As a typical red-blooded Canadian male who first became aware of professional sports in the late 1970s, I have always been puzzled by the perennial debate over whether or not the Canadian Football League is something worth preserving. Those who would defend the CFL’s right to exist as a valuable piece of national culture usually bolster their arguments by harkening back to some hallowed Golden Age, a time when the Canadian version of the sport grabbed both the headlines of the sporting press, and more importantly, the attention of sports fans across the country. But coming of age as a sports addict when I did – when CFL-imposed TV blackouts of games resulted in a greater familiarity with American teams like the Dallas Cowboys than with, say, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers – I have to confess that this era of Canadian football has always been a mystery to me.

Until now, that is.

Thanks to authors Denny Boyd and Brian Scrivener, the three decades from the close of the Second World War to the end of the 1970s comprising the CFL’s heyday have been chronicled beautifully in Legends of Autumn. Confessing from the outset that making a case for the CFL as a vibrant, successful league “seems impossible from today’s vantage point, when those who care about the game apologize for it, and those who don’t consider it irrelevant,” the authors proceed to rectify this unfortunate perception. By book’s end, even the most historically challenged of sports cynics will find themselves rooting for a return to Canadian football in the days of gridiron giants like Jackie Parker, Normie Kwong, and Russ Jackson.

Scrivener and Boyd devote one chapter to each of the traditional Canadian teams (there are no Baltimores or Las Vegases here), bringing to life in the process many of the legendary players, coaches, and front office characters who gave the CFL its unique flavour during the 30-year period in question. From a literary standpoint, the authors’ greatest coup has been to capture magnificently the poignant, rah-rah spirit of innocence that prevailed when many of these underpaid stars played both offensive and defensive positions, and it was not unheard of for coaches to hurriedly don uniforms and take to the field.

At a time when the CFL finds itself in the unenviable position of being squeezed into extinction by the encroachment of the U.S. version of the game – fuelled by the resounding apathy on the part of its domestic fan base – Legends of Autumn comes as a refreshing blast of retro sport, which goes a long way toward revealing why the league was such a valuable piece of Canada during its glory years. Even the most die-hard advocates of CFL euthanasia will find it hard to resist being captivated by the spirit of this fine piece of sports writing.