It’s still three hours to kickoff, not that you’d know it from looking around. The city is electric, a swath of red no matter what direction you look– if you didn’t know better you’d swear plaid was the new black.
Over the buzz of a thousand different conversations, the melody to Sam Hunt’s ‘House Party’ plays, a fitting selection for a night meant to pay tribute to the Rough Riders’ Grey Cup win 40 years beforehand.
It’s a strange sensation; paying tribute to a team the majority of the people here never had the privilege of seeing, but the enthusiasm shines from their faces; it’s infectious.
The crowd’s a wash of people of different ages, ethnicities, and gender. Someone shouts a RedBlacks cheer; it reverberates through the crowd. You can feel the music pulsing through your chest.
At the moment there are some 25,000 people in attendance, not bad for a city of just over a million people. Especially when you consider three years ago this team didn’t exist.
“Part of it I think is the ambiance that you’re seeing around you,” says a man named Bob, a 68-year-old, former high school English teacher who has been a fan since the 1960s, “Having this sort of facility creates the atmosphere, it brings the people out, and when the people come out, they’re in a good mood. It instills a bit of pride, not only in the area, but also in the team.”
Currently sporting the third-best record in the CFL, the RedBlacks are enjoying success in what has traditionally been a less than competitive market. Owning the league records for the most consecutive losses (25), the longest losing streak at home (14), and the most consecutive seasons under .500 (17), Ottawa was in desperate need of a competitive team.
All that changed with a surprise trip to the Grey Cup last season.
“Their success has had a major [impact] on their support, on getting people to come out more this year,” explains Bruce, a 60-year-old Ottawa supporter for the last 20 years. “All last year the whole thing was the stands were sold out all the time. I was amazed at that part, but I mean we’re here and we love it.”
Suddenly Ottawa was a football hotbed. Since joining the league in 2014, Ottawa is one of just two teams, Hamilton being the other, that has filled at least 90 per cent of its stadium capacity for each home game. After eight years of watching from the sidelines, Ottawa was ready to get into the game.
“The biggest thing I noticed was that it had been missed for so long,” Bruce continued, “The support they’ve been given has been spectacular. A lot of people lost out on seeing them when we didn’t have a team. My wife and I have been going for 20 years to see them as a couple, and enjoying them, but when they had that gap they were missed – big time. It’s been surprising the amount of support the team has been getting last year and this year as well.”
Twice in the city’s tumultuous history with the CFL they had gone eight years without professional football. For context, that means over Henry Burris’ 19-year football career, Ottawa has only had a team for seven years, and he’s been a member of that team for two of those. Put another way, for two thirds of RedBlacks linebacker Burton De Koning’s life, Ottawa didn’t have a professional football team.
While the CFL has become engrained in the culture of Western Canada, there is an entire generation of people in Ottawa whose only exposure to the CFL was a four-year catastrophe, known as the Ottawa Renegades, which ended in a draft that sent their favourite players across the league.
The city was left the laughing stock of the CFL; the fans betrayed by an owner who refused to fund the team; and a league, which although it had stepped in for other franchises in the past, refused to help keep the Renegades afloat. Instead they were fed rumours that football would return over the next two years until eventually the league dissolved the team. What had once been a vibrant football market was left double-crossed and with a bitter taste in their mouths.
Four decades ago, the Rough Riders brought football glory to Ottawa. It’s one of the city’s few positive football memories, and one that is consistently relived and retold when the topic of football arises in discussion, but when the Rough Riders folded in 1996, the city never recovered. They left an empty stadium and a hole in the community. The Renegades tried to fill it, but couldn’t do so. Now the city is asking the RedBlacks to fill that hole.
And they did.
“It’s a fresh start,” Shawn says. At 25 years old, he had only ever known the Renegades, and the heartache that had come with that, “I loved football, always have. I always wanted to see it succeed here. Jeff Hunt is obviously a great businessman and he’s done well with the 67’s so I’m glad he was able to turn this into a great product as well.”
Learning from the mistakes of the past, the RedBlacks partnered with the Ottawa 67’s, a team that had already seen huge success within the community. They worked with local committees to revitalize the old Lansdowne stadium, and transform it into a modern, enjoyable atmosphere. They brought new life to Ottawa’s Glebe district, modernizing it with new microbreweries, restaurants, and boutiques.
Now the RedBlacks are bringing the Canadian game back to the nation’s capital, reclaiming an older generation of fans, and in the process inspiring a new age of football players.
“I think it’s important,” says Graeme, a 41-year-old father who was bringing his 12-year-old son Jack to the game, “especially with next year being Canada’s 150th anniversary that we have football in Ottawa. I think it’s great, I think it shows how we do football differently here, and it really showcases the city.”
For his part, Jack was equally enthused, eyes shining brightly as he eagerly explained his first trip to a CFL game, saying, “We watched football a lot at home, but when the RedBlacks came I really wanted to go to a game. We did, and I just sort of fell in love.”
It’s a movement that is impossible to ignore, “You can see it here already,” CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge boasted, “There’s an energy, an invigoration, a youthfulness. We’re doing everything we can to perpetuate that.”
Next year, Ottawa will host the 105th Grey Cup, part of a yearlong celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday. It’s the first time the city has hosted the event in 13 years, but unlike before, this is the first time the Grey Cup will be hosted by RNation. They’re a collection of fans old and new. A collection of fans who have seen teams come and go, but who through it all have stayed loyal to the sport, and to their city. A collection of fans unlike any other, and a city poised to prove that this is where football belongs.