The 1977 Grey Cup game will forever be known as the Ice Bowl.
Pat Bonnett and the Montreal Alouettes fired staples into the soles of their shoes that day to get a grip on the Canadian Football League championship, pasting the Edmonton Eskimos 41-6.
It was the first Grey Cup game ever played in Olympic Stadium in Montreal and a record crowd of 68,318 turned out despite a transit strike and terrible driving conditions after an intense blizzard crippled the city two days earlier.
Salt used on the field turned snow to ice when the mercury plummeted on game day. The staples helped, but Bonnett says it was the Alouettes' knowledge of their home field which made the bigger difference. Whenever possible, they just tried to run against the grain.
"Everybody puts a lot of emphasis on the staples but it really wasn't that big of a factor," said Bonnett, 65, who was an assistant coach for the Prince George Polars junior and senior high school teams this season.
"Unfortunately it takes away from the game and kind of makes it seem we had an unfair advantage and kind of minimizes the good team we were. Actually, the biggest advantage for us was when they laid the field, the Montreal Expos were playing in the stadium, and they laid the Astroturf in the direction from home plate out, so that the grain of the field would smooth down rather than brush up.
"The Expos wanted the turf laid that way because a ball hit off the turf would simply flatten the fibres as it hit and follow a more predictable path, whereas a ball hit against the grain would dig in and fly off in all directions."
Once they noticed the field became more slippery as it was flattened, the Alouettes adjusted to the conditions by designing offensive plays so their receivers and ball carriers could avoid tramping down the ice-encrusted carpet fibres.
"We realized in the game when we went one direction we had traction because we were pushing the brush up, and if we were going the other way we didn't have traction," said Bonnett, who played seven seasons for the Alouettes from 1973 to 1979 as an offensive guard and defensive end. "I think that was a big advantage for us when we determined that in the first quarter."
The idea to use staples came from Als' defensive back Tony Proudfoot, who borrowed a staple gun from an electrician at the stadium just before the game. It seemed to help, and by the end, most of the Montreal players were using staples.
Sony Wade connected on 22 of 40 pass attempts and the Alouettes racked up 424 yards of offence, while the Eskimos were held to just 102 yards, turning over the ball 10 times. Als placekicker Don Sweet accounted for half his team's points, booting a Grey Cup-record six field goals.
"I can remember I got two holding penalties that game, but it was self-defence," said Bonnett. "I was going against a guy who outweighed me by 55 pounds and because of the footing he started to bull-rush me and was falling backward and I reached up and grabbed him by the neck to stop myself from falling."
When Bonnett started his CFL career after five years at Idaho State, Marv Levy had just joined the Als as head coach in 1973, the year they signed Heisman Trophy-winning running back Johnny Rodgers to the CFL's first million-dollar contract.
"I always joked that that's why I didn't get rookie of the year, because Johnny Rogers was there," said Bonnett. "I was far from rookie of the year, I was fighting for my life just to get a job."
Bonnett's first Grey Cup win came in 1974 on a rainy day in Vancouver when they beat Edmonton 20-7.
"It was so wet there the day before the game, they had a plywood platform covering the cables and underground connections and it had rained so much that week that Ward Smith, a defensive back for us, got on this platform that was floating and pretended he was surfing," said Bonnett.
"The day after, it was sunny and blue skies."
The Als were in good position to repeat as champions in 1975 in Calgary but lost to the Eskimos. It was the first Grey Cup game ever played on the Prairies and it was a bitter minus 15 C with a 25 kilometre per hour wind. Trailing 9-7 with 3:47 left to play, Montreal quarterback Wade took over at his own 23-yard line and drove the ball down deep into Eskimos' territory. With less than a minute remaining, Sweet attempted a 19-yard field goal but holder Jimmy Jones mishandled the cold, wet ball and the kick sailed wide for a single point. The Eskimos pulled out a 9-8 victory.
"It was really a chip shot, but Jimmy bobbled the snap and the ball was laying crooked when Don kicked it," said Bonnett. "(Larry) Highbaugh ran around the end zone for a few seconds and that was it basically."
Bonnett was a long-snapper on special teams and played in four Grey Cup games, all against the Eskimos. The Als lost the final in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1979, but Bonnett missed that game. He suffered a torn medial collateral ligament earlier in the season against Ottawa. While snapping the ball back to the punter on a third-down play, Bonnett was double-teamed by Rough Riders' Mike Raines and Brian Hedges. The Alouettes filed a protest with league commissioner Jake Gaudaur, saying the Ottawa players deliberately tried to hurt Bonnett on the play with their high-low block, but nothing ever came of it.
Bonnett and his wife Renee moved to Prince George from Langley with their three children in 1995. After his 16-year playing career ended with his knee injury he moved to Vancouver in 1980 when former Alouettes defensive back Rod Woodward asked him to help out as an offensive/defensive line coach at Simon Fraser University, the same job he has at PGSS.
Bonnett has a degree in sociology and has a diploma in social work and was a substitute teacher in Montreal while he was playing. Now retired, he spent most of his working career with IBM in technical sales marketing and servicing. This was his sixth year coaching at PGSS, and last year he helped guide the Polars to the senior P.G. Bowl championship.
"I'd never thought of coaching, I always thought of teaching, and coaching is just another form of teaching," said Bonnett, who grew up in southern Ontario and started playing football in Montreal when he was 13. "It's something I really enjoy.
"I like making the linemen feel special, because linemen are quite often the brunt of jokes - you know, the big fat lazy guys - and they're not. They're athletes as much as anyone else. If you don't win the battles on the lines you're not going to win the game."
Bonnett is a longtime friend of Wally Buono, the B.C. Lions head coach and general manager. They were living on opposite sides of Montreal when they were recruited to Idaho State in 1968. Bonnett served as a guest defensive line coach at the Lions' camp in 2010. Buono and Bonnett are devout Christians who organized the Als' bible study groups and pre-game chapels during their playing days. After he won the '77 Cup, Bonnett skipped out early from the post-game party and that night spoke to a church group.
Bonnett never did get a Grey Cup ring in 1974. He chose a watch instead and later regretted the decision. His 1977 ring was stolen and was never recovered, but the Als made him another one. He doesn't wear the ring but his players on the Polars always ask him to bring it to their end-of-season banquet.
"I'm old enough to be their grandfather but they still like to talk about it and ask questions," he said. "I'm trying to help these guys at PGSS get better skills, but I also want them to be better men. I want them to learn life skills, I want them to learn you have to go hard when you're tired, you can't quit. There are so many qualities and character development you learn by playing a sport and football, I think, is one of the best ones to do that.
"You've got small kids, fast kids, big kids, slow kids, smart kids and not-so-smart kids, and you can all play on a team and work together. You can learn self-discipline and how to go the extra mile and sacrifice and what it means to hurt and sweat and play. You learn how to adjust if things aren't going well. You're going to have disappointments and successes and you don't go around boasting when you have success. It's life, and that's what I want these kids to learn and why I volunteer for this."
