It remains to him very much the neighbourhood of one’s youth. A place of reflection, of nostalgia. Of first-times and realizations and personal boundary-pushing.
The place where you grew up, knowing everybody’s house number, all the back alley by-ways and the best backyards for swiping crab apples after dark.
They’re no different than school-yard pals, those guys. Nik and Cope. Joffrey and Jon. Ken-Yon and Keon and Romby.
Also see: Old Stamps teammates remember Hank
Eventually, though, life moves on, things change.
One day a United Van Line truck parks outside your house, the old gang breaks up, and you’re off to a new neighbourhood.
Still, the ties, the friendships fostered through those formative years, at that very special time in anyone’s life, never fade.
“Calgary,’’ Henry Burris is saying, “made me the person I am today.
“I grew up in Calgary.
“I learned so much living there, playing there, being part of the Stampeder organization. It’s a place I miss. A special place to us.
“Both kids were born there.
“But with everything we have going here in Ottawa, this is where we’ve made our life. We’ve been able to create so many great things here and it’s a great city for family also.”
Smilin’ Hank is between retirement-related engagements on this Tuesday afternoon. He’s due downtown for a live TV spot in a while.
On this, the first official day of What-Comes-Next?, Burris doesn’t feel odd or slightly discombobulated or somehow suddenly at loose ends.
“I don’t know,’’ he admits candidly, “what’s to come.
“I still feel like it’s just another regular off-season. The Super Bowl’s coming up in just under two weeks. It’s just kinda the same schedule I’d have if I were coming back to play next year.
“So right now I truly don’t think I understand what it’s going to be like. Until that first regular-season game here in Ottawa and I’m in the stands watching my former team, all the guys I’ve gone into battle with, playing without me.
“Only then do I think it’ll truly hit me.”
While he has no definitive plans moving forward, one area Burris is keenly interested in, and a natural given his outgoing personality, is – horror of horrors – the media.
“I’ve done it every off-season,’’ he reports. “Working with morning shows. With TSN. Global. So I’ve got to sit down once the sea kinda calms down a little bit and start to look at my options.”
Burris’ scrapbook of memories in this town is a large one. He holds every major Stampeders career passing record and rightfully belongs in that pantheon of all-time touchstone QBs, alongside Jerry Keeling, Peter Liske, Doug Flutie, Dave Dickenson, Jeff Garcia and, quite probably in future, Bo Levi Mitchell.
Henry Burris with son Armand after the Stamps’ 2008 Grey Cup win.
“Definitely winning the Grey Cup there in 2008 is something I’ll never forget,’’ he says. “It made me hungry to want another one.
“I’ve told everyone, the only unfortunate part of that championship in Calgary was that Nicole was pregnant with Barron. Of course, she experienced it with us but Armand was only two years old then and he only remembers bits and pieces.
“This time, we were all able to celebrate, together; all able to eat Apple Jacks out of the Grey Cup. We took it to the kids’ hockey practices so everybody could see it. Shared it.
“For me, that’s what it’s all about.
“The most important factor was having the chance to win one more Grey Cup. Once we were able to achieve that, after sitting down with Nicole and the kids to talk things over, it made the decision pretty easy.
“That third championship, like I said, that I could experience with my family, was important to me.
“The icing on the cake.”
That icing of course, was laced with strychnine for the old neighbourhood he grew up in, the franchise that helped nurture his talents.
No one in this town needs reminding that Smilin’ Hank threw for 461 yards and 3 TDs leading the Redblacks to a pulsating 39-33 OT victory over the Stamps in the 104th Grey Cup at Toronto’s BMO Field.
“It was one of those bittersweet things,’’ says Burris nearly two months later. “Of all the teams we could’ve played against, it had to be Calgary.
“That’s what rivalries are made of, though, playing against great friends. When you play a guy like Charleston Hughes, you never want him to lose but somebody’s gotta lose.
“He’s still one of the great players in this league and they’ll have another opportunity to win a Grey Cup next year. But this being my last year, it didn’t matter who was on that field against us, I had to get this one.”
Get it, he did. For him but also for a franchise and a community that he’s thrown himself into head-first.
Same way he did here.
“You have to embrace where you play. Because you have people who are embracing you, who are investing in what you’re doing, supporting you.
“When people are taking their hard-earned money and putting it into tickets, making sure they’re in the stands every week, you have to give back. You have to give it everything you’ve got.
“One thing I’ve always talked about: Athletes are always ambassadors. We’ve been lucky enough to have this stage we’ve been given, so we’re better make use of it.”
For 10 years, that stage was here, down Crowchild Trail North, at McMahon Stadium.
“We truly love it in Calgary,’’ emphasizes Henry Burris, now retired and for the moment anyway a man of leisure. “We love it to death.
“It’s a place we always look forward to going back and seeing.
“We want to maintain our residency out here in Ottawa. It’s a great place to live, too.
“But Calgary will always be, in a way, home.”