The two teams based in Ottawa and Montréal have been in flux for the past three decades. The original Alouettes folded in 1982; a Montreal Concordes team was founded the same year to replace them, but the Concordes (which renamed themselves the Alouettes in 1986) folded prior to 1987. The current Alouettes arrived in Montréal in 1996, absorbing the two previous Montréal teams' histories but disowning that of the team that formed its basis, the Baltimore Stallions; the Stallions were the only American team to be both an on-field and off-field success and are the only U.S.-based team to ever win the Grey Cup. The Alouettes' situation was largely stable for the first two decades after relaunch before a sudden collapse in the team's finances forced its owner to return the franchise to the league in 2019. The Ottawa Rough Riders folded in 1996; the Ottawa Renegades were named as Ottawa's next CFL team from 2002 to 2005, but that team also folded. In both the Rough Riders and Renegades cases, the team failures came during, or shortly after, Bernard Glieberman had purchased the respective team. In 2014, the new Ottawa Redblacks (owned by Jeff Hunt) began play at a drastically refurbished Frank Clair Stadium, thus becoming the third Ottawa CFL team and returning the league back to the traditional nine teams. Although Hunt owns the rights to the former Rough Riders intellectual property and based the Redblacks' logo and colors on those of the Rough Riders, he chose the name RedBlacks in June 2013, mainly to avoid a trademark dispute with the similarly named Saskatchewan Roughriders. The revived Ottawa franchise has also been a success.
