AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Let’s celebrate Grey Cup like never before

Sports fans, with the Grey Cup happening this weekend, we need to embrace and celebrate the CFL’s championship game more than ever.

Given the existential threats to our economy and our sovereignty by the madman south of the border, we need to support Canada in any and every way we can, and the Grey Cup is the quintessential opportunity to treasure our game, our country and our collective national pride.

So, let’s make the most of it.

There isn’t a whole lot that individual Canadians can do to combat punishing tariffs or threats of annexation, but one thing that is totally within our control, one way we can fight back against destructive outside forces, is to uphold and cherish the Grey Cup as the unique aspect of sporting Canadiana that it is.

Canadian football predates American football. Football was played in Canada in 1861 and the Americans started playing about eight years later. We aren’t copycats; we are the originators.

The Grey Cup is our game, our national championship. Let us burst with pride as we watch Saskatchewan and Montreal battle for CFL supremacy.

Sure, it’s disappointing that the Bombers won’t be playing the Grey Cup at home, but we can still celebrate the big game, even in their absence. A Bombers – Roughriders Grey Cup would have been a huge national party right in our backyard, but that’s not going to happen so let’s make the best of it.

Let’s host the biggest Grey Cup home parties we ever have. Let our drinks and snacks be made in Canada. Let’s support the Canadian companies advertising during the Grey Cup.

Let’s make the 112th Grey Cup a feast of Canada, a festival of all things great about our beautiful country, about our home and native land. Let’s sing the national anthem loud and proud with our friends and neighbours at the start of the game. Let us enjoy this uniquely Canadian sporting event, understanding that it’s a palpable way Joe and Jane Canada can fight back against the forces causing us harm.

Let’s relish that this is our game, with three downs, huge fields and an extra player. Are the players in the CFL the best football players on earth? Of course not. But they are very good and the calibre of football is exciting, often riveting.

Those of us old enough to remember the WHA understand that we were privileged to see some spectacular hockey. The jerseys didn’t have to have NHL patches on them for us to witness fantastic hockey.

The same holds true for the CFL. Sure, the NFL has better players. But the NFL is not our league, not our country, not our game.

Let them keep their hype and marketing. That’s their thing. That’s an American thing. It certainly is not our thing. And it most certainly is not a Canadian thing.

The Canadian Football League is ours. It is our game, being played on our soil, with our unique rules, by our teams, covered by Canadian broadcasters, supported by Canadian retailers and sponsors, watched by Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Let us applaud our game. Let’s take pride in embracing that the Grey Cup is a Canadian championship – our championship – and what that means at a time when our sovereignty is under attack by a lawless, corrupt, convicted criminal.

The Polish proverb “not my circus, not my monkeys” seems to apply in this case. Let America have its corruption and chaos and lawlessness. Let us warmly and enthusiastically embrace our uniquely Canadian humility, modesty, “niceness” and our national pride as we watch the big game.

The Grey Cup is an opportunity to revel in something uniquely, totally, completely Canadian. Let us relish every single beautiful moment of it.

Buy Canada. Bye America.