Get Set For The CFL Thanksgiving Day Classic

By Chris Lawton

Get set for turkey, trimmings, and football – Canadian style! Week eighteen of the 202 CFL season is in the books. Which means focus can turn to week 19 and, as part of that, the CFL Thanksgiving Day Classic. If you’re an NFL fan left wondering what one earth I am talking about in October, then let me explain. I know that the NFL thanksgiving games come in November, but this is Canadian Football, and in Canada the Thanksgiving celebrations come earlier.

The first official CFL Thanksgiving games were played in 1958 and involved every team except the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I say the first official games because the Canadian teams had been playing each other long before the advent of the CFL. Plus, like their neighbours to the south, Canada had previously celebrated Thanksgiving in November. It is argued it was moved to October because of Canadian harvest time arriving earlier than in the States.

On January the 31st 1957 The Canadian parliament announced that Thanksgiving would be on the second Monday of October, and that is where it has stayed. With the formation of the CFL following in 1958, the opportunity was taken to play games on this date.

Getting The UK On Board

The CFL has been available to watch in one format or another consistently since 2015. Which meant we encountered our first CFL Thanksgiving game in the October of that year. A game that saw the Toronto Argonauts beat the Montreal Alouettes 25-17 in Montreal.

Since then, between 2015 and 2023 we have seen ten games played on Thanksgiving involving seven different teams, – Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Ottawa, and Hamilton. Although this year will be the third year in a row that the single game on Thanksgiving Monday will be between the Montreal Alouettes and Ottawa RedBlacks.

This year’s game will be free to watch on CFL+ for UK based fans and offers a window into the CFL for fans who haven’t tried it out before at the very reasonable time of 6PM UK time.

As in America, league officials will hope that families sit down together to watch some football on turkey day and the 3 down game gets some good exposure.

Team By team Thanksgiving Record

Edmonton Elks 19-13-1

Winnipeg Blue Bombers 18-10-1

Montreal Alouettes 18-19

Hamilton Tiger-Cats 17-15-1

Calgary Stampeders 14-14

Saskatchewan Roughriders 11-11-1

Toronto Argonauts 11-17

Ottawa Roughriders/Renegades/RedBlacks 9-13

BC Lions 5-10

CHRIS LAWTON

CFL ANALYST

Chris originally started following the NFL with the ‘first wave’ of fans when it was shown on Channel 4 in the 1980’s. He has been a keen supporter of the Miami Dolphins since 1983. Chris first encountered the CFL in 2016 and instantly fell in love with the Canadian game. He has been writing about the CFL 2017. Chris has a degree in history, postgraduate degree in librarianship and can be found on twitter as @CFLfanUK

5/5