On This Day In Blues History
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It was fifty years ago today, on Oct 31st, 1971, that seven members of the Ottawa rugby community decided to branch off from their current club and start something of their own. This was the beginning of the Bytown Blues.
The man who was named interim chairman that night, and eventually named as our first president during the first AGM in February of ’72, was Doug McDonald. It was Doug who designed the original Bytown Blues logo.
As we begin to celebrate our 50th anniversary today, we’ve gone back into the archives to update our logo as an homage to Doug’s original drawing.
We’ve never deviated much from that design, so most of these changes involve the colour scheme:
- the background colours in the shield now have navy blue on the left with sky blue on the right,
- the shield outline reverts to its original gold, as does the oak tree,
- the rugby ball in the oak tree is back to navy blue,
- the maple leaf was later added when the club went on tour overseas and remains on this design,
- finally, the ribbon with the club motto also changes to its colours and now contains navy blue writing on a sky blue background.
We mentioned above that we begin to celebrate our 50th anniversary today. With the uncertainty of covid looming over the entire summer, we haven’t been able to gather like we would normally be able to in any other year.
Instead we’re preparing for celebrations to take place before and during the 2022 season – a season which will be the 50th season on the pitch.
When we do gather, included in that celebration will be a piece of our history brought to us by that original logo sketch by Doug McDonald.
