Plans have been unveiled for festivities across Canada as the country prepares to co-host the FIFA World Cup this summer
FIFA released the route Wednesday for Canada Celebrates, a tour that will make 38 stops in 34 cities from Halifax, N.S., to Whitehorse, Yukon, between June 1 and July 19.
Vancouver and Toronto are among the 16 cities across Canada, the United States and Mexico hosting games in this summer’s tournament.
The plan has long been to include the entire country in the excitement, said Victor Montagliani, FIFA vice president and CONCACAF president.
The first stop will be in Mount Pearl, Nfld., on June 1 when Canada faces Uzbekistan in a friendly in Edmonton, and the final events will take place in Brampton, Ont., and Niagara Falls, Ont., on July 19 when the championship game is held in East Rutherford, N.J.
The tour will swing through every province and one territory, with FIFA saying in a release that it will bring “FIFA World Cup energy” within a two-hour drive of more than 75 per cent of Canadian residents.
“This really, I think, wraps up, sort of in a big hug, the diversity and the breadth and width of our country, because it will go close to coast to coast,” Montagliani said.
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“It’s a sort of a festivity of football, where you can go watch the game on the big screen, you can go interact and have games that are going to be there for families, there’ll be food, there’ll be music. So it’s a real festival of what football and the community really is. It’s a real Canadiana feeling in the end.”
Plans for a cross-country celebration were included as part of Canada’s bid to host World Cup games more than eight years ago. Montagliani said.
Now he believes Canada Celebrates can be a legacy for other host nations.
“I think it’s something we could give as Canadians to the World Cup moving forward, where it’s a project that could be used in future World Cups,” he said.
There are less than 70 days to go before the tournament kicks off in Mexico City and Guadalajara on June 11.
Canada will play its first game against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Toronto on June 12 before finishing out the group stage in Vancouver with a tilts against Qatar on June 18 and Switzerland on June 24.
Toronto will host six games across the tournament while Vancouver stages another seven.
World Cup excitement is starting to build, Montagliani said. He’s seeing people on the streets wearing World Cup gear and recently returned from Mexico City where he took in the grand reopening of Estadio Azteca.
The reality of having the tournament on home soil will only grow over the coming months, he added.
“I’ve been around the game my whole life, and been around it internationally for 20 years. So these experiences I’ve had in other countries,” he said. “To have them in your own country is almost a bit of an out of body experience, because it’s something you thought could never happen.
“But to know that the work that’s been done by a lot of people in the last 20 years to get this country to be a World Cup country host, you know, I think a lot of people should take pride in that.”
There’s still work to be done getting both Toronto and Vancouver ready for the games.
Construction continues at B.C. Place Stadium and BMO Field, which will be renamed Toronto Stadium during the tournament. Plans are being refined for fan events in both cities. Head coach Jesse Marsch continues to ready his team to play the tournament on home soil for the first time.
“The beauty about the World Cup, it’s about a country,” Montagliani said. “And I know that this country has always risen to the occasion in terms of big events, and this is going to be no different.”
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