![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/70c8fc80.png\")
<\/p>\nThe Grey Cup honours Canadian football heroes of the past \u2014 many of whom were also war heroes.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf you take the first three rows (of the Cup), most of them are in Flanders Fields,\u201d Keeper of the Cup Jeff McWhinney told Global News.<\/p>\n
On Monday, McWhinney took the Grey Cup to Kildonan Park in Winnipeg, placing it beside the memorial statue for Tommy Prince, Canada\u2019s most decorated Indigenous war hero, who was a member of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. Some of the names on the cup include men who fought alongside Prince, including Jeff Nicklin.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe Tommy Prince statue in Kildonan Park.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tJosh Arason \/ Global News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tMany of the names engraved on the Grey Cup are veterans who now rest in Flanders Fields.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tJosh Arason \/ Global News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cTommy Prince and Jeff Nicklin were both together in the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion,\u201d McWhinney said. \u201cPutting them together and thinking about what they did in 1945, with the Liberation of France and also jumping into Germany. It\u2019s pretty wonderful to talk about these two gentlemen in the light of today.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tJeff McWhinney is the Keeper of the Cup.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tJosh Arason \/ Global News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Nicklin was a CFL Hall of Famer and Grey Cup Champion with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1934 and 1939. He was killed by German forces in 1945 after his parachute became caught in the trees.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t![\"Get](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767930311_275_national.jpg\")
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\u201cThat was his fate; he didn\u2019t return,\u201d said McWhinney, who is named after Nicklin.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/JEFF-NICKLIN-3.jpg\")
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\t\t\t\t\tJeff Nicklin was a 1934 and 1939 Grey Cup champion and served on the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion during the Second World War. He died in conflict in 1945.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSource \/ Veterans Affairs Canada\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\tMore on Canada
\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n
The Grey Cup also memorialized championships during conflict and dark times.<\/p>\n
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The 1942 Grey Cup was a non-civilian game that saw military members go head-to-head with the Toronto RCAF Hurricanes and the Winnipeg RCAF Bombers. The Hurricanes defeated the Bombers 8-5.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe Toronto RCAF Hurricanes were the 1942 Grey Cup champions.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSource \/ Valour Canada\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had 21 guys on the team, 15 of them were deployed, and eight of them did not come back. That\u2019s pretty tough. The last photograph that was taken was that locker room of the boys having a good time,\u201d McWhinney said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir fate was going to be sealed in two years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years later, in 1944, the Tea Bowl was played, another morale-boosting championship game that was played in London, England.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the Canadian allies and the American allies in a pub debate saying, \u2018Whose game is better?’\u201d McWhinney said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen we think of the great locker room, putting all these great countries together, we saw 60 minutes of peace in 1944.\u201d<\/p>\n
McWhinney says it\u2019s important to him to keep sharing the stories of the war heroes on the Cup, and honouring their memory and sacrifice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to recognize that Canada is the greatest locker room,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have 4,049 names on here, many of which fought for our freedoms. And if you look at it, it\u2019s 4,049 chapters in one of the greatest history books we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Grey Cup honours Canadian football heroes of the past \u2014 many of whom were also war heroes.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,68627,82],"class_list":["post-546696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-grey-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546696","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=546696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}