{"id":536659,"date":"2026-03-14T21:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T21:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/536659\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T21:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T21:26:09","slug":"cross-canada-drive-with-david-beard-made-coulter-woodmansey-comfortable-to-sign-in-edmonton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/536659\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross-Canada drive with David Beard made Coulter Woodmansey comfortable to sign in Edmonton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo courtesy: Edmonton Elks.<\/p>\n

Coulter Woodmansey made the cross-country drive from Hamilton to Edmonton with David Beard last offseason. Little did he know that one year later, he and his family would make the same move.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, when we went, I helped David drive across the country. I took his minivan,\u00a0he took his truck,\u201d Woodmansey said.<\/p>\n

Woodmansey and Beard spent two seasons together playing along the offensive line for the Tiger-Cats. The big men became friends, as did each other\u2019s families. After a 30-plus-hour trip, Woodmansey and his family spent a couple days in Edmonton, along with some time at Beard\u2019s wife, Vanessa\u2019s, family farm outside the Alberta capital.<\/p>\n

Then it was time for a drive down the Icefields Parkway from Jasper through Lake Louise and Banff. The couple\u2019s first son, Mickey, was along for the ride while Woodmansey\u2019s wife, Shelby, was pregnant with son number two, Blue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was one of the most gorgeous drives\u00a0we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d Woodmansey said. <\/p>\n

\u201cActually getting to experience it \u2014\u00a0this had nothing to do with free agency at the time, it was just helping our friends out and then\u00a0getting the opportunity to do it. Now, we look back, that was\u00a0something that helped a lot because we saw where we\u2019re going to live and we saw\u00a0how gorgeous that province is.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ed Hervey came calling with an offer to make Woodmansey the highest-paid offensive lineman in the three-down league\u2019s salary cap era, Edmonton felt comfortable for his family to call home. The Toronto native spent the first 28 years of his life in Ontario, but the Woodmanseys packed up and moved to Alberta. His wife and sons flew to Edmonton while his brothers, Curtis and Jaden, drove with Coulter to the new family home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting these financial numbers in, this is what Hamilton was offering, Ottawa, Edmonton. What do we actually keep in our pocket?\u00a0Because these numbers sound great, $300,000 sounds fantastic, but you\u2019ve got to consider what\u00a0you\u2019re going to pay in your income tax, your sales tax, and everyday purchases,\u201d\u00a0Woodmansey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thinking about Edmonton, there\u2019s no provincial\u00a0sales tax, there\u2019s just the federal five percent. Unlike in Ontario, where you pay an eight percent provincial sales tax, you don\u2019t pay that in Alberta; we only pay five percent. Right away, everyday purchases are eight percent cheaper. You have a slightly lower income tax, so saving more money there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other big one was no land transfer tax. We\u2019re buying a house to be able to set our family up and\u00a0saving thousands and thousands of dollars on land transfer tax, plus the cost of housing being\u00a0so much lower. It was something we definitely considered because it makes it hard to say no to that opportunity when you talk about the finances, because Edmonton\u2026\u00a0you have cheaper housing, cheaper cost of living, saving money on taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodmansey believes the negotiation window setup allowed him to have extra time to make a more informed decision about his future with a new franchise. In 2020, the CFL shifted from the free agent market opening with career-changing decisions made in minutes or hours to a full week where teams can talk to players prior to putting pen to paper. That enabled professional athletes and those around them to go through a fuller process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no other professions out there where if you\u2019re considering doing a cross-country move, moving across the world, that you don\u2019t actually have time to consider or see the\u00a0place or do anything. For us, it was about what we\u2019re doing with our family. If we\u2019re given no\u00a0time, you\u2019re shooting in a barrel,\u201d Woodmansey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I at least look into the schools there and make sure that my son has a school close by to an area that we might live? That\u2019s what that week gives me the\u00a0time to do. It\u2019s not about Ottawa\u2019s offering me this much money, Edmonton\u2019s offering\u00a0this much money. That does matter, but what matters more is that I know my kid is going to have a safe\u00a0place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The University of Guelph graduate, who completed a degree focused on real estate and housing, went about his free agent process in a measured way. Woodmansey stated the Ticats made him \u201cvery generous\u201d offers to re-sign in the Hammer. The Redblacks put enticing money on the table, but the Elks won him and his family over for many reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to make a decision based on what we believe would be\u00a0best for my kids and my wife. When we made the decision on where we\u2019re going to go,\u00a0we\u2019re going there to be committed to that organization, that city, and stay there for\u00a0the long haul. We made the decision for Edmonton because we want to be here, build our family, help build this organization, put roots down, and perform for this city,\u201d Woodmansey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I go, we\u2019re going to win. I\u2019m going to Edmonton knowing that this organization is going in the right direction. We are going to win a lot of\u00a0football games this year, and we are going to bring a championship back to Edmonton.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodmansey plans to help the Green and Gold become contenders in the West Division and win the team\u2019s first Grey Cup since 2015.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy: Edmonton Elks. Coulter Woodmansey made the cross-country drive from Hamilton to Edmonton with David Beard last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[166835,166836,901,49,48,7028,521,522,520,181496,209938,13417,23752,13264,77213,149153,3801,15655,905,14967,82,43334,167300],"class_list":["post-536659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-alberta","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-coulter-woodmansey","tag-david-beard","tag-ed-hervey","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-elks","tag-elks","tag-guelph","tag-hamilton","tag-hamilton-tiger-cats","tag-ontario","tag-ottawa-redblacks","tag-sports","tag-ticats","tag-tiger-cats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536659","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=536659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}