The first time I stepped into BMO Field, I thought it might collapse on top of me.
I was standing just inside Gate 3 on a dark and dreary day back in April 2007. It was the opening game of the great Toronto FC experiment. Ok, technically it was the fifth game, but for most, this was the day that a club was being born.
No one knew what to expect when Toronto hosted it’s first top division professional football match since the death of the CSL and the Toronto Blizzard for than 15 years earlier. In reality, with apologies to the CSL Blizzard and the poor, under-loved Toronto Lynx of the A-League/USL/Whatever they were calling it that week, it was really the first pro soccer game held in Toronto since the NASL days.
It had been a long and lonely walk in the wilderness for the domestic soccer-loving fan in Toronto, indeed.
As it had been that long, a lot of folks were reluctant to believe that there was a market for the sport. The building of the stadium had been controversial, with a lot of grumpy sportswriters sending a lot of energy telling us that it was a waste of money that was doomed to fail. The Toronto Star’s Dave Perkins was the biggest and most consistent skeptic. Man, did the Toronto Voyageurs and U-Sector hate Perkins.
Aside: I actually wrote an email to Perkins about a year after TFC launched and it was clear that they were very successful. I asked him if his opinion had changed in light of the new evidence and, to his credit, he replied and stayed consistent in his position that regardless of the success he was still opposed to public money being used and although he acknowledged that he underestimated the interest in soccer, he was still convinced that it was a bad long-term investment. He was entirely reasonable, civil and, although I still disagree with him, I feel nostalgic for a time when you could have an exchange with someone you disagreed with, agree to disagree, and leave it without even accusing them of being worse than Hitler.
I grew up reading Perkins. I always enjoyed his style, even if he was decidedly old school as a baseball guy. Sportswriting was better when guys like Perkins were doing their thing.
So that was the background as I walked into the stadium for the first time. I was terrified I’d walk into a half-empty building of half interested people who had gotten free tickets to check out this soccer thing.
Imagine my shock then when I heard the noise. The entire south end of BMO Field was shaking — shaking so hard that you could hear metal pins falling from the stands. That wasn’t great, but it was also AMAZING. They fixed the metal pin issue for the next game, in case you were worried. BMO Field had a history of making it up as it goes along, and that’s a good thing.
If one day I roll into the afterlife and am offered the opportunity to re-live a select few moments in my life, walking into BMO for the first time would absolutely be on the short list. I knew I had found my thing. I was finally going to get the opportunity to stand pitchside with like minded people and fully experience what it was to be a football fan. What previously had been an activity that I had only experienced through the distant and remote periscope of a television screen, was suddenly a living, breathing thing, full of life, and noise, and smells, and songs.
I was in love. That TFC didn’t win the game was irrelevant — TFC didn’t really win games back then. Winning games wasn’t the point. Experiencing games was. At BMO Field was what gave me those experiences.
There would be many more nights after that. Too many to count or, often, to remember. Nineteen years on, the building holds so many memories for me. Some good, some amazing, and others heartbreaking and emotional — and that’s before we get into the soccer.
There are other places that are special to me, of course, but it’s hard to imagine any that will have as lasting an impact on as many parts of my life as the house on Lakeshore has had on me.
As I sit here now, on July 2, 2026, watching what is undoubtedly the highest profile game that has ever been played at the stadium— probably the highest profile game that will ever be played there — I felt compelled to write this little love letter to the building (jumping the order of my retrospective a bit — we will go backwards in time for part 4 tomorrow).
Places can have souls — they gain them from the people who gather there and give them life. I am proud that part of me is in that building and that the world got to see it over the last couple weeks.
I also look forward to it becoming just Toronto’s — and my —space again as we start to build the next 19 years of memories down by the lake.
Lovely read Duane. Thanks for sharing.
Mind you, it would be nice if TFC started winning again. Would also be good if the Arrrgos moved out of what was, I believe, Canada's national soccer stadium.