EDMONTON \u2014 Lance Hackewich loves his Saskatchewan Roughriders — and he\u2019s got a 75-year-old desiccated, positively inedible piece of history to prove it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a loaf of bread from 1951.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s son\u2019s old bedroom in Regina.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201c(It) looks like a large crouton now,\u201d Hackewich said about the bread in an interview from what is known as \u201cThe Rider Room\u201d on social media.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s genuine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still sitting in the box that I got it in. It\u2019s got a label on it that proves what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hackewich is among those Canadian Football League superfans planning their rituals, trips to the stadium and game-day menus ahead of Sunday\u2019s battle for the Grey Cup between the Roughriders and Montreal Alouettes.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be a big, long line of traffic going to Winnipeg in the next couple of days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had hotels booked for probably three months now. We don\u2019t have tickets to the game, but we\u2019ll find tickets. I\u2019m not worried about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watching the game with his son is a tradition. \u201cWhen my son came along, it was important to me to take him to games and build this bond between us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In Saskatoon, Rider superfan Arlene Mongovius says watching the Grey Cup championship games with her family has been a tradition for almost a century.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She said her family has been meeting to watch the games in person for the last 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have family in Ontario that are huge Roughrider fans as well, and lots of times we\u2019d meet up at the Grey Cup,\u201d Mongovius said. That\u2019s why she said she\u2019s devastated she can\u2019t go this year because her husband is sick.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019ve settled for another party in their living room.<\/p>\n
She said she has been seeing green and white everywhere she goes in recent days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have other professional sports teams like NHL teams so you can think of the Saskatchewan Roughriders as our main, professional sporting team,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is gung-ho for the Green.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first superstition is not to talk about it,\u201d the 55-year-old consultant said in an interview.<\/p>\n
He said he would\u2019ve gone to Winnipeg to watch the game but his daughter has a volleyball game the same day that he can\u2019t miss.<\/p>\n
But he will be cheering on his team as always.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m behind my players. I love my Alouettes. They deserve to be at that final game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Montreal and Saskatchewan are meeting for the third time in the Grey Cup. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2025.<\/p>\n
Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 Lance Hackewich loves his Saskatchewan Roughriders — and he\u2019s got a 75-year-old desiccated, positively inedible piece…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,4852,47,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-278471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-human-interest","14":"tag-national","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}