A player with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers paid a visit to Kenora last week touting the football team’s prized possession (for a year, at least): the Grey Cup, which they won during the 2019 Grey Cup Championship.

John Rush, Bombers fullback, was in town on Friday, Jan. 17 and Saturday, Jan. 18 with personnel from the Bombers to talk to locals and share the Grey Cup with Bombers and CFL fans. He said that after the Bombers’ win in November they were thinking of communities they needed to visit with the Cup. Kenora – with its long-standing Bombers fanbase – was a community they couldn’t ignore.

“Growing up in southern Ontario, the running joke was that anything north of Muskoka is basically Manitoba,” Rush said on Saturday. “We really feel that Kenora is part of that Manitoba and Winnipeg family.”

Rush and the Grey Cup began their tour on Friday at St. Thomas Aquinas High School and Beaver Brae Secondary School. Students were excused from class to take photos with Rush and check out the Cup. On Saturday, the Cup was out at Golden Eagle Bingo Hall in Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation, where – despite heavy snowfall the day before – many came out to meet Rush and see the Cup.

The Kenora Chiefs Advisory hosted the Bombers and the Cup in Kenora last week. Chief Lorraine Cobiness, KCA board president, gave a short speech to students at St. Thomas Aquinas before students lined up to take pictures, in which she said she hopes the visit from Rush and the Cup will inspire young people to consider joining local sports teams.

“Sport fosters team… Team is about doing things together,” she said. “It creates friendship. It creates bonds. It creates lifetime connections.”