenge. The president of the Journal newspaper in Ottawa, P. D. Ross, was asked by the governor general’s representative to figure that out, but he demurred, suggesting instead the establishment of a board of trustees. That three-man group included Rev. Macdonald, author of the famous inscription, and Percival Molson, scion of the great Montreal brewing and sports family, along with H. B. McGiverin, a member of Parliament, a former football and cricket player of some renown, and the president of the Ottawa Football Club. In the spring of 1909, they decided that the trophy would be presented to the champions of the Canadian Rugby Union and, after that, would be a challenge trophy – as was the Stanley Cup.
But by the autumn of that year, with the football season drawing to a close, the trustees faced one minor problem: the promised trophy had not yet turned up. How do you tell a governor general – with the utmost respect, of course – that perhaps he ought to keep his promise? It would take three gentle nudges from the trustees before the eighteen-inch-tall sterling silver mug – valued at $48 – finally arrived in Toronto.
That wasn’t the end of it, though. The base of the trophy had to be replaced with one more appropriate to the purpose, and the inscription composed and engraved. And then there was the small matter of the bill for those changes. Just whose responsibility might that be? The trustees again sent out a carefully worded note to Earl Grey, which included a photograph of the trophy, and the jeweller’s invoice. They offered to foot the bill themselves “if there is the slightest disposition on the part of His Excellency against it,” Rev. Macdonald wrote. Lost to history is the answer as to who finally anted up. Only in the spring of 1910 did the first Grey Cup champions from the University of Toronto finally receive their prize – presumably having had no real idea they were playing for it the previous December.
But still, the match at Rosedale Field, in what is today one of the oldest and wealthiest neighbourhoods in the City of Toronto, is remembered and recorded as the moment when a great Canadian tradition was born.
And now to 2012, back to Toronto – today a great, vital cosmopolitan city – and to a place just a short distance from the site of that first championship game. The Grey Cup will be presented for the 100th time at Rogers Centre, and that humble trophy has become emblematic of a game, of a truly national event, and of a country its donor could never have imagined.
The story of the Grey Cup, from its origins through to the twenty-first century, is firmly lodged in our collective memory, and in many ways reflects some of the great themes of our history. Individual games really can seem like signposts along the road of our evolution as a nation.
It is telling that the Grey Cup’s power as a symbol of and rallying point for Canadian identity seems even more significant today, at a time when we can connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime, with the push of a button, and in a world in which so many cultural lines of demarcation have been erased, than it did back in the days when horses were first – reportedly – being ridden into hotel lobbies.
No other sporting event in this country has such lineage, such history. On no other day on the calendar do so many Canadians pause to celebrate something that is absolutely, 100 per cent their own.
This selective and subjective history of the Grey Cup touches on just a handful of those 100 games. Rather than approach the history chronologically, or focus on the familiar milestones – the Mud Bowl, the Fog Bowl, etc. – the years and games chronicled here were chosen because each seemed to represent a particular mome
nt in time for Canadian football, for one of its teams, or for Canada.
One of these moments came in 1935, when the Winnipeg Football Club made the long train trip east and came home with the Grey Cup, the first time a western team captured the national football championship, ending years of futility, knocking central Canadian arrogance down a notch – and hasn’t western alienation been a long-running theme in our national conversation?
Another emblematic moment in the game’s history took place during the Second World War, when service teams competed for the Grey Cup. Some of the players who took the field later died on foreign battlegrounds fighting under Canada’s flag.
After the war, in 1948, Calgary fans took over downtown Toronto, effectively creating what is now known as the Grey Cup festival, before they bore the trophy home to Alberta. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Canada’s burgeoning industrial might was embodied by those tough Tiger-Cat teams from Hamilton, whose grit on the field was inextricably linked to Steeltown’s own working-class identity. In 1969, Prime Minister Trudeau’s ceremonial kickoff in swinging Montreal – and the victory of an Ottawa Rough Rider team quarterbacked by homegrown Russ Jackson – played directly into the themes of Canadian cultural independence and confidence that were so much a part of the times. And, in 1995, our great push/pull relationship with the United States, and the long-running struggle to define and preserve what makes us Canadian, was played out on a football field in Regina as, for the first and only time, a U.S.-based team took Earl Grey’s trophy back across the great unguarded border.
The Grey Cup made Edmonton the City of Champions years before Wayne Gretzky came along. The Grey Cup – and especially those 31 years between Argos victories – made all-powerful Toronto the butt of at least one long-running, unifying joke for the rest of Canada. The Grey Cup brought Vancouver fully into the national sporting life when the Lions won their first in 1964, and returned French Canada to the fold when the reborn Montreal Alouettes claimed their first championship in 2000. And back in the days when Regina teams came east to mount hopeless challenges for the Grey Cup, or even in more modern times when the Roughriders struggled for survival, who could have imagined that their twenty-first-century incarnation as the beloved obsession of a suddenly booming province, the single greatest economic engine in the entire Canadian Football League, would be even bigger than it had been in the days when Ron Lancaster and George Reed worked their magic at Taylor Field?