On August 14, 1958, the Canadian Football League played its first-ever game with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers hosting the Edmonton Eskimos at Winnipeg Stadium. The new CFL was founded earlier in the year when the Canadian Football Council withdrew from the Canadian Rugby Union to become a completely separate entity, renaming itself the “Canadian Football League” in the process.
The 1958 WIFU schedule (Edmonton Journal, 14 August 1958).
One thing that stands out to me is the general lack of branding around the “CFL” moniker in the news coverage. Most news articles of the day stick to the established Western Interprovincial Football Union (WIFU) and Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU)/Big Four branding when covering the new league.
Advertisement for radio broadcasts of the first CFL games (Regina Leader-Post, 14 August 1958).
For all intents and purposes, the CFL was a new league in name only. The Big Four and the WIFU were still their own entities under CFL umbrella, and they maintained a high degree of independence still. While the rules of the game were uniform, the western clubs played 16 regular season games (four games against each opponent in the division) while the eastern clubs played 14 games. When it came to the playoffs, the western final was a best two out of three series while the eastern final was a two-game total point series.
Canadian Press article about lack of interlocking schedule for the new CFL. (St. Catharines Standard, 8 August 1958).
I also find it a bit humorous that from the onset of the CFL’s conception, the teams were at odds over adopting an interlocking schedule. It appears Montreal and Ottawa both initially opposed the implementation of an interlocking schedule. I guess self-interest and lack of big picture vision have always been built into the CFL’s DNA. It wasn’t until 1961 that the CFL finally adopted a partial interlocking schedule. Until then, the only time the east played the west was in the Grey Cup.
Article about the Ottawa Rough Riders and Montreal being opposed to an interlocking schedule in 1958 (Ottawa Citizen, 6 August 1958).
Now, back to that historic CFL debut in Winnipeg. The Bombers and Edmonton were seen as two powerhouses in the WIFU. In a rematch of the previous year’s western final, a crowd of 18,206 watched Winnipeg rush for 364 yards to overpower their rival. Here’s how the Edmonton Journal reported the game:
Account of the first CFL game (Edmonton Journal, 15 August 1958)
Final score. Winnipeg 29 Edmonton 21.
Sources: Edmonton Journal, 14 August 1958 Edmonton Journal, 15 August 1958 Ottawa Citizen, 6 August 1958 Regina Leader-Post, 14 August 1958 Regina Leader-Post, 15 August 1958 St. Catharines Standard, 8 August 1958
My background is in sales and marketing. That’s what I studied at university, and that’s been my career for the last 25+ years. Coincidently, I discovered my interest in marketing around the same time I started following CFL football. That was back in Grade 10. As a marketer who likes history and nostalgia, I like looking back at vintage and retro advertising. So, I thought let’s do a blog post on some old advertisements for the CFL.
To set the tone. The year is 1983, and the new BC Place Stadium has just been built in Vancouver. The 59,000-seat stadium is the first domed stadium in Canada. New beginnings for the B.C. Lions.
Here are some advertisements for the B.C. Lions and CFL football that appeared in Vancouver newspapers throughout the year.
Advertisement for BC Lions season tickets in the Province, 12 June 1983.
The first game at BC Place Stadium was a pre-season match between the Lions and the Calgary Stampeders. The game featured a kick-off concert by The Guess Who.
Advertisement for the BC Lions’ first game at BC Place Stadium, an exhibition game vs. the Calgary Stampeders (Vancouver Sun, 16 June 1983).
The Lions hosted the Saskatchewan Roughriders in their regular season home opener at BC Place. The game was sponsored by Rothman’s and you could win a “magnificent Eskimo carving.” A different era when tobacco advertising was quite common.
Advertisement for the BC Lions’ regular season home opener at BC Place Stadium (Vancouver Sun, 23 July 1983).
A&B Sound, a former electronics retailer, was a corporate sponsor of the B.C. Lions. They ran the promotion below.
A&B promo ad in the Province (30 June 1983).
The two best teams in the CFL in 1983 squared off on September 10th. A Grey Cup preview.
Advertisement for the big game between BC and Toronto (Vancouver Sun, 8 September 1983).
A purchase of a Sony radio or Walkman also got you into the big game between the Lions and Argos.
