Green and Red were primarily East/West airways and Amber and Blue were primarily North/South. (A portion of Red 1 went YYR - YEO - YZV - YYY etc, headings roughly 240/060. Blue 19 went YZV - YWK heading 020/200. Red 1 actually began in Victoria BC and went all the way to Goose.) They were low level airways, ie below 12,000 ft east of the Rocks, 18,000 ft. over them and were between either an NDB, or earlier, an LF range.
I seem to recall it was about 30 years ago in Canada that they began calling them Romeo 1 or Bravo 19 or whatever. To my knowledge, all Victor Airways in Canada were between VHF facilities (VOR's).