Saturday, November 28, 2009

On to the Grey Cup, one more time

The first Grey Cup game was played in 1909.  The University of Toronto team defeated Parkdale Toronto, 26-6.  The now traditional East-West contest didn't begin until 1921, when the Edmonton Eskimos played, and lost to, the Toronto Argonauts, 23-0.  The first western team to win Earl Grey's cup was the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, in 1939.  A very tight game: Winnipeg 8, Ottawa 7.

The big turnaround for the west came in 1948, when Les Lear took the Calgary Stampeders to Toronto.  He also took, or was followed by, hordes of white-Stetsoned Calgary fans, who cooked pancakes on the steps of Toronto's city hall and rode horses into the Royal York Hotel.

The Stamps won that game 12-0 and established the Western Division of the CFL as a contender to be respected and feared.  It was a great team, including Normie Kwong, "the China clipper," later Alberta's Lieutenant-Governor, and Woody Strode, later the King of Ethiopia in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments."

And the man for whom the trophy was named?  Albert Henry George, fourth Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada 1904-11.

Which is the reason, of course, that the coach of the winning team is always doused at the end of the game with a pot of Earl Grey tea.

Cream or lemon?
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3 comments:

  1. LYNDON GROVENovember 28, 2009 at 11:03 AM

    A sharp-witted reader points out that 2009 is Centennial Year for the Grey Cup, something that escaped your correspondent, who has never been a number guy. Same reader asks which team Calgary played in 1948. Answer: Ottawa Roughriders. But checking this, we came upon a curious piece of scrambled information: one source gives the score of that game as 12-0, another as 12-7.

    Other nacho-size bites of Grey Cup lore: University of Toronto Varsity Blues, who defeated Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club in the first Grey Cup game, won again in 1910, 1911 and 1920. Some teams and team names long forgotten: Sarnia Imperials, Winnipeg Tammany Tigers, Hamilton Flying Wildcats, Calgary Bronks, and, in the 1940s, Toronto RCAF Hurricanes and Winnipeg RCAF Bombers. Perhaps the most storied name of all from those halcyon years: Toronto Balmy Beach, with the great Annis Stukus.

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  2. Boris TNovember 28, 2009 at 3:41 PM

    I believe the Hamilton Flying Wildcats wins are counted into the Hamilton Ti-Cats total as they Merged with the Hamilton Tigers to form Ti-Cats.

    100 year of tradition and history, I hope it last another 100 years more.

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  3. Deborah HodgeNovember 29, 2009 at 9:05 AM

    You're a veritable font of information, Mr. PD. Thanks for educating us all!

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