Kevin Sousa/CFL.ca
Whether you’re a fan, a player, a coach or a part of the media that covers the CFL, the schedule release — fast becoming a holiday staple over the last few years — will immediately send you into long-term planning mode.
One thing that covering the CFL taught me very quickly is that it provides a wonderful means for us to explore our great, gigantic country. For a lot of Canadians, sport greases the wheels of travel for us and exposes us to places we might not otherwise have made time to go and see.
I experienced Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and Hamilton for the first time over the years through the CFL. One of the things I’ve enjoyed since then is watching colleagues and friends experience those places for the first time with me. When the CFL’s 2024 schedule dropped on Thursday, I once again scoured it looking for good travel opportunities. I started out looking for one dream road trip and have landed on three possibilities that would let someone see the best of the CFL at some optimal times of the year. These trips would involve some likely expensive one-way car rentals and some costly flights, but let’s put price aside for the moment and just dream big.
Here’s what I came up with. Since we all have different starting points, why not plug in the logistics of your trip here at Red Tag, where you can line up flights, hotels and car rentals as needed.
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An opening week cross-country zigzag
Start your trip off with a Grey Cup rematch in Week 1, with the Bombers hosting the Alouettes (Kevin Sousa/CFL.ca)
There’s a joyful, boundlessly optimistic feeling from fans across the CFL during opening week. Mix that with some early summer weather and late sunsets and you’ve got a near perfect travel and football environment. With single games running from Thursday through Sunday for the first 12 weeks of the season, there’s room in theory for fans to take in all four games in a single week.
Why not tackle that in Week 1? You’d start in Winnipeg, where the Blue Bombers will host the Montreal Alouettes, opening the 2024 season with a rematch of the 110th Grey Cup game. From there, you’d hop on a plane and land in Calgary, where the Stamps are set to welcome Bo Levi Mitchell back to McMahon Stadium as they host the Tiger-Cats. After Friday’s game, you could make the relatively quick trip north to Edmonton — where the sun sets at 10:01 p.m. on June 8 — and see the Elks host the Saskatchewan Roughriders. You could either take a red eye out of Edmonton to Toronto, or have an early rise and line up your flight with the 7 p.m. kickoff between the Argos and the BC Lions at BMO Field.
See the country, see some football
This is an ambitious trip that requires a love of driving, probably a team of dedicated drivers to facilitate it safely and at bare minimum, a playlist with some Smokey and the Bandit on it, because you’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
Our trip starts in Week 12, where the Lions are at TD Place to face the Ottawa REDBLACKS on Aug. 24. After that one, you can easily jump over to Montreal for the Als’ game against the visiting Edmonton Elks on Sunday, Aug. 25. As soon as that game wraps, maybe as soon as you get a good post-game meal in you, you’ve got some ground to cover. Google Maps says that the drive from Montreal to Victoria, BC takes around 48 hours. If you and your team of drivers can split it into a few eight-hour shifts, you’ve got six of them to get you all the way across the country in time for Saturday, where you’ll see the Lions and the REDBLACKS once again, but this time for the Touchdown Pacific game on Saturday, Aug. 31
Vernon Adams Jr. and the Lions take their offensively charged show to Victoria this summer for the Touchdown Pacific Game (The Canadian Press)
You may think after a crazy quick, cross-country drive that the voyage has ended. We’ve got one more stop. After you’ve watched some CFL action out on Vancouver Island, take the ferry back to Vancouver and gear up for what I think is one of the absolute best drives that Canada offers up. It’s a 13-14 hour trip from Victoria to Calgary, but that drive takes you through the Okanagan and into the thick of the Rocky Mountains, from Revelstoke to Golden and Banff, then finally into Stampeders country. There, you can settle into McMahon Stadium and watch the Stamps host the Elks in the Labour Day Classic. When it’s all over, stretch your legs out, maybe swear off road trips for a little while and probably never listen to any banjo-heavy road trip tunes ever again. In the end though, the trip would be an incredible one.
A turkey trot
This trip would provide a good snapshot of the country as we enjoy the Thanksgiving weekend. And with the prairies entering into that somewhat unpredictable time of year weather-wise, we’ll do it all by air. It starts off with what should be a heavyweight football tilt in Winnipeg, with the Bombers hosting the Argos on Friday, Oct. 11. After that, we’ve got a quick one-hour flight to Regina, where Vernon Adams Jr. and the Lions are visiting the Riders at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 12. You can take your time a little bit getting out of Regina, as you have a couple of days between games, where your trip wraps up in Montreal on Thanksgiving Monday, with Cody Fajardo and the Als squaring off against the REDBLACKS on Oct. 14 at 1 p.m. ET.
I’ve long advocated for CFL fans making the trip to Montreal for any October game. As someone that grew up in northern Alberta, what you get from Montreal between Thanksgiving and Halloween is often the kind of weather you only saw on TV. It may not be a summer-like offering, but it’s usually a comfortable, true fall atmosphere and with the afternoon kickoff it’s a perfect football environment.
Finally, the simple one-off
If you don’t have the time or funds to invest in one of these elaborate multi-city stops, pool your resources and go with the surefire thing. The BC Lions are hosting the 111th Grey Cup this year. You’re guaranteed milder (but perhaps wet) outdoor weather, a domed game and a week’s worth of fun leading up to our annual celebration of football and Canada’s biggest in-house sporting event.
