Canadian Football Resources

Sources for research into CFL, CIAU and general Canadian Football history


Important announcement:
Canadian Football Historical Association


Anyone who has tried to research Canadian football history will be quickly struck by the absolute dearth of printed resources; the amount of literature written on the subject in the past half century likely falls short of the annual output of material on the NFL alone. Much material this can be found is of questionable usefulness, although there are also some absolutely superb secondary works that have been compiled.

The goal of this site is to become a comprehensive bibliography of Canadian football items. It is ultimately hoped that the following items can be catalogued with reasonable completeness:

  • all known books of subject matter relevant to Canadian football;
  • all known rule books pertaining to senior football;
  • all known team and league media guides for senior football;
  • all known championship (Grey Cup, Vanier Cup, etc.) programmes for senior football;
  • all league and playoff programmes from before c.1955;
  • pre-1970 promotional material (e.g. schedules, official and unofficial league guides, explanations of the rules, etc.); and
  • other miscellaneous printed items which do not fall into the above categories, but are to be considered noteworthy and worthy of inclusion.

    Both the physical specifications (number of pages, dimentions, etc) and the content (either a table of contents or descriptive summary of material) will be outlined for most major items, in addition to an image, where I deem its inclusion appropriate.

    Senior football (CFL, CIAU, ORFU, etc.) has been singled out largely to make this project more manageable, although I hope that junior football might ultimately be included. "Hard souvenirs" (textiles, pins, drinking vessels, etc.) have been excluded, as they are of little use for general research purposes, as have trading cards, as these have been quite thoroughly catalogued by Charlton (4th ed.). I intend to place greater emphasis on compiling information on older material (generally 1970 and before), as it is this material that researchers are less likely to encounter in the collectibles market, and in public collections. (Given limited time resources, I would rather start to cast light on the obscure than add yet another beam on an already well-lit item!) I do expect that this will take many years to complete, and thus apologise in advance for the patchwork nature of the present production. (You can help make it better: collectors are invited to contact me if they feel that they might be able to contribute to this project.) I do try to keep these pages up-to-date, but as this is one of my many part-time hobbies, some items may take between a few days and a few months to appear on this site.

    This site is not a site for collectors per se, in that values will not be assigned or quoted for any items listed, nor will relative rarities be discussed for all items. Collectors may find this site useful for determining what items definitely do exist, what they look like, and the scope of their contents. A page is included for listing items that people are trying to locate, although it is not my intent to turn this into a commercial forum. If there are specific items that one is looking for, please feel free to request a posting on the items wanted page.

    A number of the items listed are in my personal reference library, and I shall gladly pass along small bits of information therein to people conducting research; photocopies are not always possible, as many items are so poorly bound that I shall not risk destroying them for the purpose of producing a copy. Photocopies will be provided at cost, and I may also have to request a fee for more detailed undertakings. Please contact me with any such requests, but be mindful of the fact that I am a full-time student, and shall occasionally be unable to offer an immediate response to an enquiry because of academic obligations.

    Please note: Most of these pages have a number of large image files--please be ready for the pages to take a few minutes to download if (like me) you continue to trust your internet connection to the cheapest possible medium. I'm gradually trying to standardise the size of images, as many have been scanned at different times, on different machines, resulting in programme and media guide images of various sizes and formats.


    Pages

    Bibliography of Canadian Football Books

    As the name suggests, a listing of all known Canadian football books. This does not include media guides, promotional literature, etc., all of which will be covered on other pages.

    Rule Books

    Rule books of the CRU, CFL and (when I find some!) Intercollegiate unions.


    Team Media Guides

    Argonaut Media Guides
    to 1975
    1976 to date

    A listing of the media guides of the team that has unified much of Canada for the past fifty years by means of a near-universal hatred of the franchise.

    Hamilton Tiger-Cat Fact Books

    As above, but of the Ti-Cats, who are not so hated across Canada (except by Toronto's three regular fans).


    Championship Programmes

    Grey Cup Programmes

    1949 to 1959
    1960 to 1969
    1970 to 1989
    1990 to date

    Listings, images and contnets of Grey Cup programmes.

    Vanier Cup Programmes, 1982 to 1997


    McGill Football Programmes, 1923-1939

    Listing of general characteristics of McGill's programmes for many of the interwar years.

    Canadian Football Literature, 1950-1969

    An assortment of official and semi-official publications of Canadian Football from the early-modern era that really don't fit in elsewhere.

    Canadian Football Items Wanted

    More categories to come in the future.


    Contacting Me

    I may be contacted if you click on this link and delete the "NOSPAM" prefix to the address. (Apologies for making my e-mail address disappear from most pages, but with the sort of outright crude bulk e-mail lists that I've somehow been subscribed to by virtue of posting my address online, I've grown a little tired of having to delete up to 45 unsolicited e-mails from my inbox every morning!)
    Others holding items not presently listed on these pages are encouraged to send along descriptions of their contents and/or scans of their covers for inclusion in this index; in particular, information on the media guides of western teams would be appreciated.


    This page maintained by Ian Speers.
    Last updated: 21 December 2001