The first Grey Cup game was played on a cold, blustery day in December 1909. The 1950 Grey Cup - The Mud Bowl - was such a mess at one point that a referee mistakenly thought a Winnipeg player was drowning in a puddle. Before the modern era of artificial turf, domed stadiums and end zone antics, these football players defined the game when it was celebrated not as a lesser northern cousin, but as a distinctly Canadian creation.   

Called the best and perhaps last good Canadian-born quarterback to play in the CFL, Russ Jackson played all 12 years of his unrivalled career with the Ottawa Rough Riders and led them to 3 Grey Cup victories.

The province of Saskatchewan, land of living skies, is the heartland of Canadian football. It was there where Ron Lancaster, an American boy from Pennsylvania, patiently harvested a Canadian football career like no other. Lancaster was a master craftsman and tactician of the game who patiently reaped records. When he retired at the age of 41 he had thrown more touchdown passes, more completions and suffered more interceptions than anyone else in CFL history. He had also passed for more yardage than any passer in professional football history.

Normie Kwon joined the Canadian Football League in 1948 as the first Chinese Canadian to play in the league. This marked the beginning of his illustrious career in the Canadian Football League, which would eventually see him win four league titles and become Canada’s athlete of the year in 1955. In 1960, Kwong's last year in the CFL, the "China Clipper" added five more touchdowns to his career total to become the League's all-time touchdown leader. This record would be but one of 30 CFL records he held at the time.

They were Footprints on the gridiron of Canadian sport.