The purpose of the CFHA and its membership will be primarily to research, consolidate, publish and diffuse material of significant and meaningful contribution to all areas and eras of Canadian football history. Professional and amateur; junior, senior and intermediate; intercollegiate and high school football will all be considered part of CFHA's scope.
While the CFHA has yet to decide upon a format for publications, the hope to have three main areas of print activity:
1) Encyclopedia: Expected to be a year or so in preliminary preparation, we hope to produce a definitive Canadian Football Encyclopaedia, having statistics, player information, game results, championship results, historical chronologies and the like. This will likely be a cumulative effort over several editions with each issue adding more detail. (more detail available below)2) Journal: We hope to publish a journal approximately three times a year, which will include short and medium length articles of both scholarly and general interest. We hope to keep production costs low, thus the number of pages in each issue may be flexible.
3) Monograph Series: This series will publish sustained works that are too long for the journal, in addition to studies on topics too specialist or obscure to be considered by a commercial publisher. Initial print runs will be limited to perhaps 75-100 of each issue (less for long monographs for obvious financial reasons), but re-prints will be issued indefinitely as demand justifies. (We regret that we have no intention to feed into the "limited edition" collector market with this series--the specific prupose of this Association is the diffusion of knowledge, and placing a limit on its diffusion by producing a finite number of a study goes utterly against that principle.)
All types of textual submissions will be accepted for consideration, from journalistic discussions of the career of a beloved player or report of an historic game, to scholarly studies on specific themes or periods, to statistical studies. Submissions will be judged on the basis of general interest and/or the contribution made to the general body of scholarship available on Canadian football history. Both rigourous academic studies and lighthearted popular discussions are equally welcome, provided they are historical in scope. Both members and non-members will be able to submit their own articles, although these authors must understand that we can offer no financial compensation for any article's publication.
We have yet to reach the stage where subscription or membership fees have been discussed, let alone set, thus please don't send money! What we would appreciate is your sending e-mails to one or all of the following people to indicate your interest in this endeavour, and specifically whether you would wish to contribute (please suggest your general area of interest), or merely subscribe to our projected publications.
Ian Speers,
Wednesday 14 November 2001
If you are interested in contributing to the Journal or Monograph series please e-mail
ian.speers@utoronto.ca
If you are interested in contributing to the encyclopedia or being placed on a mailing list to be kept informed of the Society's progress please e-mail
AndyMalycky@SierraSystems.com
Also if you know of Canadian Football fans who might be interested, please forward this information to them as well.
We hope to get things moving in the not too distant future but bear in mind that this is all volunteer activity. Anybody wishing to volunteer to help make things happen in an organizational or web-site development sense, feel free to offer your services as well.
Photos! As much as possible.