Canada’s Cup runneth over They’ve come from coast to coast — including some interlopers with frozen cod — to take in the annual grassroots block party… and there’s a football game, too By: Melissa Martin Posted: 7:37 PM CST Friday, Nov. 14, 2025

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/11/2025 (309 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The small plane touched down on the tarmac in Winnipeg Friday morning, fresh off a short jaunt from Saskatoon. Within minutes, the first passenger appeared above the baggage claim, his clothes leaving no doubt of his loyalties: a bright Roughriders jacket over a Roughriders hoodie.

The green invasion of Winnipeg was officially in full swing.

“The banjo-pickin’ inbreds are in town,” the fan announced, spreading his arms as he descended toward the Hug Rug, where Blue Bombers mascots Buzz and Boomer were waiting to razz him. The fan dashed off before a Free Press reporter could get his name, but not before volunteer Sue Burns pressed a Grey Cup Festival swag bag into his hands.

“Welcome,” she said with a laugh. “We were expecting you.”

Of course, the full-throttle Canadian invasion of Grey Cup week is not only Riders green. It is also orange, yellow, blue, red, black, red and black, and a slightly different shade of green. It comes to the city from all directions, and on every flight that lands at Winnipeg Richardson International Airport: from Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, and even the United States.

(To be fair to our neighbours to the west, and their remarkable fandom, a lot of those flights have a noticeably green tinge, too: “You’d be surprised how many Riders fans were on the flight from Toronto last night,” one Grey Cup volunteer at the airport noted. But everyone knows how Riders fans come out of the Canadian woodwork once activated.)

The invasion begins at the airport, where volunteer greeters make sure every fan gets a warm welcome, that swag bag, and directions to the airport social at the Root98 bar, featuring $5 beer specials. (“It’s a good time to start drinking,” a fan from Toronto declared upon hearing this news, after landing around noon.)

From there, it spreads out over the city, from restaurants to street parties and the central Grey Cup Festival hub at the convention centre, where a full slate of concerts, social spaces and team party rooms started rocking on Thursday and will reach its peak Saturday night.

There’s nothing in the sporting world quite like the week leading up to the Grey Cup. It’s a showcase of a fan culture that is gleefully grassroots, and defiantly Canadian. It’s the costumes, and the parties, and a camaraderie that extends far beyond a single game.

For instance, it’s the way that, on Friday afternoon, Brampton, Ont., couple Sheree and Steve Bashak couldn’t walk five feet through the convention centre without being asked to pose for photos with fans: he was dressed as a football, she as the Grey Cup trophy.

This year marks Sheree’s 10th Grey Cup; Steve has been to more. They started wearing the costumes in 2019, and found the eye-grabbing looks made it even easier to make new friends.

“Everybody recognizes us now,” Sheree said, with a laugh. “People say, ‘it’s not the Grey Cup Festival until we see you two.’ We’ve met fans from all across the country. It doesn’t matter what team you cheer for, you still love each other. Community, that’s what we need across the country. So that’s why I keep coming back. It really is a lot of family.”

In fact, the culture of that Grey Cup family runs so grassroots, one can celebrate without even having a real-life team.

Since Thursday night, the hottest team party room at the convention centre has belonged to the Atlantic Schooners, from Halifax. The Schooners have a logo, a thriving volunteer base, and official merch, including jerseys and shot glasses; some years, they even have their own cheerleaders.

They just don’t have an actual team, despite decades of campaigning for it. But for 23 years, the Schooners crew have come to the Grey Cup Festival and thrown its only charity bash, complete with a chance to partake in a Newfoundland “screech in” initiation rite, and nights rocking with foot-stomping fiddle music.

“Atlantic Canada was never included, so we just took it upon ourselves to bust into their party, and we never left,” organizer John Ryerson says, chatting outside the Schooners room on Friday afternoon. “Everyone knows East Coasters can throw a proper party. Everybody knows why we’re here. So we don’t need to be found, they’ll find us.”

In some ways, not having a team has an upside: the slogan on the Schooners jersey correctly declares the squad to be “still undefeated,” and not playing actual games means that no fans have hard feelings. (“We’re the neutral club,” Ryerson says. “Everybody can come to our room.”)

But the Schooners’ very success — as an annual Grey Cup party, at least — speaks to something deeper, about the culture of the CFL itself. It’s a community where a fan base without a team cannot just participate in the festivities, but set their tone, shape them, and lead — and they do it all only for love of the game, and the people around it.

“The fans are speaking, and they’ve been speaking for 23 years,” Ryerson says. “This is their league. It’s the fans’ league. And what they’re saying is nine teams is not enough. In the culture of the CFL, if you were to take these team parties out, it would collapse. I hope people recognize that and don’t take that fan base for granted too much longer.

“The CFL owes that fan base another team. It’s their job to go out and get it done.”

This year, Schooners organizers expect to sell as many as 2,100 of their signature lobster rolls (featuring Atlantic lobster flown in fresh by sponsor Purolator) and donate at least $20,000 to food banks in Winnipeg. And they have a big goal: to screech in more than 212 people, which will set a new record for the famous tradition.

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For those who wish to be so initiated: you just show up at the Schooners party room, sign up, and make a $20 donation. Then drink the screech rum, kiss a cod — “after you kiss the fish, (the screech) is welcoming,” Ryerson says — and get a certificate confirming you as an honorary Newfoundlander.

So far, they’re on track to smash that record: by mid-afternoon Friday, they’d already screeched in nearly 80 fans. That’s no surprise to Ryerson: a veteran of 37 Grey Cups as a CFL fan, and 23 as Schooners organizer, he finds that Winnipeggers and Schooners fans have more in common than it may seem.

“In my estimation, this party is starting off to be one of the best Grey Cups of those 23,” he says. “Winnipeg has embraced Atlantic Canada and said ‘welcome to Winnipeg, and we’re here for you.’ The Winnipeg Jets, when they left town, it took them 15 years to get it back. So Winnipeggers understand our pain and our whole story.

“But the dream goes on.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.