About the Project

Every four years, there is a colourful transformation in Toronto. It begins slowly, in the late spring, when out of the grey of winter appears a smattering of colour, on street corners and balcony windows, growing slowly here and there, becoming, by early June, a full fledged symphony of colour across the city. It is ubiquitous. This transformation does not arrive simply from the changing seasons or a summer festival, it is a harbinger. A harbinger for the passion of sport, historical roots and a greater acknowledgement that we are all a part of something bigger. Every four years, flags from every corner of the world adorn what feels like every inch of the city, pets and vehicles become profoundly patriotic, brightening the landscape with bold colours, challenging the vexillology of even the most knowledgeable citizens.

As a young man growing up in the city, I first distinctly remember this transformation on my drive to high school in 1994. For two years, my brother and I had been making the same 25 minute commute through mostly working class neighbourhoods with small family shops, cafes and bars and some of the last remaining urban slaughterhouses in the city. Then one summer, in the last months of the school year, everything changed. These same sleepy neighbourhoods came alive with new flavours and colours, declaring distinct national pride, not for Canada, but for a wide variety of other homelands and mother countries. I had no idea what was going on.

My family is a sports family. Baseball in the summer, football in the fall, hockey and basketball in the winter. To us, there was only one kind of football, and it was American football. Realizing that Toronto’s colourful transformation was all for some soccer tournament was both humbling and a little bit embarrassing. I had a feeling there was a lot more I needed to learn about sports, and my city.

The curiosity stayed with me and when I returned to Toronto as a young photographer in 2006, after 8 years of school and work in the United States, Ireland and South Korea, I decided to delve more deeply into soccer mystery. That summer, while the FIFA World Cup was being played in Germany, I decided to explore the fandom and the passion here in Toronto.

I believe Toronto is one of the few cities in which this project could have been completed. Most remarkable is that of the many nations in the 2006, 2010. 2014 and 2018, 2022 World Cup, some of Toronto’s largest ethnic communities, such as the Irish, Chinese, Indian and Pakistani, are not represented.