The tournament rotates around the country, and has been held in eight of Canada's ten provinces during its 63-year history, missing only Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
The Championship's list of winners has included some of the world's strongest players, including Grandmasters Boris Spassky (in 1971, while he was World chess champion), Bent Larsen, Alexei Shirov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Viktor Bologan, Artur Yusupov, Bu Xiangzhi, Alexander Moiseenko, Kevin Spraggett, Ljubomir Ljubojević, Larry Evans, Pal Benko, William Lombardy, Gyula Sax, Igor Vasilyevich Ivanov, Walter Browne, Tony Miles, Larry Christiansen, Joel Benjamin, Eduardas Rozentalis, Vladimir Tukmakov, Jonathan Rowson, Luke McShane, Vladimir Epishin, Vladimir Malaniuk, Pentala Harikrishna, Alexander Shabalov, Nigel Short, Eric Hansen, and many other top stars.
The first tournament in Montreal 1956 was noteworthy for the presence of 13-year-old Bobby Fischer, a future World chess champion, who tied for 8-12th places.
Canadian Grandmaster Kevin Spraggett has the record for most titles with eight (either clear first or shared).
Laszlo Witt made a perfect score (9-0) at Ottawa 1962; this was matched by Alexander Cherniev at Regina 2019.