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Harvey Hughes has seen both sides of soccer fandom.
Hughes, a Cape Breton University player who hails from Southampton, England, was delighted to see the buoyant atmosphere at Canada’s first FIFA World Cup 2026 match versus Bosnia and Herzegovina last week and he thinks it will help grow the sport in the country.
“That’s what the World Cup’s all about. It was great to see.”
Leading the enthusiastic cheers at BMO Field in Toronto were the Voyageurs, a group of fans who have been the supporter club for Canada’s national soccer teams for 30 years.
Dressed in red and white, they revved up the audience by belting out chants at the top of their lungs as Canada played to a 1-1 draw.
With Canada playing three World Cup games in Toronto and Vancouver this month as the country co-hosts the tournament alongside the U.S. and Mexico, the Voyageurs’ chants are being heard by millions.
During a match, one person from the group goes to the front of the supporter section with a megaphone to scream out chants, getting the crowd to sing along. It’s a common sight at soccer matches around the world.
In one of the call-and-response chants, the crowd repeats:
Ca-na-da!
Ca-na-da!
Come on you boys in red!
Come on you boys in red!
Canada is red and white!
Football clubs in Europe and Latin America have songs devoted to their players, opponents and referees. Each team or country creates its own unique chants, and the Voyageurs have attempted to bring that tradition to Canadian soccer.
Alex Ho, an executive director of the Voyageurs, was one of over 43,000 fans who piled into BMO Field to support Canada during its first World Cup match.
Ho said the Voyageurs’ chants grew from Canada’s Major League Soccer clubs, Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC and CF Montreal. The group started gathering chants from the teams in the mid-2000s.
“What you hear at a game in Toronto, what you hear in Montreal and what you hear in Vancouver may be a little different,” Ho said.
Their chants range from patriotic basics to player-specific ones, but Ho said they rarely use complex chants because they want fans to be able to follow along.
Canada’s national men’s soccer team recorded their first-ever point at the FIFA World Cup against Bosnia-Herzegovina on Friday. CBC’s Michelle Song speaks with Toronto residents, business owners and soccer experts about what this milestone means for the city.
The Voyageurs also represent Canada’s bilingual culture. Allez les rouges is commonly sung out at Canada’s games, along with three other French chants.
Ho said they try to create chants that are unique to Canada, though some have proven challenging because of the country’s diverse cultures and sprawling geography.
Ho said it will simply take time for people to grasp the chants and he hopes this World Cup can serve as a launching pad.
“If Canada does really well in this World Cup, there will be a lot of after-effects of our success with respect to fan culture, with respect to just having that level of engagement at [a] grassroots level,” he said.
Hughes said growing up in England, each local soccer club had its own chants and they were passed down from generation to generation.
“You’re sort of bred into it,” he said. “That’s the only difference compared to Canada where it’s such a new sport over here.”
Colin McLaren, an assistant professor in the department of experiential studies in community and sport at Cape Breton University, echoed those thoughts.
“When we look at other places in the world, where soccer is very deeply rooted, it’s not just a sport,” McLaren said.
“It’s actually part of the cultural fabric and you’re very much born into this. That fandom is intergenerational and it’s connected to family, religion, class, politics, you name it.”
But Ho said the June 12 game in Toronto shows the progression of Canadian soccer fandom in recent years. He said that while he saw blue Bosnia-Herzegovina jerseys in the stands, the days when fans of the visiting team made up 85 to 90 per cent of the crowd at a Canadian home game are gone.
“That’s the one big achievement we’ve been able to do,” the Ottawa native said. “We are never going to have a game against an opponent like that where we don’t basically own the place.”
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