Seeing a CFL game in Ottawa

Ottawa's next home game is Friday when they host the BC Lions. I witnessed Ottawa's 3rd ever home game as the RedBlacks franchise.

While there are many reasons (government, Byward Market, up and coming neighbourhoods) to visit Canada's capital, the idea of seeing a CFL game in Ottawa has been on my bucket list for a long time.

I vowed to go to Ottawa to see the CFL when the city got another team. Here are a few thoughts from my night with the RedBlacks at TD Place.

-- TD Place is in the same place as Frank Clair Stadium, right off Bank Street just north of the Rideau Canal at the south end of Lansdowne Park. A lovely, yet small stadium.

-- OC Transpo ran a special 450 Landsdowne bus from downtown to the stadium, but you can take any bus that goes that far down Bank Street to get to the stadium. Your printed ticket gets you on any Ottawa city bus. I even found that to be true well after the game. I needed to go to the Greyhound station to go back to Toronto, and my ticket got me on the bus.

The buses afterward were pretty well organized. Evacuating 24,000 people, most of whom took public transportation, is not an easy task.

On drier days, people could also ride their bikes down to Landsdowne Park.

-- Rain dominated my time in Ottawa, so bringing an umbrella made sense. There is a sign that lists umbrellas as something you can't bring into the stadium, specifically noting that confiscated items would be destroyed. Pretty harsh.

After all, there isn't any substantial parking, so you couldn't put the offending items back in the car, if you had a car. Played it smart and hid my umbrella. They played it smart and didn't find the umbrella. A disaster averted, but an odd policy.

If you sit in the north stands, chances are you will be dry. The bad seats are well-covered. In the south stands, you will get wet without rain protection, unless you are in a skybox. An extra perk if you sit in the north stands is finding the south seats of the hockey arena below. Struck up the right conversation with knowledgeable people and I got to see the hidden magic.

-- Both teams line up on the south side, as we've seen in Hamilton at Ivor Wynne Stadium. Directions are played up as the stadium features competitions between patrons of the different stands. From my seat in the north stands away from the water, I could still see the Rideau Canal in the daylight.

-- To the east, there is a bridge where you walk across to get from one side to the other side. A few of us were taking pictures on the bridge but we were told to keep moving. The idea of taking pictures on the run wasn't that appealing.

-- I noticed yard lines measured out as part of the concourse where I found the hockey seats. A nice football touch, even if the field is also used for the Ottawa Fury of the NASL (soccer).

-- We realize there are interim issues with a relatively new stadium. I bought a hot dog and was sharply underwhelmed with the options to dress the dog. Fast food packets fell short of the mark expected by professional football stadiums.

Let's hope that by the time you get to TD Place, you have an improved condiments experience.

The food looked tempting. Garlic fries were on the menu. The hot dog had a split-top buttered bun ready made for a lobster roll. There were a few other culinary temptations.

-- As we've noted, the stadium seats just under 25,000 for games. If Ottawa is to host a Grey Cup, putting in extra seats would be rather difficult. There is a hill to the east of the stadium where extra seats might not be viable. To the west, you can see the very tall condo building going up giving you a chance to live the dream of walking to a RedBlacks game. There is some room for extra seats, but not much room.

-- The music before the game was rather obnoxious, to no one's surprise. Stadiums do this now. The volume of the music was rather loud. The people in front of me were more upset than I was; we share some lovely moments mocking how loud the music was.

-- Perhaps this list is so finicky, so let's end on a good note. The fans were very excited and very loud during the game. You could see how much they cared about their team. There was a lot of RedBlacks gear around town on non-game days, but they have cleared the stores out based on what I saw at the game. They have suffered through endless waiting to renovate the stadium, the Renegades, and the wait after the Rough Riders disbanded.

photos credit: me

Comments

[Tyler]

The Grey Cup was held at this site most recently 2004 (bad memories for me: the Lions sucked and lost to the Argos) and I do recall temporary seating added for the game. But you are correct, it would be difficult with that condo on the one end now.

[Chad]

51,242 is a lot of people in that space. Not too far off the 53,208 crowd in Toronto for the 100th Grey Cup. The CFL will really want the Grey Cup to be in Ottawa at some point. We'll see if the nation's capital can approach that number in the future.