CFL.ca
Rob Allison pulls no punches when the Canadian Football Hall of Fame comes up.
“I bet you if you asked 100 people here today where the hall of fame was for the CFL, I bet you they wouldn’t know,” said Allison, the National Brand Manager for Kubota Canada. Allison, the CFL and the Hall of Fame are trying to change that.
In spite of a cold Wednesday morning, Kubota employees in Markham, Ont. enjoyed a celebration of their company’s partnership with the CFL and helped launch an initiative that’s aimed at chipping away at that number that Allison threw out there. Kubota has modified a semi-truck into a high-tech, interactive Canadian Football Hall of Fame that will go on tour this season, bringing the history of the game to fans across the country.
“The idea was if (fans) don’t know where (the Hall) is we’ll take it out to them and because we already have a vehicle that goes out on tour across the country, I thought that it’d be a good fit for the artifacts tour to hook up with us periodically,” Allison said.
On the Hall of Fame side, Executive Director Mark DeNobile’s enthusiasm about the partnership and the upcoming tour was obvious.
“I’ve been trying to do a road trip for nine years now,” he said.
“This is great, I’m ecstatic about it. We did (Mark’s CFL Week) in Regina, we (had Wednesday’s announcement) and we’ve got about seven more sites to visit. The REDBLACKS home opener, Grey Cup with them…this is a no-brainer (partnership) with Kubota. We’re showing our artifacts and it adds another aspect to CFL football.”
DeNobile explains that while he’s a born and bred Hamiltonian, he thinks it’s important to take the pieces of history that the Hall has accumulated over the years in Hamilton and take them on the road. The Hall has been in a state of transition since its downtown Hamilton location closed in 2015, with a move to Tim Horton’s Field still in the works. There are currently hundreds of artifacts tucked away in storage right now. DeNobile wants Canadian football fans to see them.
Forming new business partnerships and getting new faces in front of its historical items is a focus for the Hall of Fame as it goes forward.
“I think getting the artifacts — some of them haven’t seen the light of day for 20, 30, 40 years — to get them out for people to see (is important),” DeNobile said. “People can relive those memories, whether it be a helmet or a game sheet from a certain game, people can look at it and touch and feel it. It’s all important to grow the game and the history.”
Standing in glass casing in the cold on Wednesday, there were maybe a dozen items from the Hall on display. Jerseys, a few busts of Hall of Fame members, an evolution of teams’ helmets through the last 50 years. It’s old, but it never gets old for DeNobile.
“There’s a pair of cleats here from Frank Rigney from the Fog Bowl that he donated and there’s still CNE dirt in the box,” DeNobile said. “The Fog bowl was ’62…that’s one of my favourite ones. There are always the helmets with no face masks or a single bar. Nice little artifacts. I’m always finding new things. I open up a door and there’s another item we never knew we had.”
Allison’s fandom and attachment doesn’t run as deep as DeNobile’s, but he’s come to appreciate what the Hall is about since forming their partnership. He loves looking at the old Grey Cup rings that the Hall had on display at Mark’s CFL Week last month.
“The rings are a big thing, I think they’re the coolest,” he said. “Being able to actually see some of the stuff…some of the things that have been around for 50 years, 60 years or even longer. If people have any interest in the game at all they’ll be blown away by some of the stuff that the Hall of Fame has. To me, it’s great to be able to be a part of making the public more aware of what the Hall of Fame is about.”
The Kubota and Canadian Football Hall of Fame tour continues on June 23 in Ottawa, for the REDBLACKS’ season-opener against the Calgary Stampeders. The rest of its dates are listed below.
July 22: Calgary, Stampeders vs. Saskatchewan Roughriders
September 13: Woodstock, Ont. (dealer event)
September 17: Montreal, Alouettes vs. Ottawa REDBLACKS
September 21: Ottawa, Ont. (dealer event)
November 23-26: Ottawa, Grey Cup Festival and Grey Cup game day
