Football Canada

Football Canada is the governing body for amateur Canadian football. It is Canada's representative member of the International Federation of American Football IFAF, the world's governing body for American football, although it focuses primarily on the Canadian form of the game. Football Canada is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.

The organization now known as Football Canada was founded on June 12, 1880 as the Canadian Rugby Football Union, revived on February 7, 1884 and re-organized as the Canadian Rugby Union on December 19, 1891.

The CRU was founded to govern a sport which at the time had rules similar to the rugby football being played in the United Kingdom. In 1909, Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, then Governor General of Canada, donated a trophy to the CRU to be awarded for the Rugby Football Championship of Canada. This trophy became known as the Grey Cup.

Even by this time however, the rules being played in Canada were vastly different from the rules used in countries that were part of the International Rugby Board (IRB). In the years that followed, the CRU made numerous rule changes that resulted in a game reasonably similar to the American one, but unrecognizable to a rugby union enthusiast.

Despite the divergence, the sport continued to be referred to as rugby for many years, and the CRU did not change its name despite the obvious confusion. By the 1940s, however, another development was to cause further changes to the CRU's mandate. It was now clear that two of its member leagues, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union in eastern Canada and the Western Interprovincial Football Union in the West were far more competitive than other circuits. By the 1950s, the two major unions had become openly professional, and in 1956 formed the Canadian Football Council as an umbrella organization. In 1958, the CFC seceded from the CRU and became the Canadian Football League, which assumed control of the Grey Cup (though the amateurs had effectively been locked out since 1954).

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