Thursday night Miles Gorrell goes onto the Wall and he considers it his greatest Honour

Miles Gorrell had no problem ranking where going onto the Tiger-Cat Wall of Honour stands in his long list of accolades.

“This is the number one, absolutely,” the 69-year-old CFL legend says without hesitation, despite the fact that he’s also been a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame for a dozen years. “I love the Canadian Football Hall of Fame because it encompasses all of football in Canada. I did play high school, I did play junior, I did play university football. And I played pro football in Canada. So I’ve run the gamut.

“But I look up there at the wall and I see the names like (John) Barrow, Ellison Kelly, I’ve got great memories of those guys from following the game in my youth. And then to also see up there Ben Zambiasi and Rocky DiPietro, my teammates, I just get emotional because it’s all part of our life and our past, you know? As we approach our senior years, you have a lot of memories, but you don’t have a lot of tangible evidence besides the aches and pains.”

And being on the Wall of Honour is tangible evidence. It’s as tangible as it gets in Ticat circles.

There are only 30 members whose names are on the wall facing the west side of Hamilton Stadium—Gorrell is just the 27^th player honoured, and there are three builders, which is far fewer than the number of Ticat players who are in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame alongside Gorrell. So, Gorrell’s name and number will now be outside and inside the west side of the stadium: the Hall of Fame is on the fourth floor.

We all try to help: it’s just how you were brought up, how we were raised in the CFL. We were always doing things for people.

Gorrell came to the Ticats in 1985 from the now-gone Montréal Concordes and stayed until leaving for Winnipeg in 1992, then returned to end his 19-year CFL career as a Ticat in 1996. He later went into player personnel with the Argonauts, but Ticat Nation will forgive him for that. He was a beloved Cat who gave everything he had to the organization, on and off the field. One of the criteria for Wall of Honour induction is “good character” and a history of community work, and he ticked both boxes easily. He donated countless hours of his time to charitable causes in the city, worked with community programs for kids, visited more hospitals than a surgeon, signed every autograph request, and is a big supporter of the Ticats and CFL Alumni programs, which help former players in need.

“There’s a lot of guys who get down on their luck,” he says. “And we all try to help: it’s just how you were brought up, how we were raised in the CFL. We were always doing things for people.”

Gorrell says when he returns to Calgary, where he spent the first five years of his career, or is somewhere in Hamilton, he will often run into middle-aged men and women who tell him that he came to their hospital beds to offer warmth and encouragement when they were suffering from life-threatening diseases. He’s got well over 100 photos of him visiting various hospitals.

The Wall selection process also requires outstanding work on the field and Gorrell was a five-time Eastern all-star, was twice a finalist for the CFL’s top lineman award, won the Grey Cup as a core member of the magical 1986 Ticats, who clobbered the favoured Edmonton Eskimos in the national final, and was part of the 1989 Grey Cup, arguably still the best pro football game ever played. That was the Cup of the improbable Tony Champion catch, the last-second Dave Ridgway field goal to win it 43-40 and earn Saskatchewan just its second Grey Cup ever, and a sell-out crowd of more than 50,000 at the then-SkyDome in Toronto, which shook with the vibrations from the constant turns of fortune in the riveting game.

“I’ve probably watched the game 20 times, 30 times,” Gorrell said. “I was a talent evaluator in the CFL, and I try to watch the film as a critique of myself, and in that ‘89 Grey Cup, I would like to have done a few things differently.

“But it was a great game. Saskatchewan had a great game; they won the breaks, and we entertained the people that day. And that’s what you’re there for, in the end. We’re professional athletes, but we’re there to entertain the people.”

Gorrell was not only talented, but he was also more durable than any other CFL lineman to play the game. His line coach and mentor, John Salavantis—who still analyzes games for the Ticats Audio Network—recalls that not only did he play every single game of his final 10 seasons in the league (all in an injury-inviting role in the violent trenches), he did not miss a practice in Hamilton. On his retirement, his 321 games were the second-most ever. It still ranks sixth and is the most ever for a player who was not a kicker or quarterback. That daily reliability, Salavantis says, is one of the many ways in which Gorrell was a team leader. His infectious “free spirit” was, of course, another.

“On the free-spirit thing, I didn’t believe that the rules should apply to people who didn’t cause problems, and I didn’t cause problems,” Gorrell says. “Breaking curfew is not a problem as long as you show up the next day and play, which I did.

“I didn’t believe in missing games or practices. You’re trying to set an example, but it’s also that you like to play. I really love the game.”

Gorrell was born in Edmonton and was part of the Knothole Gang, which is still commemorated in Commonwealth Stadium: kids who’d push themselves through a hole in the fence, watch the game, then crawl back outside, where their parents would be waiting for them. He grew up idolizing CFL players,  played high school ball in Calgary, then went to the University of Ottawa, where he won a Vanier Cup—with Rocky DiPietro one of his teammates—before he was drafted by the Stampeders in 1978.

Now he and DiPietro are on the Wall of Honour together. In fact he played with seven Cats who are on the wall: DiPietro, Mike Walker, Paul Osbaldiston, Less Browne, Earl Winfield, Grover Covington and Ben Zambiasi.

“We all came together in ‘85, and got our quarterback situation (Mike Kerrigan) in line,” Gorrell says of the group which won the ’86 Cup after having reached the final the previous two years and vowing at the start of the season that they would not be the team which lost three years in a row, and proceeded to make good on the vow.

“And then the pieces started to fall into place in the 1986 training camp. Everybody had another year together. We were sputtering when we started, but Ben Zambiasi was such a great leader. Paul Bennett was such a great leader. Lance Shields. So many great guys in the room: Dave Sauve, Rod Skillman, all of them. Grover and I played against each other and played with each other, and we had a lot of fun together. Mike Walker was probably my favourite player because he was so tough when he played, and he never really complained. He just played so damn hard and never gave up.

“I just liked our whole team and makeup. All the guys got along. It’s not that we had to go out and party together or be together … but there was some of that.”

There will be a lot of stories as many Ticat alumni gather to toast Gorrell Wednesday night at the annual Wall of Honour dinner, and they’ll be there to support him when he receives the ultimate franchise honour at halftime Thursday night when the Ticats try to win their seventh game in a row…reminiscent of that mid-80s bunch.

And, as there still are at all Ticat games, there will be fans in the stadium who will be wearing Gorrell’s Number 66 jersey.

“I just love Hamiltonians,” he says, “and have ever since I played for the Stampeders, and we used to call Ivor Wynne, ‘Never-win Stadium’ because it was so tough to win here.

“It’s a different mentality when you play here in black and gold. The people are tough, and they like tough players.”

And as 321 games and 10 years of not missing one prove, Miles Gorrell qualifies as tough.