Online sleuths try to identify mystery performers at 1999 Grey Cup halftime show

If you go to the Wikipedia page that lists Grey Cup halftime shows, you'll find familiar names such as Shania Twain, the Guess Who and the Tragically Hip.

You'll also find the Parablegics listed as the performers at the 1999 Grey Cup halftime show. Unlike the majority of acts listed on the page, there is no link to a Wikipedia bio dedicated to the band.

It's something that has plagued Braydon Stachel, a CFL fan and music lover from Kingston, Ont., who has never heard of the act, which appeared to have performed in front of more than 45,000 people at B.C. Place in Vancouver.

With no Wikipedia bio as a starting point, he began digging around online for information and found little except a few references to the Parablegics being an obscure act that performed at the 1999 Grey Cup.

After a fruitless search, Stachel went from thinking, "Why haven't I heard of the Parablegics?" to "Why hasn't anyone heard of the Parablegics?"

In an age when it seems like every nugget of information, no matter how arcane, is easily available through a Google search, the fact that details about the halftime performance at one of Canada's most-watched events remain elusive bothers him and a small group of users on the CFL Reddit forum.

"Why does nobody know that information?" Stachel said. "It has not left my mind since I've started [searching]."

Who are the Parablegics?

Stachel says his quest started last year when a user on the CFL reddit page asked to crack the mystery of the 1999 halftime show.

"That started off the chain and nobody was able to solve it," Stachel said.

Stachel, who has experience working in the music industry, made efforts of his own.

He searched databases of performance rights organizations such as BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) and SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) and found no record of them.

More than 45,000 people, including these Hamilton Tiger-Cat fans, attended the 1999 Grey Cup at Vancouver's B.C. Place. But what did they watch during halftime? (CP PHOTO/Kevin Frayer)

He watched the CBC's broadcast of the 1999 Grey Cup and found its halftime segment featured an in-studio panel that included analysts Mike (Pinball) Clemons and Glen Suitor and did not show the performance on the field.

"You can hear music in the background, but they never cut to the halftime show, which is incredibly strange," Stachel said of the broadcast.

Searches of media databases found little mention of the Parablegics. The few articles that came up only noted that they played at the Grey Cup and include no other information.

A new thread popped up on Reddit earlier this month calling for a renewed search.

CBC News's efforts have proven futile.

CFL head statistician Steve Daniel says he has a copy of the 1999 Grey Cup game program and there is no mention of halftime entertainment. There is a reference to a plaza party but the Parablegics were not among the list of performers.

A search of the CBC's archives found no trace of the Parablegics. A search of the CBC Sports archives also came up empty, with no mention of the halftime performance in shotlists for the 1999 Grey Cup.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeated the Calgary Stampeders 32-21at the 1999 Grey Cup. Other details about what happened at B.C. Place that day are less clear. (CP PHOTO/Ryan Remiorz)

Grant Lawrence, longtime CBC Music host and member of the Smugglers, says he has never heard of the Parablegics.

Stachel says he's considered that Wikipedia could be the problem, with someone adding a name of a non-existent performer as a hoax and subsequent media reports citing information from the site without looking for further attribution.

He notes, however, that one Reddit user found that the oldest instance of "Parablegics" showing up on Google was in 2003, before the Wikipedia page was created in 2011.

Given the lack of  details, theories about what took place in between halves at the 1999 Grey Cup (which saw the Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeat the Calgary Stampeders 32-21, for what it's worth) abound.

A Twitter user who said he attended the game seems to recall a "military demonstration," leading some to wonder if the "Para" in "Parablegics" stood for "paratroopers."

One user found a reference to a performance by high school cheerleaders.That has led some to think that the Parablegics were a high school band, perhaps from a Christian school, which would put the "Parable" in Parablegics.

A shot during the telecast shows cheerleaders on the B.C. Place turf and a person on stilts dressed as a Mountie.

Stachel says there was a time when Grey Cup halftime shows featured a cappella groups such as the Nylons, so the Parablegics could have been an a cappella group performing cover versions, which would explain why there is no record of them in databases such as SOCAN.

Stachel admits that there could be a perfectly straightforward explanation for what happened at B.C Place 24 years ago.

Until then, this elusive piece of trivia will continue to gnaw at him.

"I have searched every [database] for any reference of of this band and they just don't exist," he said. "Yet they were booked for the biggest halftime show in Canada and it just doesn't make sense."

The 110th edition of the Grey Cup kicks off Sunday at Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton. Green Day will perform at halftime.