In 1909, the Grey Cup was offered as an award for the amateur senior hockey championship of Canada. However, Sir H. Montagu Allan had already supplied a trophy for hockey competition, the Allan Cup. Instead, the donation by His Excellency Earl Grey, the Governor General of Canada, became an award for the amateur rugby football championship.
After offering the trophy, the Governor General promptly forgot about his promise and the cup was not ready to present to the first senior Dominion Champions, the University of Toronto rugby squad, in December 1909. Two weeks prior to the championship game, a series of letters was exchanged and a hurried order placed with the silversmiths to produce a sterling silver cup, on a wooden base, total cost: $48.00. Three months later, in March 1910, the Grey Cup was presented to the University of Toronto.
For a good part of the first half of the 20th Century, football in Canada was amateur and governed by the Canadian Rugby Union. Although the trophy was fought for by eastern clubs and university teams, as the game and the leagues evolved, teams from the west began to enter the competition.
Soon, professional players from the US were brought in to augment rosters, and 1945 saw the last game played exclusively by Canadians and since 1954 only teams in the CFL have competed for the trophy.
The nation-wide festival that is the Grey Cup celebration as we now know it began in 1948 when the Calgary Stampeders went to Toronto to play the Ottawa Rough Riders. The western fans, dressed up in ten-gallon hats, high boots and spurs, invaded the city with horses and chuckwagons and impromptu parades. Hotels cleared their lobbies of everything that was not nailed down and good-natured hijinks were the order of the day. (The above information was gleaned from the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum website)
The 99th Edition of the Grey Cup took place in Vancouver on November 27, 2011. From June 30th through November 5th, eight teams played a 72-game regular season schedule and 4 playoff games to determine the Champions of the East and West Divisions. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the East and traveled to Vancouver to face the West Division Champion BC Lions at BC Place Stadium, which had just undergone a transformation from a dull and boring domed stadium to a fresh and vibrant state-of-the-art facility. Capping off a season that reads like a Hollywood script, the Lions shook off a rocky 0-5 start and won the right to drink champagne from Earl Grey's storied mug by defeating the Blue Bombers 34-23. This was only the 4th time a CFL team has won the Cup on their home field.
SPECIAL NOTE! This is a bonus cache. Its brother cache, GC34M0F Canadian Football League Draft Cache, holds information you need to solve this puzzle. The CFL Draft Cache is hidden somewhere in Burnaby, putting the caches about 12 kilometres apart, so if you wish to log them both, be prepared for the journey!
When you locate the CFL Draft Cache, look for the paper inside that says "Welcome to the CFL Draft Cache!". Read it carefully to find the answers for the following:
Take the number of consecutive games, double it & add 400, then subtract the player's overall pick position to get your new North decimal value. (fill in the blank 49 16.____)
Take the last 2 digits of the year the football program started here, add the number of first picks overall, then multiply by 10 for your West decimal value (fill in the blank 123 06.____)
IMPORTANT NOTE: your GPSr will have an EXTREMELY difficult time getting a good reading here!! Use your geosenses and the hint!