There will not be a post today. It is a national holiday. Well, not really, but for Canadian sports fans it is an important day.

Our national football championship is being contested today, as the Hamilton Tiger Cats take on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the 107th annual Grey Cup game.

I had thought of re-posting one of my previous pieces on the game and its significance, but old sports news seems so dated.

Just a note for my American friends who will be watching Super Bowl LIV in a  couple of months time. If Canadians were that pretentious about the game, this would be Grey Cup CVIII. Our country has been doing this almost twice as long, though we are more modest in our boasting. (Is it modest of me to say that?)

For me the  biggest plus to today’s event is that I am in Canada not in Europe. That means kickoff is at 6:30 p.m., not 12:30 a.m.  As someone who usually wakes up around 5, that is a definite plus.

Sports contests like this one remind us of how silly we can be at times. After all, the Grey Cup is just another game, and not very important compared to so much else going on in the world. My recently deceased mother regularly complained about the amount of attention given to professional sports by the  media. Since she wasn’t interested she saw no reason anyone else should be.

Still, when the game moved to cable television (which we didn’t have at home) I began watching it at her retirement residence because she had cable, and a bigger television. We would talk during the commercials and at half time – unlike the Super Bowl, the commercials aren’t a draw.

I’m going to miss that this year. I imagine it will take a full year at least for the impact of my mother’s death to completely sink in. Every significant date without her will be a first. It is going to seem weird tonight to watch and not have her complaining about the idiocy of grown men playing a child’s game.

I’ll enjoy the game (which is always more entertaining than the Super Bowl), but will be missing her as well.