Air Canada strike throws Winnipeg youth archery championship in disarray

Lingering travel hiccups from the strike between flight attendants and Air Canada forced major changes to a world archery championship.

The 2025 World Archery Youth Championships, held this year in Winnipeg, saw its schedule changed dramatically because of the strike, which has now been resolved after a tentative deal between the parties was reached.

“That started five days of hell. I’ll put it to you that way,” said Kelly Taylor, the tournament’s chair organizer.

“It’s forced us to take what would have been four days of competition and compressed it into two-and-a-half.”

Some of the archers competing at the event didn’t make it to Manitoba’s capital.

“We’ve had at least two if not three cancellations on every flight from Air Canada. Most of them, the day before we were ready to go to the airport,” revealed Alan Howell, the Archery Australia team manager.

“There’s always expected to be some sort of interruptions or inconsistencies with how things get done, but this has really been a mash of so many issues.”

Howell says 19 out of 25 archers and officials on Australia’s team made it to Winnipeg.

“We’re a few members short, which means that we can’t make a couple of our teams, our teams that we’re meant to compete with,” he said.

For competing athletes who did make it, the travel time and lost luggage is wearing on them.

“Sending people out to the supermarket to buy underwear and toothpaste and the basics that they expected to arrive with them, it’s mentally draining,” said Howell.

“One archer was here for two days with no bow case, so they watched the practices and not been able to shoot.”

Taylor says many athletes didn’t even arrive until hours before the competition began at 8 a.m., if they arrived at all.

“We had teams changing their arrival schedules almost by the minute,” Taylor said.

“We’re just so appreciative of all the effort that the teams went into to get here.”

Archery New Zealand’s team manager, Myshka Wallberg, says the next concern for many are the return flights.

“We’ve got two people still on Air Canada, but hopefully everything’s resolved,” Wallberg said.

“You just wanna reach out and grab them and give them big hugs and stuff. You can hear the emotion in their texts.”

The World Archery Youth Championships are held every two years, with the last three being held in Ireland, Poland and Spain.