The four teams in the division are the Toronto Argonauts, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Montreal Alouettes, and Ottawa Redblacks.
Additionally, current West Division team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have, in the past, spent a number of seasons in the East over three separate stints.
Although substantial changes (such as forward passing) were still to come, modern Canadian football would ultimately evolve from John Thrift Meldrum Burnside's code.
[5] In December 1906, The Gazette reported that a proposal originated from Ottawa for the ORFU and the QRFU to merge, which would allow for higher calibre of play and create rivalries.
In 1907, in a meeting organized by Hewitt, [6] the ORFU's Hamilton Tigers and Toronto Argonauts joined with the QRFU's Montreal Foot Ball Club and Ottawa Rough Riders (Ottawa had been moving back and forth between the two unions over the past few years) to form an elite competition, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (also known as the "Big Four").
Moreover, the Western Interprovincial Football Union had been gaining strength over the last two decades, and its level of play was almost on par with that of the IRFU.
Following the 1954 season, the ORFU finally stopped challenging for the Grey Cup, thus making the game a contest between the champions of the IRFU in the East and the WIFU in the West.
Although it was another four years before the amateurs were formally locked out of Grey Cup play, this marks the start of the modern era of Canadian football.
In an effort to bolster the league's stability, the CFL decided to proceed with a complete merger of the two regional conferences.
This led to the first "all-Western" Grey Cup in 1988 when the Blue Bombers won the East Division championship for the first time.
In 1994, the CFL decided to expand further into the United States after admitting the Sacramento Gold Miners as the first U.S. team a year earlier.
The owner of one, the Grey Cup champion Stallions, moved his organization to Montreal as the third and current incarnation of the Alouettes.
The pre-1987 divisional alignment was restored, only to see Winnipeg return to the East after one season when the Ottawa Rough Riders folded.
For most of the modern era, however, the West has generally been on an equal footing and in recent decades has often dominated the East in the regular season.
This reflects Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Baltimore Football Club, and Shreveport Pirates results only while in the East Division.