Popular content creator detained for "mess" at Canadian border on way to Toronto Blue Jays game

Even though he’ll be heading to a lot of sporting events this fall, it wasn’t in the cards for Garrett Fedewa to make it to a Toronto Blue Jays game this week.

The popular sports content creator who goes by the name @GFedGoCrazy, or simply “GFed” for short, was detained at the Canadian border between Detroit and Windsor on the way to a Blue Jays game against the Houston Astros on Thursday in Toronto, a 6-0 win for the home side.

The 27-year-old Michigan native’s biggest following is on TikTok, where he’s amassed 496,000 followers for his stadium visit content.

His two most popular series have included a “walk-on challenge,” where he attempts to get on the field or the court of vacant pro and collegiate facilities, and a “how long can I stay?” challenge, where he loiters around stadiums after events until security finally makes him leave the premises, anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.

This fall, he’s undertaken a new challenge, aiming to visit 100 stadiums in 100 days, and filming other videos along the way.

Hoping to catch a 3:07 p.m. Blue Jays first pitch, Fedewa headed to the border with about a four-hour journey still ahead of him after spending the day prior in Ohio visiting six different universities.

There was just one catch: he didn’t realize he was breaking the law with a recent purchase he was bringing over the border from Michigan.

“I had just drove nine hours the day before… I was like, let’s just take a breather, get something to take the edge off, and get over to Canada the next day, where it’s also federally legal. And it just didn’t cross my mind that I can’t bring that,” Fedewa said in an interview with Offside.

“[The Canadian border guards] started asking, ‘Do you have any alcohol, tobacco, cannabis?’ I don’t really like lying to law enforcement, so I just told them exactly what’s going on.”

Fedewa admitted that a bit more reading of the Canadian travel resources could’ve probably saved him from the whole ordeal, which took about 30 to 45 minutes before being released.

“Just a little bit of a mess that was totally on my own fault,” he added. “Since I was honest, they were really cool about it. It just took more time than anything. It didn’t cost me any money or give me anything like, on my record, or anything like that. They decided to take, like, $40 worth of stuff and let me on my way.”

Fedewa opted against going to the Blue Jays game, instead turning around and heading to a Cleveland Guardians home game against the Kansas City Royals. To make matters worse, he’d left his driver’s licence at his hotel from the night prior, making an extra pit stop on the trip to avoid any more legal trouble.

“I was already about to get in, right at [first pitch] to arrive at the [Rogers Centre], but after getting detained… I pushed things back far enough, like it’s not even worth it,” Fedewa said.

But despite the mixup, he’s still en route to his next stop on the tour, a Friday night CFL contest in Hamilton between the host Tiger-Cats and Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

“I was a little bit upset that I couldn’t go to Toronto yesterday, because I haven’t really spent that much time in the cities of Canada. Like a lot of those trips, I’m like going out for like a day and driving right back after the game to the States. So I thought I was gonna have more time than I have previously, to actually enjoy Toronto and enjoy Canada.”

Have there been any other roadblocks?

Fedewa’s experience in filming his content has been mixed; some teams and organizations have embraced him with open arms, while other security teams have either found him while on site or prior to entry and either told him to stop filming or escorted him out.

The mixup at the border isn’t even the first major hurdle that Fedewa’s faced in his recent run of content. Though it was recovered, his vehicle, which he estimates he’d put 100,000 miles (about 160,000 km) on while filming content, was stolen last month.

Earlier this month, he’d been served a full ban from all NFL stadiums, due to fear of trespassing on the league’s part.

“I wouldn’t say I had a full schedule prior to [going on a 100-stadium tour], but I did get my content banned from the NFL, and that was originally going to be probably like 15 to 20 of the days of the 100 days, and we had about 89 days left,” he said.

Though Fedewa’s content pushes the boundaries a little bit, he admits that it’s mostly out of curiosity on his own part and a willingness to show new things to fans that they might not have seen, such as vacant luxury boxes after a game that might have cost thousands of dollars per ticket.

“I’ve never really tried to be anything but a fan. I’ve never played college football. I never went into journalism school. That’s never been the path I really saw for myself,” he explained. “I want to just build that for someone that, if they were thinking… maybe not 100 days, but if they were trying to build out, like, a week-long trip… how would they realistically do it? And I think that I’m portraying this in a way that they would do it as well.”

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