Ottawa celebrates the Redblacks Grey Cup win

Gray skies didn’t stop thousands from welcoming the Grey Cup to Ottawa on Tuesday. The Ottawa Redblacks won the Canadian Football League’s (CFL) championship trophy last Sunday, defeating the Calgary Stampeders 39-33 in overtime in Toronto, the host city for this year’s game. Crowds lined Bank Street in The Glebe to celebrate the Redblacks big win. It’s the first time an Ottawa team has won the Grey Cup in 40 years. In 1976, it was the now-defunct Roughriders. Canadian football is like American football, but with a few differences. The Canadian field is larger, a team has 12 players instead of 11, and there are three downs instead of four. The Grey Cup was commissioned in 1909 by the Earl Grey, then the Governor-General (representative of the British Crown in Canada) as the annual football championship trophy and remained in use after the CFL was officially organized in 1958.

Tags: canada, football, ottawa, Redblacks