Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Big Four (which dated to 1907) and the WIFU (which was founded in 1936), and became independent from Football Canada in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The Grey Cup is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. The CFL attempted an expansion into the United States in cities that had no NFL team between 1993 and 1995, though the expansion teams all either folded or relocated to Canadian cities.
History of Canadian sports
Soccer in Canada has grown in popularity in recent decades, especially as a school sport for boys and girls. It has more players than ice hockey. At the professional level, the Toronto FC in 2007 became the first Canadian club in the American Major League Soccer (MLS). In 2009, another MLS franchise was awarded to Vancouver, and began play in the 2011 season. In 2010, an MLS franchise was awarded to Montreal for the 2012 season. Both the Vancouver and Montreal clubs had their roots in lower-tier professional soccer leagues.