A little more than seven months following the Canadian Hockey League failed to accept its candidacy for the presentation of the next Memorial Cup tournament, Quebec City suffered another refusal on Thursday, while Hockey Canada preferred the cities of Halifax and Moncton for the presentation of the 2023 World Junior Hockey Championship.
Quebec had submitted its candidacy jointly with the city of Trois-Rivières. The City of Ottawa as well as joint bids from Regina and Saskatoon as well as London and Kitchener were also in the running.
“DISAPPOINTED”
The chief operating officer of Quebecor’s Sports and Entertainment group, Martin Tremblay, preferred not to give interviews on the subject, preferring to react by means of a press release.
“We are obviously disappointed that our bid was not selected to host the 2023 World Junior Championship and are very proud of the quality of the proposal we submitted. We thank the partners who worked closely with us, namely the Government of Quebec, the City of Quebec, the City of Trois-Rivières and the organization of the Lions of Trois-Rivières. We wish the best of success to the two cities selected, Halifax and Moncton, for the holding of the championship. »
A meeting is scheduled between the Sports and Entertainment group and Hockey Canada next week to see what tipped the balance once morest them.
The news had started to spread in the morning. Updated in the midst of a press scrum on the sidelines of an announcement in the Saint-Sauveur district, the mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, also expressed his disappointment.
“For us, it’s a disappointment. I think that with Trois-Rivières, we had a superb candidacy [et] hockey fans [pour] a world championship that would have been really appreciated, popular and for which there would have been extraordinary benefits, both for Quebec and more widely. I am disappointed, ”he reacted hotly.
OTHER REJECTION
This is the fourth time in 30 years that Quebec has been told no to the World Juniors, following 1995, 2006 and 2009.
In 2016, Quebec had also studied the possibility of submitting its candidacy for the 2019 event, but had refused to do so since everything indicated that Hockey Canada wanted to present the tournament in the West. In the end, Vancouver and Victoria were chosen. At that time, Quebec Remparts president Jacques Tanguay assured that Quebec was focusing on a bid for the 2021 World Juniors.
Then the pandemic arrived…