Canadian Football in Living Colour, Part I — A Leo’s World Special

Good Wednesday morning, Uni Watchers! Did you get a lot of sleep last night? Anyone hungover this morning?

UW pal/contributor/author Leo Strawn, Jr. joins us again today, after finishing an EPIC series he called The Good, The Bad, The Oddly (a seven parter, with links to the other six in Volume 7. After a very short hiatus, Leo returns to take a look at the colo(u)rful uniforms of the three-down, 110 yard field sport of Canadian Football. There’s a lot to get to, so I’ll just turn it over to Leo now…

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Canadian Football in Living Colour, Part I
by Leo Strawn, Jr.

I’m Leo…welcome to my world!

I’ve been cleaning out my sports photo files and have been running across some pics that I thought I’d share. Football season in the Great White North is winding down, so I thought I’d share some rare Canadian gridiron photos I’ve collected, in living colour!

I’ll start with some game worn Hamilton Tigers jerseys, from l to r: 1909, circa 1925-34 and circa 1935-37.

I don’t have a colored pic of the helmet, but I do have one of the logo that was adhered to the front of the original Als helmets, from their founding in 1946 and worn throughout the 1940s.

Apologies for the poor quality of these screenshots, but I wanted to share the brightness of 3-down uniforms in the 1950s. The first is from either 1950 or ’51, when the newly merged Tiger-Cats wore yellow and red. The reason for that choice of colors was that the Tigers had traditionally worn black and yellow, while the Wildcats wore red and white. As seen in the second screenshot, Hamilton dropped the red for good in 1952.

Here’s a good look at the shoulder stripes on the 1953 Stamps jerseys.

Beautiful game photo of the 1954 Ti-Cats v Ottawa. Note the Union Jack flying over Hamilton’s Civic (later known as Ivor Wynne) Stadium.

Mono unis ruled the west in the 1950s. Pictured, in order, are the 1956 Stampeders, 1957 Lions (two pics), Calgary in 1957 and BC in 1958. (Note: I am going to contact GUD about some things I think may need tweaked in their Canadian database, now in progress, and the shade of orange on early BC unis is one of them.)

The Roughriders embraced green on mono uniform sets during the ’50s and ’60s, starting in 1954. They had abandoned red/black and red/gold color schemes in 1948 after changing the location portion of their name from Regina to Saskatchewan.

From the Big Four, I wanted to share these cool photos from the 1956 Tiger-Cats (nice sleeves!) and les Alouettes de Montréal in 1958, sporting sleeve numbers a guy named Jim would love.

Everyone is probably familiar with the wiiiiiiide white stripes on Hamilton’s helmets, but did you know Toronto had a similar penchant for wide helmet stripes? Argo pics are from 1958 and 1959; game photo of the Ti-Cats and Argonauts is from 1961.

Heading out west again, Winnipeg had some nice unis in 1958 and embraced mono blue in the early ’60s.

Here’s a rare look at an Edmonton mid-sixties jersey with the letter “E” on the sleeves.

I personally abhor the logo on the Lions helmets from the late 1960s-late 1970s, but you’ll probably never get a better look at it than in this photo of Don Moorhead’s helmet.

Back east again, the Argonauts went mono dark blue in the mid-to-late 1960s while debuting the boat logo for a single season in 1964. It would not return to their helmets until 1977.

In these pics from 1962 and 1963, you can see two rare Ottawa helmets (second helmet is sadly only partially visible), each only worn during a single season.

Here’s a game worn jersey from the mid 1960s-mid 1970s featuring the Ti-Cats sleeve stripes we’re all familiar with. The second pic is from 1966, not only showing those beautiful Hamilton sleeves, but also the awkward shoulder numbers Ottawa wore off-and-on during that era.

Hamilton’s familiar tiger helmet logo made its first appearance in 1967 in connection with the Canadian Centennial.

The tiger disappeared until 1972 when it first received its traditional positioning, very low on the sides of their helmets. The first photo is from the late 1970s and the last two are from 1985.

I’ll end this bright look at Canadian uniforms with my favorite, Montreal. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve had uniforms I can’t stand to look at, but they have always embraced innovation in 3-down football fashion. The Als have had 2 helmets with front logo placement (that one from 1974 and the 1946-49 helmet I referenced in part 1) and recently wore a full helmet design featuring their new logo. (The opponent in that black & white photo from preseason 1948 is the AAFC Brooklyn Dodgers.)

The mid-seventies also saw the debut of these gorgeous jerseys, one of my favorites from any era in any league.

And…my all-time favorite helmet from north of the border is the 1960s lark-winged Alouettes helmets.

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Hope you enjoyed this colorful glimpse at football fashion in Canada. I will return with a “Grey” look next week.

Until next time…

Cheers!

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Great stuff, Leo! Thanks. I’m not sure how many of you guys are familiar with Canadian Football, but it’s a blast to watch. It’s actually in many aspects very true to American Football’s early years in terms of rules and field length — although obviously it too has evolved over the years. Very much looking forward to the next edition.

Readers? Are you a fan of the colo(u)rful uniforms from the Great White North? Like in the states, CFL teams will wear throwbacks from time to time — and some of the unis shown above are great candidates (and some have already been worn as throwbacks too). And unlike some NFL teams, you can definitely trace the uni-lineage from these vintage unis! What do you think of the old-time unis?