Grant to relive glory days

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This article was published 23/07/2009 (5926 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They are still this town’s sporting royalty — the Blue Bombers of the late ’50s and early ’60s — and Bud Grant remains their iconic leader.

Grant and some his troops will be together again this September to relive the glory days of this franchise during the Canadian Football Hall of Fame celebration. The local organizing committee of the event, led by Paul Bennett, is expected to announce Grant’s involvement in the festivities today.

"This is a neat deal for me, a great honour," said Grant from the office he still keeps with the Minnesota Vikings. "I’m not big on banquets, but coming to Winnipeg, that’s a little different. There will be people I know there, I know Winnipeg and even though I’m 82 and some of my contemporaries are gone I still have some friends left.

"Whoever came up with this idea, it’s a great one. Every town in Canada with a CFL team has its hall-of-fame members and if they could move it around and get those people back that would be wonderful. It’s a great promotional thing for the Canadian Football League and the hall of fame. I’m tickled to death to be a part of it."

Yes, for just the second time in its history, the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies — and all the festivities that go with it — will he held outside of the shrine’s home in Hamilton during the week of Sept. 24 with the annual Hall of Fame Game featuring the Toronto Argonauts in town to face the Bombers on Sept. 26.

This year’s inductees include players Alondra Johnson, Jim Mills, Rudy Phillips and Glen Weir along with builder Tony Anselmo.

Grant will head north — even though it’s hunting season — to attend the banquet, see some of his old team and rub shoulders with their still-adoring public.

Grant came north to the Bombers from the Philadelphia Eagles in 1953 for an increase in pay — Winnipeg offered him a 33 per cent raise over the NFL — and was an all-star three times before becoming head coach. He amassed a club-record 102 wins and won four Grey Cups in 10 seasons before becoming the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach in 1967.

Grant was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994.

"We had quite a run there for eight or nine years," said Grant. "What I remember most was the bond. We didn’t have a lot of turnover and when we got the players, in most cases they played long careers there. We built quite a team back then and, you know, the nucleus of that team was mostly Canadians. We had a really good group of Canadian players and the American players we brought in just fit in really well.

"We had good experiences with those guys and that’s why people remember them — you tend not to remember the bad experiences."

Grant played in two Grey Cups, losing to Hamilton in both 1953 and 1957, before coaching the club to four championships in five years (1958, 1959, 1961 and 1962) and then losing in 1965.

And those games and the experiences around them are still as vivid as if they happened last weekend.

"When I first came to Canada we went to the Grey Cup (losing to Hamilton 11-6). I knew the importance of the game but I didn’t know of the significance of it," Grant recalled.

"I remember when I was coaching we were in Vancouver for a Grey Cup and they shut the streets down because there were so many revellers for three or four days before the game. We’d go to the Royal York Hotel in Toronto during the Grey Cup and they took all the furniture out of the lobby because there were too many revellers getting wild.

"John Diefenbaker said one time at one of the dinners in Toronto, ‘This is the greatest uniting force we have in Canada today, bringing East and West together.’ I was so impressed with how vitally important the game is to Canada.

"It was great to be a part of something like that. Those are the things that bond you."

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca