In 1948, the Calgary Stampeders journeyed to Toronto to claim their first Grey Cup — the first for a city west of Winnipeg — accompanied by an unexpected trainload of cowboy-hatted fans.
Toronto was soon overrun with public jamborees, horses and chuck wagons parading through downtown, and an impromptu flapjack breakfast on the steps of city hall. In the raucous post-game celebrations, western-suited fans famously rode horses into the lobby of the Royal York Hotel.
This fall, “the trophy which has inspired so many pilgrimages” will itself take to the rails when the CFL loads the Grey Cup into a specialized 12-car train for a 74-day coast-to-coast whistle-stop tour.
“It seemed like the most Canadian way to bring it from coast to coast,” said CFL spokeswoman Carley Smith, who will be bunking down on the train for the entirety of the journey.
Wrapped from wheels to roof in CFL insignia, the specially outfitted train will include museum cars, displays of team-specific artifacts as well as a special car for the cup itself.
Along with stops in all eight CFL cities, the train will swing through Halifax, Quebec, Ottawa and nearly 90 smaller communities before stopping in Toronto in time for the Nov. 25 match. “This is probably one of the biggest things this league has done in its history,” said CFL commissioner Mark Cohon.
“I think our team has learned a lot about what it means to run a train across this country,” Mr. Cohon. “They’ll be using some private lines, some secondary lines … it’s much more complicated, but we thought a train was a perfect match with the cup.”
An armada of trucks and support vehicles will follow the tour — and take the cup on quick jaunts to communities off the rail line including, if plans hold, Nunavut’s Baffin Island.
The train’s red and black colour scheme was gingerly selected, noted Ms. Smith, as organizers feared pulling into cities bedecked in the colours of a rival team.
Like its hockey cousin, the Stanley Cup, the Grey Cup was forged on the order of a Canadian Governor General. In 1909, Governor General Albert Grey, the Fourth Earl Grey — and the grandson of the namesake for Earl Grey tea — inaugurated a trophy for the “Amateur Rugby Football Championship of Canada.”
In the 103 years since, the cup has been contested for all but 1916 to 1919, when World War One — and then a rules dispute — sidelined the championship game. Unlike the Stanley Cup, which has been in the hands of U.S. teams for the past 19 straight years, the Grey Cup has stood on Canadian soil for all but 1995 when the Baltimore Stallions — from what turned out to be a brief U.S. division of the CFL — claimed the cup only months before being sold to Montreal as the Alouettes.
Although the antique cup always glimmers each November when it is carried onto the field by a pair of red-coated Mounties, the trophy has sustained a long history of abuse.
In 1947, the cup narrowly dodged being melted down when it was reportedly the only trophy to survive a fire that ripped through the Toronto Argonauts Rowing Club. In the winter of 1969/1970, the cup was stolen and held for ransom by unknown kidnappers, before being recovered in a storage locker at the Royal York Hotel.
Most recently, in 2006, the victorious B.C. Lions shook the cup into two during post-game celebrations in Winnipeg. Before returning to Vancouver with the prize, the team quickly packed the trophy off to local welder Ben Klumper, who described his “hands shaking” as he turned his torch on the iconic trophy.
In conjunction with the tour, TSN, CTV and RDS are airing a series of eight documentaries on the trophy, including an account of the Edmonton Eskimos dynasty in the context of National Energy Program tensions and a profile of the Toronto Royal Canadian Air Force Hurricanes, a military-fielded team that was mobilized to Europe soon after winning the 1942 cup.
National Post, with files from Postmedia
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