Promo ad (The Province, 9 September 1983)
The SuperValu grocery chain ran a ticket promotion, as well. Customers could get a coupon for a free Lions ticket when purchasing a $9 ticket.
SuperValu BC Lions ticket promo ad.
The B.C.Lions hosted the Western Final on November 20th versus Winnipeg. Season ticket holders, as expected, had first dibs. The tickets cost between $10 and $19.
Ad for Western Final tickets (The Province, 30 October 1983).
Player’s was another tobacco sponsor at the time. Here’s an ad promoting Grey Cup Week and the first Grey Cup to be played indoors at BC Place Stadium. Remember to heed the health advice given and avoid inhaling when smoking your cigarette.
Grey Cup advertisement in The Province (24 November 1983).
There weren’t any official Grey Cup tickets ads in Vancouver papers leading up to the big game because the game was virtually sold out well in advance. This article talks about the scarcity of Grey Cup tickets and how they were allocated across the CFL.
Article in the Vancouver Sun about the availability and distribution of Grey Cup tickets (29 October 1983).
So, if you didn’t have tickets, yet, your only option was the scalpers and resellers. The classifieds were full of ads like these. You could try John on Monday morning.
The Grey Cup wasn’t the final game played in 1983. On December 3, the CFL and CFLPA staged an all-star game at BC Place Stadium.
Advertisement for the 1983 CFL-CFLPA All-Star Game (Vancouver Sun, 2 December 1983).
Sources: The Province, 12 June 1983 The Province, 9 September 1983 The Province, 30 October 1983 The Province, 24 November 1983 Vancouver Sun, 16 June 1983 Vancouver Sun, 23 July 1983 Vancouver Sun, 8 September 1983 Vancouver Sun, 29 October 1983 Vancouver Sun, 2 November 1983 Vancouver Sun, 12 November 1983 Vancouver Sun, 23 November 1983 Vancouver Sun, 2 December 1983
Most football fans like a lot of scoring. You really can’t beat seeing two teams going back and forth and lighting up the scoreboard. Of course, a good defensive matchup can still make for some entertaining football now and then. But back in 1966, a game between Montreal and Ottawa redefined the meaning of a defensive battle.
On October 30, 1966, the Montreal Alouettes defeated the Ottawa Rough Riders by a score of 1-0. No, that’s not a typo. The lone score in this affair came by way of a rouge.
Article in the Montreal Gazette about the Alouettes beating Ottawa 1-0 (31 October 1966).
It was the last game of the regular season for both teams, and the game didn’t have any significance when it came to the standings. The Rough Riders had already locked up first place in the CFL’s Eastern Football Conference. And, win or lose, Montreal was going to finish third.
The game, played before about 12,000 fans who braved the cold at Montreal’s Molson Stadium, produced a total offence of just 386 yards collectively. Montreal’s offence came mostly from their ground game with 165 yards rushing. Of note, Montreal running back Don Lisbon surpassed over 1000 yards on the season during this game. On the other hand, most of Ottawa’s offence was produced in the air by star quarterback Russ Jackson, who passed for 132 yards.
Montreal Star (31 October 1966)
With the game scoreless, it wasn’t until late in the fourth quarter that Montreal kicked the single point. A rouge from a missed 36-yard field goal attempt by Peter Kempf. It was the lowest scoring game in CFL history and, thankfully, the record still stands.
Montreal-Ottawa Game Summary in the Montreal Gazette (31 October 1966).
Interestingly, it is suggested that the game tied a previous Canadian football record set in 1948 or 1949 when Winnipeg supposedly defeated Calgary 1-0. But I can’t find any reference to this WIFU game in newspapers or historical statistics. I suspect it was a reporting error in the Montreal Gazette article above that contributed to this incorrect notion.
Sources: Montreal Gazette, 31 October 1966 Montreal Star, 31 October 1966
The 2026 CFL preseason is underway with a full slate of games this weekend. I’m always happy to have football back – even if the games don’t really matter much to us fans. It’s safe to say that the coaches and players themselves get way more out of these matchups than we do.
Today, CFL teams play two preseason games each – one home and one away. However, teams used to play four preseason games. A four-game exhibition season can make for some long meaningless football from a fan’s perspective.
