Atlantic Schooners

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Atlantic Schooners

Founded	1984
Folded	1984
Based in	Halifax, Nova Scotia
League	Canadian Football League
Colours	Black and silver
Owner(s)	J.I. Albrecht

The Atlantic Schooners was a conditional Canadian Football League expansion team in 1984, to play out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Schooners folded before they played a single game because the owners of the team (led by J.I. Albrecht) couldn't secure the financing for a new stadium for the team. Since there was (and still is) no CFL caliber stadium in Halifax the team had no choice but to fold.^[1] Since then there have been endless rumours of a stadium being built in the area and with it, a CFL team.

One urban legend around the Halifax area is that the old scoreboard from the New England Patriots stadium is in a warehouse in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, left there awaiting the proposed stadium. Another legend is that J.I. Albrecht had already bought turf for the stadium. When the club folded he took the turf and threw it into the Atlantic Ocean.

On June 11, 2005, a CFL exhibition game, called "Touchdown Atlantic" between the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, was held in Halifax. This game served as a gauge for possible CFL expansion. The venue was Huskies Stadium (capacity 11 000) on the campus of St. Mary's University. Tickets for the event, which cost upwards of $60.00, sold out rapidly. The game ended in a 16-16 tie. Another CFL exhibition game would have taken place on June 3, 2006, but the suspension of the Ottawa Renegades, who were scheduled to play the game, forced the game to be cancelled altogether. Possible considerations are being made to locate the next franchise in Halifax. If Halifax had landed the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the city may have had to build a stadium, which in all likelihood would lead to a franchise in the CFL; however, Halifax withdrew its bid for the games in early March 2007.

Nevertheless, a Schooners delegation took part in the festivities at the 2007 Grey Cup.^[2] Also in the Atlantic region of Canada, Moncton, New Brunswick (a city that is arguably more centrally located in the region and is roughly 250 km from Halifax, slightly longer than the distance between Ottawa and Montreal), is building a CFL-capacity stadium in hopes of luring a CFL team.^[3] A ninth CFL team has been located in Ottawa, meaning were the Schooners to join the league they would become the tenth club. The CFL has been extremely cautious about expansion in recent years, following the failed expansion into the United States of the mid 1990s.