One downtown Vancouver hotel will unknowingly be donating the wheels and platform for an impromptu float Saturday during the Safeway Grey Cup Festival Parade.
The luggage cart will be missing only temporarily-long enough for the Booze Brothers to initiate another rookie into their ranks and march the parade route from start to finish.
"Somebody has to go into one of the hotels and borrow a luggage cart for the parade. Somebody will have to go get one. It'll be a rookie," said Rob Metcalfe, the granddaddy of the Booze Brothers, the few, dedicated and irreverent B.C. Lions fans who make occasional appearances in costume at home games and have travelled to the Grey Cup for three decades.
The parade comes Saturday during a week "measured in minutes, not days, spent sleeping," said Metcalfe.
An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people will travel to Vancouver although they don't have tickets to Sunday's Grey Cup game between the B.C. Lions and Winnipeg Bluebombers.
Among them is Betty Halliday. The 66-year-old Ticats devotee from St. Catherines, Ont. has been to at least 14 Grey Cup championships and for the past decade has custom sewn intricate trench coats for the many friends she's made from across Canada.
Waiting for the official arrival of the Grey Cup Wednesday at the military base in Stanley Park, Halliday, who's already booked her hotel for the 2012 Cup, said she designed each poncho using five flags and avoids a back or side seam so the team's colours and logo remain intact.
"I'm usually waking up in the night and drawing sketches," she said, flashing a giant "Argos Suck" pin along side one that read "Go Lions Go."
The party ramped up Thursday evening with the Eskimos famed "Spirit Of Edmonton" party. For the next couple of days, revellers tour a circuit of pancake breakfasts, hospitality suites and late-night live entertainment while soaked in team colours and Canadian flavours that can only be brewed or distilled.
Metcalfe made his first trek to the Grey Cup with a friend in 1980. Since then, he's missed only four. This Sunday will mark his 28th Grey Cup.
Back in Toronto in 1982, he watched the parade and noted all the teams had a CFL mascot. All but one, he remembered. "B.C. had none. The city of Nanaimo had a bathtub, they were promoting the bathtub races, and we jumped on with that one," he said. "We came up with this idea to dress as the Blues Brothers and rename it the Booze Brothers."
The next year, he and friends Rob Low and the late Norm Lamb made it official. They were an official entry in the parade, each wearing a black fedora, black sunglasses, black suits, black shoes. And because it's live Canadian football, there was booze.
"We come up with a gimmick and it's just been super popular. It's got us into places and onto stages, singing, dancing. People tell me, 'Hey I've got pictures of you on my fridge. They've seen us or they've drank with us or know where we've been," said Metcalfe, who runs a fishing charter in Sechelt. "All you have to do is go once or twice and you're hooked. I've seen the same friends from Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Hamilton every year. We get together and we have drinks, people show each other pictures of their kids and talk about what they did during the year."
His go-to description of the Grey Cup Festival rolls some of the continent's greatest celebrations and cherished moments into one: "It's like Mardi Gras, Halloween and a family reunion.
Colinne Dowbyhuz, the Winnipeg Bluebombers event planner responsible for events like Touchdown Manitoba, said, "I put it to the equivalent of Vegas. It's a party like none other."
The camaraderie, she says, brings football fans together. CFL fans bond over rivalries when seated side-by-side in open-air stadiums exposed to Canada's inhospitable November weather.
"You can't believe it until you see it. The pageantry, the costuming is absolutely unbelievable. It doesn't matter what your affiliation or what team you support, everyone is there for the same purpose: to have a good time."
Calgarians take special pride in starting the tradition. For the 1948 Grey Cup, the Stampeders travelled to Toronto where they defeated the Ottawa Roughriders 12-7.
And they didn't make the trip alone, explained Janice Smith, the director of exhibits and programming at the Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary and formerly the director of the CFL Hall of Fame in Hamilton. "The Calgary fans travelled by train to Toronto. That was really the very first time," she said.
Calgary's mayor served pancakes on the steps of Toronto's city hall, a tradition Stamps fans continue today in each host city. Someone reportedly rode a horse through the lobby of the Royal York Hotel. Revellers started line-dancing. They never really stopped.
"It's grown tremendously since that time," said Smith. "There are an awful lot of people who may not attend the game but they want to be there to be part of the festival. People want to go out to those events and socialize with people and share their Grey Cup stories and be part of the whole excitement of the week."
Scott Ackles, the general manager for the 99th Grey Cup, said he looks forward to taking in the characters who will descend on Vancouver this week.
"There's the Box J Boys from Hamilton and there's Rider Nation, which is everyone in green, and the Flame, the guy who wears the hard-hat with the flame that comes shooting out of his head, he's forever been doing this. And of course with the B.C. Lions, there are the Blues Brothers, in fact they call themselves the Booze Brothers," he said, noting the average CFL fan is becoming younger.
"It's a celebration of Canada. That's what is so cool about this event and what makes it so fun."
For Metcalfe, who has twice drunk from the Grey Cup because his bluesy, boozy persona opened doors, he's pleased to be playing host this time around.
"It's nice to have them all come to our town for a change and I'll be showing them a good time."
Twitter: @MHStewart