Here’s a Canadian Press article by Grant Kerr from 1985 bemoaning the lengthy preseason that saw fans pay regular-season prices to watch rather unexciting football often played by rookies and backups. There’s talk of an 18-game regular season and dropping the preseason games to two (which would be adopted the following year) and even giving a team a point in the regular season standings for a preseason win. An interesting idea that obviously didn’t gain any traction.
At high school in the mid 1990s we were asked to use a new technology called the “World Wide Web” for a research project. Yours truly balked and wanted to stick with the tried-and-true volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica. I told my friend that I would give it a go but that the Internet was nothing more than a mere fad, something that would surely pass. Over thirty years later, here I am writing an article online publicly admitting that ridiculous prediction of mine.
I slowly came around to the web. The early web was an imperfect place full of imperfect homepages and websites. There were no algorithms, no ads, and no AI. Ah, serenity! Over time, I became fascinated with it, eager to “surf the web” and explore new things on the so-called information highway and to connect with others across Canada and around the world. The CFL’s presence on the World Wide Web played a large part in my gradual acceptance and adoption of this new technology. I was a new football fan, and I wanted to consume football content.
The CFL’s homepage in 1996
The Canadian Football Leagued launched its CFL.ca website just prior to the 1995 season. Like most websites of this era, it consisted largely of blocks of text with some limited graphics. Remember, people connected to the Internet via dial-up in those days. The site comprised simple static pages featuring team information, schedules, game scores, and statistics. The Saskatchewan Roughriders were the first team to launch an official website. The Riders went online in May of that year, a site that would eventually become riderville.com.
Article in the Regina Leader-Post about the Saskatchewan Roughriders becoming the first CFL team to have its own website (31 May 1995).
Several other teams had unofficial webpages, usually designed and maintained by computer hobbyists who happened to be fans of the team. For instance, the Calgary Stampeders’ website was designed by two teenaged brothers Mark and Ryan Ciampa. Often, these webpages had convoluted URLs that seem so awkward today but were not out of place in the 1990s.
Edmonton Journal article praising the Calgary Stampeders’ website designed by brothers Mark and Ryan Ciampa (16 Nov 1995)
In 1996, the CFL partnered with Slam Sports to launch a revamped website in line with its Radically Canadian marketing campaign. This site featured a hotspot graphic with links (a trendy web feature for the time) on the homepage and included an e-commerce store as well as the first online forum or message board for fans to connect and discuss the league. The forum was called the “Huddle.”
Column in the San Antonio Express about the early CFL websites (21 July 1995).
By 1998, all CFL teams had an official online presence although the sites had their own look and feel to them. In the 2000s – especially after Bob Young purchased the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2003 – the CFL began to incorporate a consistent theme for all CFL websites. Young’s MRX company eventually took over the design and management of CFL.ca and team sites. This led to the launch of the CFL.ca Network in 2009, with a focus on video content and social links. The Web 2.0 era had arrived. All CFL and partner websites were now under one umbrella.
Call it nostalgia, I guess. But there’s something special about looking back at the early CFL websites. It takes me back to a simpler time when I first became a CFL fan.
So, if you are a football fan who grew up in the early web era and want to relive it or if you simply want to explore these retro CFL websites, here’s your opportunity. Keep scrolling and happy surfing.
Here is the type of content you could expect to see on the CFL’s early website. A simple table with text.
The first website for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats used the domain www.tigercats.on.ca and included a virtual Roar Store.
The Toronto Argonauts’ official website in 1997 was crunch.net and reflects the look and feel of websites in the mid 1990s.
By 2000, the CFL website was a little more polished and included content such as video that more web surfers could view thanks to faster internet connections.
Now, for the really fun part…check out the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/ Enter the cfl.ca URL into the search box and you will have the opportunity to play around with the old CFL websites from the 1990s and 2000s. You can try the URLs of your favourite team, as well. Keep in mind that some of the content may not load and some of the links may not work. But it should give you an idea of what surfing the CFL website was like in the “early” days.
Sources: The Edmonton Journal, 16 November 1995 The Regina Leader-Post, 31 May 1995 The San Antonio Express, 21 July 1995
