It will be the party Toronto didn’t see coming.

And you’re invited. So are thousands of your new best friends.

The Toronto 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games are exactly a year away— 365 days of waiting for the construction dust to settle, 365 days to wonder if anyone will care when it does.

Unless you count the seemingly ceaseless jackhammering around town, the event has created little noise.

But Toronto, if multi-sport events in other world cities are an indicator, won’t know what hit it next summer when 10,000 athletes, coaches and officials, along with some 250,000 visitors, descend upon southern Ontario to celebrate sport and culture.

While Torontonians tend to be apathetic about anything they perceive as less than the best, and it wouldn’t be a Games — Pan Am, Olympic or otherwise — without worries about cost overruns and construction delays, it’s tough to be a wallflower at a get-together when you’re the host.





“I know some people were a little wary about having it here, but I think once we have all the athletes in the city and we have the competition at our doorstep, people will get excited about it. I think the buzz is going to be there,” says Markham’s Phylicia George, a hurdler who finished sixth in her Olympic debut at London.

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If the Vancouver Olympics revealed anything about our evolving national character, it’s that not only do we enjoy basking in the glory when our athletes win medals but, personal bests be damned, we are not above publicly crowing about our golden moments. And with the Canadian Olympic Committee gunning for a top-two finish in the medal count, the Pan Ams will provide a chance to revel in the Maple Leaf in a city accustomed to mourning the Maple Leafs.

The Pan Ams are often dismissed as B-games — in the lead-up, that “B” apparently standing for bleating rather than buzz — and, to be sure, this is not the Olympics. Toronto takes the gold when it comes to falling short in bids to land the world’s most famous five-ring circus.

That doesn’t mean the Pan Ams can’t be and won’t be hugely fun, especially with entertainment from Canada, the Caribbean and the Americas giving it the feel of a rollicking summer festival. There should also be some outstanding athletic performances as Canadians, who typically hone their craft at events around the world, have a rare chance to showcase themselves on home turf against top-level international competition.

Toronto sprinter Dontae Richards-Kwok says he’s been in no local meet that comes close to the competition he anticipates at the Pan Ams.

“You’ll have a lot of the fast Americans and a lot of the fast Jamaicans all in one place. This will definitely be the biggest thing at home for me,” he says.

“It motivates you to do better. You’ve got everyone at home that you know, even people from the city, supporting you, so you want to put on a big show. It will be an extra push to do better.”

The Pan Am overlords are hoping that 16 to 18 of their events will be Olympic qualifiers for the Rio 2016 Summer Games. Fifteen events in the Parapan Am Games — as with the Olympics, there is a partnered competition for disabled athletes — will decide participants in the Rio Paralympics.

The Pan and Parapan Am Games will collectively give us a chance to proudly celebrate the city and to revel in its diversity. Events such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Caribbean Carnival and WorldPride offer reminders of the city’s joys and the Pan Ams, however rated as an athletic event, will be another opportunity to relish that.

The Games will take place in 32 venues spread across 13 municipalities of the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Some 20,000 volunteers will help co-ordinate things.

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“Some say this is not the Olympics — well, go to hell,” Pan Ams chairman David Peterson told the Star earlier this year. “It ain’t the local gathering at Christie Pits either.”

While Toronto 2015 will be sort of an Olympics light, the influx of energy and vitality combined with the Games’ arts components might create a smaller-scale vibe than what took place in Vancouver in 2010. There, each night was like New Year’s Eve, a glorious time not only of celebrating ourselves as Canadians but also of developing international friendships. Sure, the streets were mostly a river of red and white, but to be adrift in that flow of humanity was to hear almost every language spoken and to see almost every flag waved or worn proudly.

For Toronto 2015, the underpinning of goodwill and camaraderie will likely be the same as representatives from 41 countries of the Americas take to our streets, aided by the proximity of the athletes’ village to the downtown. And if some of the city’s roadwork is actually completed by then, there will definitely be reason to celebrate.

Toronto has never previously hosted a significant international multi-sport event or World’s Fair and, of course, there will be crowds and, of course, there will be traffic congestion. The inconvenience might even cause some to flee the city.

But there will also be a legacy that goes beyond pavement, paths and primping as Toronto gets ready for its close-up.

There will be an investment in youth.

Of the $1.4-billion operating budget for the Games — a figure that doesn’t include transportation and security costs — almost half is earmarked for capital investment, largely in high-performance sport venues. The area’s athletic community has been woefully underserved until these Games acted as a catalyst for new facilities.

In what is the largest infusion of funds into amateur sport in Canadian history, the $158-million Aquatics Centre and Field House on the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto will not only be used by students, but will also fill a void in part of the city that lacks recreation facilities.

This new centre includes two 50-metre pools, doubling the number of Olympic standard pools in Toronto, and a deep-diving tank. After the Games, it will also provide the community with an indoor track and gym space. The head office of the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario will also set up shop in the building.

A new track and field Athletics Stadium is blossoming on the York University campus. In Markham, a new facility will be the home of table tennis, badminton and water polo during the Games and then become a multi-purpose athletic facility for the city. A $56-million Velodrome, built in Milton, will allow Canadian cyclists to remain at home to train rather than travel to California as is currently the case. It will also become the home to Cycling Canada.

“It’s an amazing high-performance facility, but it’s also a unique and creative community centre for the town of Milton, with three full-size basketball courts in the middle, a running track around the outside and gym facilities,” says Curt Harnett, one of Canada’s most decorated cyclists and this country’s chef de mission for the Pan Am Games.

A $70-million legacy fund will keep the Velodrome, track and swimming facilities operating as high-performance centres to avoid what happened to the Montreal Velodrome, which was constructed for the 1976 Olympics but became a biodome science exhibit.

The deadline of the coming Games has hastened improvements — such as a link between Union Station and Pearson Airport — that typically move at a glacial pace in this city.

Exhibition Place and Ontario Place, forming Pan Am Park, will host 13 sports but one of the most dramatic changes is occurring where the Canary District development is reshaping the West Don Lands. There, six structures will serve as the main athletes’ village during the Pan Ams before becoming private condominium towers. The development will include 250 affordable rental apartments, a huge 82,000-square-foot YMCA and a residence for 500 George Brown College students.

The construction was slated to happen eventually, but the arrival of the Pan Ams ramped up the transformation of barren industrial land into the city’s newest neighbourhood. That it is essentially downtown — stretching from Cherry St. east to a new extension of Bayview Ave., south of Eastern Ave. — will give the athletes easy access to the city core.

“I’m excited for the chance these athletes have to compete at home, to show who they are and to build a profile for themselves a year out from Rio,” says Harnett. “Also (the Pan Ams) will give a long-lasting legacy to the high-performance community and to communities as a whole as a way to get more kids interested in sports because they have access to facilities that are specific to certain sports. We can also continue to build on the momentum that Games like Vancouver have brought to the Canadian psyche, and the fact that we do care about how our athletes perform and have access to resources to make sure they are able to compete and win against the world’s best.”

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