It was 1904 when Albert Henry George Grey, the 4th Earl Grey of his family, replaced his brother-in-law (the Earl of Minto) in the position of Canada’s Governor General, becoming the 9th person to hold the office. From all accounts, he seemed quite eager to be a part of the young country as we were slowly coming into our own. Plus, he’d just gone bust after a series of unwise investments and he needed the cash.
Throughout his almost 7 years in the post, the popular Earl Grey (whose grandfather Charles was the chap who the tea was named after) travelled extensively throughout Canada, made a number of very nice friends, and used his position to nudge our new country along on its journey to self-governance. He left us a horse drawn carriage that he had bought from his colleague, the Governor-General of Australia (who clearly had two of them) which is allegedly still used as our state landau when we get fancy. And, Earl Grey gave us the Grey Cup as a trophy for football.
Seems random, doesn’t it? Well, when Lord Stanley had been our Governor General, a dozen years prior, he had thrown his support behind the organization of hockey by donating a silver trophy to be awarded to the best amateur hockey team each year. While Earl Grey dithered about wanting to offer a similar trophy to acknowledge the annual winner of the senior amateur ice hockey championship (the Stanley had become associated with professional hockey by this time), a Canadian businessman by the name of Sir Montagu Allan swept in and donated a cup named after himself (the Allan Cup) for that purpose. Albert Grey decided to turn his gaze towards Canadian amateur rugby football instead.
The first game played for the Grey Cup was in December of 1909, but this competition had already been an annual event for the Canadian Rugby Union for over almost 30 years. There were a recorded 3,807 fans in attendance for that final game of the season. Somehow, Albert Grey forgot to order the actual trophy until 2 weeks before the game, so the winners of this Quebec-and-Ontario-only league didn’t end up with something to hoist over their heads until the Cup arrived in March of 1910.
The University of Toronto Varsity Blues turned out to be the first winners of the Grey Cup in a 26 – 6 blowout. To be fair, the team they were playing was the Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club and this was their first time in a final. And it was a canoe club that also seemed to have a hockey team, so maybe they were just stretched a bit too thin.
The Toronto Varsity Blues went on to win the 1910 and 1911 Grey Cup games as well. They didn’t make it through to the finals of the 1912 season but when the Hamilton Alerts beat the Toronto Argonauts that year, the Varsity Blues refused to hand over the Cup because they were under the illusion that they were given it to keep until THEY were defeated in a final game. No one else thought that. After their inclusion and subsequent defeat in the 1914 Grey Cup game, it was wrestled out of their hands and began its journey from winning team to winning team.
By 1921, the league had opened up to include the Western provinces, and the playoffs were intended to see the winner of the West Division play the winner of the East Division, but league expansions never go smoothly. In 1924, although the Winnipeg Victorias had earned the right to play in the Grey Cup final, the Winnipeg team and their management couldn’t agree on which railway to take to Toronto, where the game was played in those days. The players voted to travel CNR, and the team execs dug in for CPR. The bickering went on until it was too late to take either and the game was played between two Ontario teams instead.
In 1947, the Grey Cup was in the care of the Toronto Argonauts and was being displayed alongside other trophies in their clubhouse, when a fire broke out. The building suffered badly and several of the awards were burned or melted when the shelf they were all sitting on gave way, dropping to the floor and into the fire. The Grey Cup, however, caught on a nail protruding from the wall on its way down and thereby escaped being destroyed.
Though saved from that fiery fate, over the years the Cup has required serious fixing 6 times. It’s been dropped, head-butted, sat on, and the cup has become separated from the base more than once. The base itself has had 4 different versions as more space is continually required to add each year’s winners to the list of those before them. Not only that but the poor ol’ thing has been stolen twice. Well, three times but that last one was just a player having a few too many drinks and wandering off with it, before sheepishly returning it the next morning.
The Canadian Football League has not only kept up its tradition of handing the Grey Cup to each year’s winner, but it also has a plethora of other traditions that have been woven into its final game. 1948 saw the first of what would become the Calgary Stampeders’ habit of holding a pancake breakfast on the day of the game (that first breakfast was held on the front steps of Toronto’s City Hall) and riding a horse into the lobby of the hotel the fans were staying in, to celebrate their (first ever) win. These days, hotels in the Grey Cup host cities will clear their lobbies of anything valuable since the tradition of riding horses into lobbies continues, regardless of which teams are playing in the game. After Calgary’s win in 1948, the Grey Cup was given its own celebratory parade through that city’s streets once it reached its temporary home, and thus another tradition was born.
The final CFL football game of the 2024 season will take place this Sunday here in Vancouver. After about 3 hours of play and TV advertising, the winner will be awarded temporary ownership of the Grey Cup, the very same chalice that teams have been eagerly pursuing since 1909. This year’s version of the game will take place in BC Place, a stadium that boasts 54,500 seats for in-person viewing of the game (the nosebleeds went for $128 a piece!) and there are suggestions that the TV audience will be over half a million enthusiastic souls. That’s a far cry from the first final played for Earl Grey’s Cup in Toronto in 1909, and it’s a pretty remarkable legacy for a silver trophy that arrived four months late and cost its patron $48 to have made.
