Why this exhilarating Canadian city I once called home is the perfect World Cup host

“I love heights, man!” shouts the man next to me as we awkwardly stuff our limbs into fire-engine-red jumpsuits and tighten the straps. “I’ve wanted to do this for ages.”

This golden retriever enthusiasm should be infectious, but any chutzpah I once had has fluttered away like a maple leaf in Canada ’s crisp autumnal breeze. I’m at ‘basecamp’ for Edgewalk, a toe-curling 30-minute creep around the edge of Toronto ’s CN Tower, attached only by a black harness. A short lift ride later, and our group of six is gingerly stepping out into the elements at 356 metres (1,168 feet) above ground.

Coal-black rainclouds swell ominously over Lake Ontario, and the tourists below look like shuffling grains of sand. My hands clam up, clutching the harness cord as we attempt our ‘leaning forward’ exercise. Yet, suspended above it all, watching the city I once called home fan out below me is oddly comforting.

My first summer in Toronto was a balmy haze of riding carnation-red streetcars, sinking happy hour beers on downtown terraces, bouncing around busy hostels, learning the rules of ice hockey and savouring fleeting friendships with fellow travellers from around the globe. That was 2011. Now, 15 years later, Canada’s biggest city is gearing up to host six matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

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Toronto is the perfect city to host the FIFA World Cup 2026, says writer James March (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

I stayed for two years, and the place still feels like home. Toronto’s international character was intoxicating to me when I first arrived, with over half of its three million-strong population born outside Canada and over 180 languages spoken. While I eventually got around to attractions like the Royal Ontario Museum and the Norman Foster-designed Art Gallery of Ontario, it was the city’s diverse neighbourhoods that captivated me most.

“There’s definitely a neighbourhood mentality here,” says Saro Yacoubian, one of the three brothers who run Taline, a Lebanese-influenced Armenian restaurant in Toronto’s leafy Summerhill neighbourhood. It’s the first time I’ve been to this corner of the city, a few blocks north of the bustling Yonge and Bloor intersection, and it’s the first time I’ve eaten Armenian food.

“In the 1960s, this space here was a tailor's, and upstairs was where the tailor lived. Funnily enough, he was an Armenian too. Total coincidence!” laughs Yacoubian, before he explains what I’m going to be eating tonight. I’ve no idea where to find Armenian food back in Britain, but in a city like this, with its global bazaar of cultures and cuisine, it’s just another Wednesday night.

Taline is the name of the brothers’ late mother, and I tuck into refined versions of the hearty Armenian-Lebanese cuisine she once cooked for them, like unctuous boat-shaped meat dumplings called manti , or tender, well-seasoned vochkhar lamb chops.

The dishes are excellent, but Summerhill is far from the only neighbourhood for sublime food. There is Portuguese bacalhau on Dundas St West, Polish dumplings on Roncesvalles, Korean BBQ on Bloor St West or Peking duck in Spadina’s historic Chinatown. My salvation, though, was always Kensington Market.

Spending my first night back at the glittering Bisha Hotel , I feel like an interloper. This wasn’t my world 15 years ago; I could barely pay rent and became something of an authority on happy hour pints and cheap poutine. Toronto’s skyline may be taller and glassier, but Kensington Market’s edgy, multicultural spirit is as beguiling as ever.

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Downtown Toronto is where you'll find Toronto Stadium, host of six football matches during the FIFA World Cup 2026 (Getty Images)

“Kensington Market is a microcosm that represents everything Toronto is about,” says my guide CJ, as she leads a busy food tour from Chinatown into Kensington’s art-splashed streets. Incense hangs in the air, pro-Palestine flyers are handed out, and Pride flags flutter above the houses. The vintage stores and shabby dive bars I used to frequent are still here, while the revolving cast of affordable bites brings new surprises: with fiery Jamaican beef patties, generously filled tacos and dense fried chicken providing an agonising array of choice.

“The diversity, the multiculturalism. That means everyone is welcomed, recognised, and respected,” CJ adds, before leading our group into a meandering mobile brunch.

If food and football are to go hand in hand, the World Cup is an opportunity to showcase Toronto’s other famous sports. A staunch football fan, I was initially dismissive of ice hockey, basketball and baseball when I arrived, but by the end of my first summer, I was a full-blown Toronto Blue Jays fan. They’re the local baseball team that came within a whisker of winning the World Series championship last October. Ticket prices for games at the hulking Rogers Centre stadium (conveniently located downtown next to the CN Tower) in summer are always affordable, and on a warm evening, with a beer in hand, the games are great fun, even if the rules seem as complicated as a Russian novel to the uninitiated.

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Ride a streetcar through Chinatown in downtown Toronto (Getty Images)

The six World Cup games will be played at Toronto Stadium, near the waterfront. Usually home to Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC, its 28,000 capacity is being expanded to 45,000 for the tournament, with two new grandstands and a host of plush new suites. The Bentway – normally a concrete underpass – is being transformed into a vibrant arts, music and events space, and will host the official FIFA fan zone. I’d also recommend wandering into nearby Liberty Village for more drinks and fun. It was where I landed my first job in Toronto, though the less said about that, the better (I was never cut out for manual labour).

One place I was cut out for was the Loose Moose, a cartoonishly named favourite from my time here – a downtown pub with almost as many screens as pints on tap. With the Blue Jays on TV and a cold Canadian pint in hand, my last night in the city is a good one.

“It always makes me happy, because it reminds me of being happy,” wrote the great food critic and raconteur AA Gill about his old home, New York. I feel the same way about Toronto. Though next time, I’ll probably just stick to the CN Tower’s indoor viewing deck.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Edinburgh all offer direct flights to Toronto. The airlines that fly there are Air Transat, Air Canada, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, with an average flight time of around seven hours.