As Canada prepares for the 2025 Rugby World Cup, they are once again faced with balancing fundraising and on-field preparation.

The Great White North may not seem like a natural fit for a flourishing rugby culture, with its often snow-covered pitches and nationwide hockey obsession. However, rugby’s cultural values of being hardworking and humble align well with Canadian culture, according to current women’s national team captain Sophie de Goede¹. Men’s rugby has a long and storied history in Canada, with rugby serving as a precursor to the country’s native game of Canadian football, and it was also an early adopter of the women’s game. Despite this deep history, in the modern era, rugby in Canada has suffered from several significant hindrances, which has damaged the men’s programme and led to limited success on the international stage. In comparison, despite chronic underfunding, a lack of a cohesive domestic structure and national set-up controversies, the women’s team has risen to the current number two side in the world and a world-leading sevens programme.

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Rugby has a long but complicated history in Canada. The sport was introduced by British settlers and soldiers during the mid-nineteenth century, with a game between soldiers and students taking place in Montreal in 1865². Like their southern neighbours, Canadians were quick to develop their own laws, with Canadian football soon becoming the predominant form of the game in the country. This led the sport we know today as rugby union as a ‘sport of the past’ in Ontario and Quebec by the early 1880s³. However, rugby union did continue to be played by small minorities throughout Canada, with a stronghold in British Columbia, resulting in reciprocal tours between Japan and Canada in 1930 and 1932⁴. Whilst the Canadian national men’s team has often been considered to be a regional giant, they have not been able to continue to compete with more traditional rugby nations. With a significantly smaller budget than tier one nations, a small player pool, a lack of domestic senior rugby opportunities and legislative issues within Rugby Canada, the men’s team have struggled to attain any measure of form in recent years. Whilst the team were Rugby World Cup mainstays following the competition’s 1987 founding, they failed to qualify for the 2023 edition and lost six of their seven matches in 2024⁵. The failure to qualify for the 2023 World Cup has also impacted the team’s ability to bounce back due to decreased funding from World Rugby.

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Whilst France is arguably the birthplace of the modern women’s rugby movement, North America took the game to a new level. In the 1970s, university and club sides began popping up across North America, with those north of the border enjoying the benefits of full membership of their union and the most support from any integrated union in the world⁶. The first official and independent Women’s rugby club in Canada was founded in 1979 in Ottawa, Ontario⁷. The Ottawa Banshees remained independent from a male club until 2002 and continue to play to this day. More clubs began to pop up around Canada, leading to representative provincial sides and the Provincial Championships, the first of which was held in 1987 in Calgary⁸. It would be in the same year that Canada made their test match debut.

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Following on from successful tours of Europe by American club sides, the first test match outside of Europe (featuring the USA and Canada) was planned for 1987, five years on from the first ever Women’s international test match between the Netherlands and France. The match took place on 14th November 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia and acted as a curtain raiser to a contentious Canada v USA men’s match. Whilst the USA Women’s team was sanctioned by USA Rugby, the team were not allowed to call themselves the Eagles nor were they allowed to wear the famous badge, as the union were still not fully supportive of women’s rugby⁹. In comparison, Canada had full support of their national union and wore the famous maple leaf with pride. The USA, the majority of whom had toured Europe, won the match by 22 points to 3. The initial Canadian team however set an example for all future Canucks, with the USA team noting how physical and unrelenting their opponents were.

‘The thing about Canada is that they were much tougher than we were. They have always been incredibly physical and tough. We tackle hard but at the breakdown we are not as physical on a constant basis like they are. We won the game alright, but it was an awakening to say ‘oh this is international rugby’, because nobody had ever done it and we were the first.’

Kathy Flores, 1987 USA captain and number 8¹⁰.

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Not only did the 1987 match cement a tradition of physical relentlessness for Canada and start one of the fiercest rivalries in Women’s rugby, but it also created a family legacy. Stephanie White captained the side from number 8, and she would go on to receive 17 caps for the Maple Leafs. White co-captained the side at the 1991 World Cup and captained the team at the 1994 World Cup, as well as captaining the first-ever Canadian sevens team in 1997¹¹. Alongside her playing career, White balanced a career in rugby administration, having sat on various governing boards at both provincial and national levels. However, despite White’s success in both of these areas, in recent years she has entered the spotlight as the mother of current Canada captain Sophie de Goede. The de Goede family name has become synonymous with Canadian rugby worldwide. Dutch-born patriarch Hans de Goede captained the Canadian Men’s fifteens and sevens sides and also had spells playing in Europe and Oceania, most famously with Cardiff RFC in the late 1970s¹². As a player, Hans was so well-renowned during the 1980s that he twice featured in ‘World XV’ sides despite coming from a country known as somewhat of a rugby minnow. Hans retired from playing in 1987, after captaining Canada at the first Men’s Rugby World Cup, where he was famously caught on radio mics during a win over the much-favoured Tonga as saying ‘Come on boys, we’re making history!’¹³. Sophie’s older brother, Thyssen, has also represented Canada twice in XVs, both caps coming during the 2015 Pacific Nations Cup. Since retirement, Stephanie and Hans have both become members of the Rugby Canada Hall of Fame¹⁴.

