Epic_Legacies_Book

David Milligan and Jennifer Mulder.
he Spirit not only maintained its place as Grey Cup hoopla
headquarters, but inspired the competition that developed over
the years and provided the opportunity for each fan to become
as big a part of the competition as possible.
Don Clarke was there in the beginning when the Spirit of
Edmonton was invented. It’s only right that he should have been
chosen for this project. Don Clarke was there in Calgary in 1975,
the year of the irst Spirit of Edmonton breakfast, escorting the
Gold Dust Dancers around town for Klondike shows.
“We were at the square in downtown Calgary, and I was
holding all the girls’ coats while they danced in their costumes,”
remembered Clarke. “A woman in a fur coat came up to me and
asked if she could join them during their performance. I tried to
be as nice as possible, and explained what we were doing there
and that they all had the same costumes. he women opened her
coat and said, ‘Here’s my costume.’”
Clarke is a man who doesn’t forget a … er … a face. He knew
he’d seen her before! He recognized her—all of her—immediately,
as the woman who’d shown up totally nude, becoming the famed
Grey Cup streaker, who made her appearance during the singing
of the national anthem (back then, it was a bit of a novelty).
Clarke remembered the year in Vancouver when the
Edmonton dance girls lost their costumes. “Someone broke
into the room where we kept the costumes and stole them all,”
he said. “Police caught the guy, but the costumes were being held
as evidence. It took a lot of doing, but my background in the
police department paid of. We got the costumes back and
the show went on.”
Recalling another incident, this time in Toronto, he related,
“We were scheduled to give a performance at the Toronto train
station, but there was no piano. We went to a nearby bar with a
piano and agreed to give a performance there if we could borrow
their piano to take to the train station. It created the wonderful
sight of 20 people from the bar pushing a piano to the train
station. Some of those things just happened.”
And then there was the Huddle. “It all started,” said long-time
Spirit member Perry Lewis, “with the ‘Party In Your Parka’ Grey
Cup in Edmonton in 1997, and with the idea that the Spirit of
Edmonton considers ourselves a great friend of the CFL. We
wanted to help all the other groups that kind of developed from
our model to be a successful part of our Grey Cup in Edmonton.
We discovered that the new groups needed help inding locations
to put on their events.”
Providing that help has become the focus of a separate group
within the Grey Cup Festival organizing committee. hey help
everybody from everywhere ind places to set up their parties
within the area of “the Huddle.”
“he greatest memories of
my time as chairman have to be
meeting the greatest of all CFL fans
who, year ater year, have made sure
to spend time in our room—people
like George Hitzroth, who attended
over 70 Grey Cups, the Box J Boys
from Hamilton, the Argoholics from
Toronto and the Booze Brothers
from B.C.,” remembers Keltie. “I
Klondike Kate, aka Deborah Lauren and
Ed Miller, who attended over 65 Grey Cups.
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