Photograph By Matt Cecill, Pacific FC

Hello readers of NSXI,

My name is Maxwell and I am a new Pacific FC fan. Unlike most Pacific FC fans, I do not hail from Vancouver Island. In fact, I’m not even from the province of British Columbia. As you can probably tell from the title, I am in fact from Ontario. I am sure this raises many questions to people. Why Pacific FC? There are two teams in Ontario who are founding members of the Canadian Premier League: York 9 and Forge FC. I am quite sure that there will be more teams added to this fine province with interest being drawn from The Tri-Cities area, Niagara, and Missasauga.



I have been fascinated with this league since it was announced back in May 2017. I had followed the English Premier League, Bundesliga, and MLS, but always felt that Canada was lacking the attention it needed in regards to professional soccer. That is where the CPL came into play. The Canadian Premier League. A league for Canadians by Canadians. A league that will eventually show the world, Canada cares about football and can develop/create world-class talent.



Source: https://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/canadian-premier-league-takes-formative-steps-open-tryouts/

I knew right away I had to find a team to support and soon I was reminded of my first year of university when I was deciding who to follow in European soccer. Chelsea FC ended up grabbing my attention after a few months of deciding. Back to present day, the same excitement arose. A new league and a new team except for this time it was slightly different. I had already followed Toronto FC for years and could not bring it to myself to support another Toronto team of the same sport.



One day, I was talking to my father who I knew wasn’t the biggest fan of football but still showed an interest in it so that I wasn’t completely alone in regards to one of my biggest interests. He went on to tell me about growing up in British Columbia and being a Vancouver Whitecaps fan in the 70s/80s. He told me stories of all his VWFC heroes.

This was all a surprise to me as I considered my father to be a major Leafs and Jays fan, but I never thought that he would’ve held football so close to his childhood. I knew at that point my problems were solved. I decided to follow Pacific FC so that one day I could tell my son or daughter about my West-Canada football heroes.



Now that the Canadian Premier League is only months away, Pacific FC is grabbing my attention just as hard as Chelsea did back in 2012. It is quite the time to be a Canadian football fan and the years ahead look bright with this league and being a joint host of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. I decided to make a Twitter page for Pacific FC fans in Ontario. Within a few days, I was followed by over 80 people including Pacific FC assistant coach James Merriman and new signing Matthew Baldismo.



Matthew Baldismo#PacificFC Player Profile

Signed from Fresno FC of the USL ✍🏻

Canada U17 international captain 🇨🇦

Experience at RB and CDM

Led Whitecaps 2 with 61 tackles in 2017 ✅

First #PacificFC player to follow my page ✅

Social Media: @matthewbaldi pic.twitter.com/1hGminWS7W — Pacific FC Ontario (@PFCOntario) January 19, 2019

The massive support from my Twitter page gave me the confidence to take my first attempt at amateur sports journalism and join the Northern Starting XI team. I look forward to bringing you articles on Pacific FC and the Canadian Premier League in the months ahead!

Thanks for reading my first article on Pacific FC.



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Maxwell Mowbray Maxwell is a University of Guelph alumni who started watching football in his first year of university. Though his undergrad was in music, sports journalism has always been one of his interests. Max decided to support Pacific FC due to family past on the west coast, leading him to create his Twitter page, @PFCOntario. Though he is 3300 km away from Westhills Stadium, Maxwell is a dedicated PFC fan and member of the Lake Side Buoys. You can often find Maxwell scouring through the lower leagues of Football Manager games.

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