This doesn’t look like Toronto, not at all.

Peering out the window of the CBC.ca offices overlooking Front Street this morning, the first thing I see is a sausage grill the size of a tanker truck.

There are pickup trucks on the sidewalk. Cowboy hats in the club district. There’s a pep band playing Garry Glitter on the trombone in the Barbara Frum Atrium. People wearing parkas made from flags of teams that didn’t even make the playoffs. Last night I saw a horse that didn’t have a police officer aboard. And for the first time since before the lockout, the old Mövenpick restaurant on the southwest corner of the CBC building has life in it!

The Grey Cup football game isn’t until Sunday, and the Argos won’t be there, but Toronto has definitely got Grey Cup fever (even though the unseasonable cold seems to have scared some people indoors). And CBC is in the middle of the craziness, with cameras everywhere, a shop full of swag, and a public “CBC Sports Cafe” acting as party central.

(Insiders say that when the facility opened up, the permit police were out in full force, incredulous that CBC could actually serve beer and, you know, have fun. Use of the facility is rumoured to be planned for upcoming hockey broadcasts, and the Cafe may be used for other events.)

Grey Cup weekend is a bittersweet event for CBC, though, because (as the newspapers are keen to point out) after 55 years this is CBC’s last CFL broadcast for the forseeable future. Starting in 2008, TSN has sole broadcast rights for at least five years.

So, CBC is going out with a bang. The game will have an amazing 29 cameras inside the stadium alone (the division finals had nine) including the famous Cablecam above the field.

The game will be carried in high definition, on the FAN radio network, Sirius satellite radio and to 74 million homes abroad via cable (standard definition.) Coverage begins on CBC-TV at 2:30 EDT on Sunday, with the game broadcast starting at 5:30.

I’ve uploaded some more CBC Sports Cafe and Front Street photos to Flickr (hat tip to Tony for some of them.) You can watch this year’s events, plus recent Grey Cup games on the CBCSports.ca main page. And check out some great moments from Grey Cup history (like the 1950 “mud bowl”) at CBC Digital Archives. Oh, and be sure to have your say on who you think will win. (Like most people, CBC analysts Greg Frers and Khari Jones both pick Saskatchewan, 24-10 and 17-13.)

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