Fan-demonium: Guys in polar bear costumes, another spray painted gold… gotta be Grey Cup

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This article was published 28/11/2015 (3657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Grey Cup is a man with a plunger stuck on his head. It’s a little old lady from Saskatchewan who appeared in Corner Gas. It’s five grown men from Yellowknife dressed up as polar bears, complete with furry paws.

The Grey Cup is fathers and sons. It’s mothers and daughters. It’s an Eskimos fan who lives in Calgary and walks around all day with a bobblehead doll of Gizmo Williams, just for good luck.

Just take a stroll across the country, or the RBC Convention Centre, and the essence of the CFL championship will reveal itself.

The first thing you see coming up the escalators is Gwen Seed, who is dancing through the crowd as the Saskatchewan Roughrider Pep Band belts out Sweet Caroline.

Seed — “Like the little things that go in the ground,” she said — is 83 years old. If you ask the honorary pep-band member how long she’s been going to Grey Cups, she replies: “How far back did they start?”

Turns out, since the 1950s. “I like the social atmosphere and the interaction,” she said. “I’m having a blast. Whenever you’re with fans, it’s always fun.”

Some Canadians might recognize Seed, who played the character of Mirtle in the quintessential Canadian sitcom Corner Gas. She was also in the movie. But for this week, at least, she’s a long way from Dog Creek.

So if it’s Canadiana you’re looking for — sights and sounds you will absolutely, positively, never see anywhere else on the planet — the Grey Cup is sort of a Star-Wars-Bar-Meets-Three-Down vibe.

Just ask the man with a plunger glued to his scalp. Or the man painted gold, from head to toe.

“To sum it up in one word, it’s community,” said Michael Smyth, a.k.a. Plungerhead, a 51-year-old Bombers fan. “And in the Grey Cup, communities come together. Oh, and party. You can’t forget that.”

Well, Mr. Plungerhead, it’s not exactly hard to forget this is a let-your-head-down occasion when the next guy is covered head to toe in gold paint.

It’s a long story. Jason Bond, now 34, would often be chastened by the creative flair of Riders fan costumes during Labour Day weekend. He made a vow to himself.

“I had to step up,” he said. “I’ve got to do this.”

Turns out, Bond used to walk to work every day past the Manitoba Legislative Building. The light (or the torch) went off.

Now Bond spends two hours — three if he’s shirtless — applying the gold theatre paint, which is mixed with a waterproof base should Riders get any ideas. He’s holding a sheaf of wheat and wearing a laurel made of cardboard.

Then there’s the polar bears from Yellowknife, found standing in line for drink tickets at the Touchdown Manitoba, who have been coming to the Grey Cup for almost two decades.

The Polar Bear Express was originally founded to protest the CFL’s ill-fated U.S. expansion in the mid-1990s. “There’s lots of fans in Canada,” sniffed co-founder Mark Sproxton. “They (Americans) have their own league.”

But the polar bears are not all business. Neither are they worried about the Winnipeg weather, given their native habitat.

“It’s balmy for us,” said Gary Lalonde. “I’m going commando under this.”

The polar bears from Yellowknife unanimously agree the Grey Cup is a one-of-a-kind celebration of culture.

Said Eddy Bunting: “It’s Canadiana. It’s more Canadian than a hockey game.”

“Unfortunately,” Lalonde added, “too many people don’t get it. They don’t know how much fun it is. But if they come once, they’re hooked. Just like us.”

Or hooked like M.J. Nelson, who has been going to the championship game since 1975. She’s a Calgary resident now, but as a young girl growing up near Neepawa, she swooned over Bombers quarterback Kenny Ploen.

“He was my hero,” Nelson gushed. “I thought I would marry him someday. He’s mine! But I’ve been stuck with him for 43 years.”

Nelson is pointing at her husband, Mervin, who smiles and says, “You know he’s putting this in the paper, right?”

The wife continues.

“We see people every year that we only see at Grey Cup,” Nelson said. “To me, the CFL has heart around it. It’s not something you can see. It’s something you feel on the inside. It’s deeper than just watching big boys play on TV.”

Each fan, each city, has their own story. And once a year, they come together to share them.

Like Ottawa Redblacks fans Nathan and Michelle Lang, along with friends Cynthia Thomson and Brian Kahn, who believe their team’s appearance in the Grey Cup will solidify a team in its third incarnation, but only second year of existence.

“This city knows what it lost, and they don’t want to lose it again,” Michelle said of the Ottawa faithful. “They lost something that was special, and it came back with a vengeance. It’s good for the league. It’s good for the country.”

That is a sentiment Winnipeg hockey fans can relate to, no doubt.

The sense of belonging is palpable. Which might explain why, for the last decade, Halifax businessman John Ryerson has been bankrolling a group to lobby for a CFL franchise on the East Coast. At the convention centre over Friday and tonight, the Atlantic Schooner’s Down East Kitchen Party will be fuelled by Celtic music and Alexander Keith’s.

Ryerson hopes the CFL one day will truly be a league from coast to coast with the first franchise and Grey Cup in the Atlantic.

“It’s going to happen,” he said, as a recording of Stan Roger’s Barrett’s Privateers filled the hall. “And it’s going to be the biggest Grey Cup party ever. We’d get back on the map pretty quickly.”

But it’s not all about nation building. A few years back, Ken Hudgeon started taking his sons Kyle and Tyler to the Grey Cup. Just the boys. They even wear the same gear.

Friday, the Hudgeons were dressed in identical lumberjack sweaters and suspenders. Saturday, they’ll be off to the Spirit of Edmonton in flashy green blazers.

“The Grey Cup is so Canadian,” the father said. “It’s like the Brier. That’s why I wanted to introduce my sons to it. And hopefully when they have sons, they’ll do to same thing.”

And don’t forget mothers and daughters.

Winnipeg’s Barbara Main has been going to Grey Cups with daughter Sylvia since 1990 in Vancouver. They are a rare breed: last fans to see Bombers win a Grey Cup in person.

But a funny thing happened along the way. Football became a way for mother and daughter to bond. But it also became a way to bond with their fellow Canucks. Thursday night, for example, the Main women, Bombers fans to the core, sat down for dinner with a couple from Toronto they first met in 1990 in Vancouver.

Also seated at the table were Tiger-Cats fans, Argos fans and Lions fans. Saturday morning, they will go to meet friends from Edmonton at the Eskimos breakfast.

“Football has been part of our journey together,” Sylvia said. “There’s just something about sitting side by side and yelling, “GET HIM!!” That’s part of our experience in life, the Canadian Football League. It brings the whole country together. For us, it really does.

“For sure, it’s the spirit of the CFL: friendship and family. We’re not all related by blood, but we’re related by football.”

Sylvia was wearing a blue wig that blinked like a tiny Christmas tree. So was her mother.

They looked at each other and glowed.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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