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EDMONTON — Lance Hackewich loves his Saskatchewan Roughriders — and he’s got a 75-year-old desiccated, positively inedible piece of history to prove it.
It’s a loaf of bread from 1951.
It sits among other treasured mementoes in wall-to-wall glass case displays alongside old and new Roughrider jerseys, helmets, newspaper clippings, posters and footballs in Hackewich’s son’s old bedroom in Regina.
When the son moved out in 2019, the Rider Pride moved in, along with the bread to commemorate 1951, the year the Riders made it to the 39th Grey Cup. They ended up losing to the Ottawa Rough Riders.
“(It) looks like a large crouton now,” Hackewich said about the bread in an interview from what is known as “The Rider Room” on social media.
Don’t worry, it’s genuine.
“It’s still sitting in the box that I got it in. It’s got a label on it that proves what it is.”
Hackewich is among those Canadian Football League superfans planning their rituals, trips to the stadium and game-day menus ahead of Sunday’s battle for the Grey Cup between the Roughriders and Montreal Alouettes.
He said the vibe across Saskatchewan has been electric since his team defeated the B.C. Lions in the West Division final and secured a ticket to the championship game.
Hackewich said he plans to leave Friday morning with his son, who is now 33, for the five-hour-plus drive to the Manitoba capital.
“There’s going to be a big, long line of traffic going to Winnipeg in the next couple of days,” he said.
“We have had hotels booked for probably three months now. We don’t have tickets to the game, but we’ll find tickets. I’m not worried about that.”
Watching the game with his son is a tradition. “When my son came along, it was important to me to take him to games and build this bond between us,” he said.
In Saskatoon, Rider superfan Arlene Mongovius says watching the Grey Cup championship games with her family has been a tradition for almost a century.
She said the love for the team was passed down from her 94-year-old mother, who bleeds Rider green and used to throw extravagant parties for the championship games in the 1960s.
She said her family has been meeting to watch the games in person for the last 30 years.
“We have family in Ontario that are huge Roughrider fans as well, and lots of times we’d meet up at the Grey Cup,” Mongovius said. That’s why she said she’s devastated she can’t go this year because her husband is sick.
But they’ve settled for another party in their living room.
She said she has been seeing green and white everywhere she goes in recent days.
“We don’t have other professional sports teams like NHL teams so you can think of the Saskatchewan Roughriders as our main, professional sporting team,” she said.
Not everyone is gung-ho for the Green.
In Mirabel, Que., Denis Genereux, a Montreal Alouettes superfan, says he plans to practise his rituals before he sits down to watch with family, friends, fondue, pizza and beer in their living room, too.
“The first superstition is not to talk about it,” the 55-year-old consultant said in an interview.
He said he would’ve gone to Winnipeg to watch the game but his daughter has a volleyball game the same day that he can’t miss.
But he will be cheering on his team as always.
“I’m behind my players. I love my Alouettes. They deserve to be at that final game,” he said.
Montreal and Saskatchewan are meeting for the third time in the Grey Cup.
The Alouettes defeated the Riders in 2009 and 2010. Montreal last won the Grey Cup in 2023 against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers while the Roughriders last held the trophy in 2013.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2025.
Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press
