EDMONTON – The Edmonton Elks took one more massive step towards completing the revitalization of the franchise Saturday, beating the B.C. Lions 28-16 in the CFL West Final to advance to the Grey Cup game for the first time since 2015.
The Elks will play the Montreal Alouettes next Sunday in Calgary.
That one, said head coach Mark Kilam and quarterback Cody Fajardo, was for Edmonton, the city and the 40,182 fans in Commonwealth Stadium.
“I want to give a shout-out to Edmonton because I got emotional when we first took the field; that place was unbelievable,” Kilam said before answering any post-game questions. “Edmonton was unbelievable, and I want to shout them out for showing up.”
“Hats off to the city, 40,000 is incredible,” said Fajardo, who will be seeking a third Grey Cup win. “From where it was to where it is now, for us, that drove us to wanting to win that game more than anything else. 40,000 in the stands, you could hear them; they were the difference tonight.”
The Elks had suffered through six seasons of not making the playoffs, at one point losing 22 straight home games, and attendance fell dramatically. The turnaround began when the team was sold to Larry and Deb Thompson, Chris Morris took over as president, Ed Hervey was hired as general manager, and Kilam was hired as head coach.
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Fajardo will lead the Elks into the championship game against the Montreal team that let him go a year after he led them to the 2023 Grey Cup title.
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“What a hell of a story, eh? That’s the CFL,” Fajardo said of meeting his former team. “To tell you the truth, when I saw them win the game (East Final over Winnipeg Blue Bombers), that’s when I knew we were going to win. God has this funny thing about giving second chances, and he gave me a second chance.”
“This is going to be a great week. An organization I have a lot of respect for. Clearly, they made a great decision because they’ve got the MOP there in Davis Alexander. He’s a tremendous player. I’ve got a lot of respect for them; we’re very close. It’s going to be awesome to compete against one another; we’re 1-1 against each other.”
It took both teams until the third quarter Saturday before the offences could find many cracks in the respective defences. The Lions led 9-6 at the half, but Edmonton outscored B.C. 22-7 in the second half.
“We’re a second-half team, this is what we do, we want to take over the game,” said Kilam. “We got the stop coming out of the half, and then we went down and got points … that’s what this team is. We’re comfortable when things get tough late in the game, we can hang.”
B.C. head coach Buck Pierce said his team just couldn’t put together enough consistent offence against a tough Edmonton defence.
“There are certain instances in games where you have opportunities to capture momentum, and we just weren’t able to get over that hump,” he said. “We had some big plays offensively, we were able to get a couple of things going but not finishing consistently.”
“Defensively, they were lights out on the first half. They played their tails off.”
Fajardo was largely instrumental in the Elks’ second-half success. Two key runs that ended with B.C. taking rough-play penalties contributed to 10 Edmonton points.
“Whatever it takes, that’s the mentality of this team,” said Fajardo, who completed 25 of 30 passes for 274 yards and one touchdown. He ran 10 times for a game-high 84 yards and a touchdown.
“I thought that was one of our best three-phase football games we’ve put together …and we had to,” he said. B.C.’s a great team, they were making it really hard on us. We made some great halftime adjustments.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press