The existence of university baseball in Canada can be traced to the late 19th century when the University of Toronto Varsity Blues baseball team (pictured here) were founded in 1887.   The McGill University Redmen also began fielding a team in 1895 but by the start of WWI university baseball became dormant in Canada.

With the likely exception of competition between independent university teams during the middle of the century, its wasn't until the mid-nineties that organized, modern-day collegiate baseball came into existence in Canada.

The Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association (CIBA) held its first National Championship in 1994 when the McGill University Redmen defeated the Brock Badgers in Montréal Quebec. The  league's first honorary commissioner was none other than Bill (the Spaceman) Lee.

From the outset, the CIBA operated outside the existing Canadian University Athletics system starting with four teams in 1994, the CIBA reached 30 teams at its peak before declining to 14 in 2014.  In the early stages of Canadian post-secondary baseball it was necessary for the league to accommodate both two-year Canadian colleges as well as four-year universities in order to form viable conferences to minimize travel costs.

Despite attempts, the CIBA was never able to become part of the existing Canadian university athletics system, in part, because its membership also included two-year colleges and new campus baseball clubs were hard-pressed to wrestle more funding out of existing university athletics programs.

 

2013 marked a turning point for Canadian University baseball.  After several years of contentious leadership including strained relations with Baseball Canada, the existing members of CIBA ousted sitting President Mercier, folded the league, and then reformed under a new legal entity - the present-day Canadian Collegiate Baseball Association (CCBA).

The upheaval acted as a catalyst for change and clarity.  The newly formed CCBA under Matti Emery embarked on a process of financial transparency and increased democratic practice.

After CIBA's dissolution, southern and western Ontario university teams broke away and applied for membership to Ontario University Athletics (OUA) and became the first baseball conference to be recognized by a member athletics group of today's U Sports, Canada's governing body for university athletics. Two-year college teams in the province of Quebec (within the CEGEP system) and the province of Ontario also broke off and joined their own respective two-year college athletics associations (the OCAA and RSEQ-Collégial respectively).

 

Today, the CCBA is an ten-team university baseball association encompassing four provinces from central Canada to the Atlantic coast.  While issues of expansion to western Canada (e.g. CCBC), reintegration with OUA teams, and realignment of existing teams within the RSEQ (Universitaire) and Atlantic University Sport (AUS) remain part of ongoing discussions, Canadian university baseball is in a better position than it has ever been.

Now based out of Carleton University under Prof. George Rigakos, the CCBA's central mandate is facilitating a bona fide university baseball championship for teams across Canada.  The CCBA remains the only national, university-based baseball association working toward a Canadian University World Series.