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A key element of White’s work within Canadian rugby has been her efforts to end the ‘pay to play’ model, which has dominated the funding structure of the national team since its inception and to also increase the funding for the programme. Pay to play has a long history within women’s rugby, and whilst financial struggles are not new to Rugby Canada, the Canadian women’s national team has been forced to pay their way and engage in fundraising efforts for far longer than any of the other top female sides. Whilst at the first Women’s World Cup in 1991, the USSR team infamously clashed with the British tax office over the team’s attempts at fundraising¹⁵, the Canadians are making headlines for their World Cup fundraising efforts in 2025, despite being favourites for the final and having their eyes on the trophy.

Scrum Queens began reporting on the financial hardships faced by the Maple Leafs back in 2010¹⁶¹⁷. Rugby Canada had been forced to pull out of a World Cup warm-up tour of New Zealand due to financial hardships. Rugby Canada later received $150,000 in extra funding for the 2010 World Cup through provincial and outside donors¹⁸. This was $30,000 more than the team’s $120,000 yearly budget allocated to the team by Rugby Canada. Team members noted that an appropriate budget was important for the team’s well-being and on-pitch performance, comparing it to the nation’s success at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics had shown that female rugby players could be successful athletes, as national team member Heather Moyse won gold in the two-man bobsled. Moyse had previously been the top try scorer at the 2006 World Cup and would later go on to once again top the try scoring charts at the 2010 World Cup. Whilst Moyse received financial backing from Sport Canada for her participation in the Winter Olympics, Moyse would’ve paid approximately $3000 per tournament for the privilege of representing her country in her preferred sport of Rugby. Scrum Queens reported that an athlete who took part in a full four-year World Cup cycle between 2006 and 2010 would’ve spent approximately $36,000; however, this figure does not include any financial losses the players would’ve suffered due to taking extended breaks from work to attend competitions. Canada would ultimately finish sixth at the 2010 World Cup, their joint lowest finish at the competition.

‘It’s amazing to see how important people think it is that we need to focus on the game itself and not be stressed financially. I think Canada’s success in the Olympics proved that financial support for athletes can make them perform better and achieve their best. We are honored and lucky to have such a great rugby community in our country.’

Brooke Hilditch, Canadian World Cup 2010 Team Member¹⁹

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The following year, a group of players, including Brooke Hilditch, opted to boycott the 2011 Nations Cup²⁰ in protest. To compete in the competition, Rugby Canada required the players to pay $2900 to play in an international competition which was taking place in Canada. In comparison, the Canadian Men’s team received approximately $1.7 million per year in World Rugby²¹ funding in this period and also had all of their World Cup costs covered by the governing body (roughly $400 000). Despite the 2010 press coverage, 2011 boycott and the team’s second-place finish at the 2014 World Cup, the team were still paying to represent their nation in 2016. Perhaps due to the bad press associated with the 2011 boycott, the costs of each tour had been reduced to approximately $1500²² by 2016, however, not only had Canada’s rivals moved away from that model but Rugby Canada had also stopped pay to play for the men’s team decades previously. Ahead of the 2017 World Cup, the Monty Heald Fund was set up to centralise fundraising efforts, and Rugby Canada noted that the pay-to-play model needed to be eliminated as soon as possible. The fund was headed up by Stephanie White, and as a result, no player used their own money to take part in the 2017 World Cup²³²⁴.

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The 2010s brought an additional means of funding for Canadian rugby, but it also came with more responsibility for the players and additional controversy. Rugby sevens became an Olympic sport in 2016, which resulted in the women’s sevens programme receiving $750,000 from the “Own the Podium” programme²⁵ and full-time contracts for selected players as a result of the newly founded women’s sevens circuit. The seven’s team won a bronze medal at the 2016 games but dropped to ninth place at the 2020 games²⁶. During the lead-up to the Tokyo games, the team submitted a complaint to Rugby Canada, citing bullying and harassment. This resulted in head coach John Tait stepping down just months before the start of the games²⁷. Although Rugby Canada found through an independent investigation that whilst the players’ experiences did match those within the complaint, they did not meet the threshold for the governing body’s policy definition of harassment and bullying. The complaint had been signed by 37 athletes, 21 of whom were in the then-current playing pool and in total represented 55% of those who had attended training camps in British Columbia.

“We know firsthand how hard it is to speak out and how hard it is to ask for change. Athletes should never have to experience heightened anxiety, depression, racism, eating disorders, low self-worth or mental illness as part of participating in sport at any level.”

Canadian Women’s National Sevens Team statement, 2021²⁸

Canada has utilised their small playing pool to the extreme, with the majority of sevens players also playing for the national fifteens squad as well. This means that a significant portion of the squad that finished fourth at the 2021²⁹ World Cup had been subjected to bullying and harassment under Rugby Canada.

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