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Al Bradbury has no idea when or if the CFL season will start.

But after a vacation nightmare that resulted in his wife and him contracting COVID-19 and his friend still in hospital with the disease, Bradbury hasn’t looked this forward to throwing a flag in anger in a long time.

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“That’ll mean a lot of things,” the 20-year CFL official said. “That life is getting back to normal. That we’re back to being the Canadians that we are. In Canada, you get a ticket to a football game, you’re in there with those 25,000 people — that’s an intimate place. You’ll know it’s back on. Life’s back on.

“It’s one of those pillars, giving everybody the sense of, ‘We got through it.’”

Bradbury’s main career was as a Winnipeg police officer, a job he held for nearly 33 years. He just retired in January, and two months later he and his wife were off on a cruise, a trip cut short by the pandemic.

They both contracted the virus somewhere along the way, and after a frantic trip home, but before he began experiencing symptoms, the 55-year-old did what comes naturally: he offered to come out of retirement to help.