Joe Briggs Place: 1956: A Grey Cup Party for the ages

On June 23rd this year, Paul Brockie got into a League softball game. He batted for the Barracudas in their 27-18 win over the Rough Riders. He is the last Brockie sibling to play in a League event. The rest of them--Rob, Hugh and Dawn--palyed on opening day in 1982. After the game, we chatted briefly about the famous picture of the entire Brockie family at a Grey Cup party sometime in the 1950s.

Here's my initial note to Rob about trying to put a definitive date on the event:

It was great to meet your brother last night. The scan I made of the Grey Cup news clipping of you all is attached. The date of the original TIF scan is in December, 2000. I have better tools today. Actually, almost everyone does. We speculated a bit about when the Winnipeg news photo was taken. You were all dressed in Esks gear, so it would make sense that you were watching them. The Eskimos were in the Grey Cup in 1952, 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1960. Until after the 1960 game, the game was broadcast only on CBLT (Toronto), so it would not have made much sense to drive to Winnipeg to watch it on television. The 1960 game was broadcast on both “national” networks. CBC did not have a local Edmonton TV station until 1961. Interesting. [A graphical representation of the 13-hour journey is added below. Note that all estimated driving times are for road systems not available in 1956.]

UPDATE! Graphical Depiction of the Brockie family automobile journey
to Winnipeg to watch the 1956 Grey Cup game on television.

Rob answered:

Well...Dawn (Sept birthday) is three which makes it 1956. Plus Paul without any hesitation last night at the diamond claimed it was the 1956 Grey Cup...so... The weird thing is the statement about not being telecast nationally that year by you and a CFL history website? And yet...there we are watching it on TV? Maybe our uncle Hugh had a big-ass antenna picking up the Toronto feed! Hmmmm Seven of us in that car driving to Winnipeg with my dad smoking like a chimney and the windows rolled up ...crazy!

As it turns out, while there were no national TV networks at the time, certain places like Winnipeg were able to pick up signals for rebroadcast. Here's what I found:

The source for the broadcast information was Wikipedia’s articles on the Grey Cups. Each year’s account gives you the broadcaster of the game, which it says is CBLT (Toronto) until 1960. CBC-TV was in a long process of turning itself into a national network, which formally happened in 1958. However, as this Wikipedia article on the Winnipeg CBC-TV station suggests, there was broadcasting in Winnipeg that was picked up from elsewhere (Toronto) before it formally became a network. “On September 30, 1956, [CBWT-TV] connected to the Trans-Canada Microwave Relay System, which allowed Winnipeggers to watch television programing from CBC television on the same day it was broadcast in Toronto and Montreal.[11] To celebrate this link CBC Television produced a special one-hour program, Along the Tower Trail, the Winnipeg segment featured a view of the CPR's Marshalling Yards, the St. Boniface basilica, a prairie harvest clip, and a musical piece sung by the Andrew Mynarski School choir.[12] By late 1957, it was decided to move CBWT from channel 4 to channel 3.[13] The changeover occurred in April 1958.” It’s not hard to imagine that your Dad, a pre-war Eskimo, might have heard from your uncle that the big game would be on TV in Winnipeg. What else would you do but pack the kids in the car for the short trip to Winnipeg?

There is not much video of the actual game that the assembled Brockies actually saw. Edmonton won the game, the last of a three-peat of Grey Cup victories over the Alouettes.

The Eskimos have a video on 1955 and 1956 here. Here are two bits of video on the 1956 season: