🏸 The world's best 18-and-unders just found NOTL

~ NOTL News Crew

Niagara District Airport doesn't usually host much more than small planes and the odd fly-in breakfast. Tonight it hosts a Chardonnay party, tents and all, as i4C's Friday Night Flights kicks off a weekend of serious wine people taking Niagara seriously.

That crowd clears out Sunday. Monday, a completely different one moves in: 200 of the best under-19 squash players alive, arriving for 12 days of world championship competition at a resort squash centre and a prep school most of us have never set foot inside. Two very different NOTL weekends, back to back, and for once neither one involves the Shaw Festival.

Mark Sachvie spent his career turning a resort squash program into something that produced actual champions. Starting from nothing at White Oaks, he hosted more than 220 tournaments over the years, including ten Canadian Junior Opens, and founded the Battle of the Border, an annual junior grudge match between Ontario and the U.S. that's still going. In November 2013, a heart attack took him. He never got to see what the program became.

Starting Monday, it becomes the site of a world championship. The WSF World Junior Squash Championships run July 20 to 31, bringing more than 200 of the top under-19 players on the planet, from over 35 countries, to two Niagara courts: the Mark Sachvie Squash Centre at White Oaks Resort, renamed for him this year, and the newer Jack Aylott Centre at Ridley College. It's the first time the World Juniors have been held on Canadian soil since Ottawa hosted the inaugural women's championship in 1981 and Calgary hosted the men's in 1984. Forty-some years, and it landed here.

Sachvie's son Nick grew up on those same White Oaks courts. He went on to captain Canada to an all-time-best third-place finish at the 2010 World Teams, played varsity squash at Cornell, and is now co-chairing this tournament alongside Matt Easingwood, in the building that carries his father's name. This year alone, Mark Sachvie was named St. Catharines Sportsman of the Year and inducted into the Squash Canada Wall of Fame in the builder category, both honours landing in the same stretch the town he built a program in prepares to host the world. Jamie Nicholls, Squash Canada's CEO and the tournament's championship director, called it a moment the whole squash community has been looking forward to, with the sport entering its Olympic era and more eyes on it than ever.

White Oaks isn't winging this. It's been the permanent home of the Ontario Squash Hall of Fame since 2007, and hosted the Women's World Team Championship back in 2014. Team Canada's eight-athlete roster includes two Ontario players, Colten McLaughlin and Sasha Lee, alongside Joelle Kim, Gladys Ho, Veera Dhaliwal, Yusuf Matti Alverez, Anderson Brown and Calder Murray, coached by Jonathan Hill and Marci Sier.

Here's what actually matters if you want to go. The individual event runs July 20 to 25: the first three days, July 20 to 22, are free and open to the public, no ticket required. Quarterfinals (July 23), semifinals (July 24) and finals (July 25) need a ticket. The team event follows the same pattern: July 26 to 28 free, July 29 to 31 ticketed for the later rounds, sidewall general admission running $35 to $75 through Showpass.

Squash isn't a sport this town talks about much. For twelve days starting Monday, it's the only one that matters here, in a building named for the guy who spent his life making sure it would.

NOTL's heritage committee reviewed developer Benny Marotta's newest pitch for the historic Rand Estate on July 8, and staff weren't won over. The plan calls for a five-storey, 111-room Ritz-Carlton on the Old Town estate plus five residential buildings with up to 270 units, and would mean cutting down 215 of the property's 694 mature trees. Town staff say the developers haven't demonstrated this is "the least intrusive development approach" and need to better justify the hotel's height, footprint and scale against the site's century-old heritage landscape. It's the second time this developer's plans for the estate have run into trouble: the town rejected an earlier subdivision proposal in 2023, a call the Ontario Land Tribunal upheld in 2024. Solmar's Blake Lyon told the committee the plan will keep evolving; staff's review now feeds into a future report to council.

The province added Niagara College as the newest partner in Ontario Corps, the network built to strengthen community response before, during and after emergencies, making NC the first post-secondary institution in the program. It joins a partner list that includes Home Depot Canada, Labatt, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and Uber Canada. The college will encourage students, staff and faculty to join Ontario Corps, host information sessions, and share its own emergency management expertise. A good week for the NOTL campus all around, between this and the Teaching Distillery's medal haul in this issue's Local Spotlight.

After being closed since fall 2025 for a full restoration, mortar repointing, replaced stone, a new lead roof, the monument at Queenston Heights is open again for the rest of the 2026 season. Visitors can climb it, take a guided tour retracing the Battle of Queenston Heights, and visit the small museum on Isaac Brock's life. Worth the drive out to Queenston if it's been a while, especially with a fresh restoration and the summer crowds not fully onto it yet.

The organizing team has been recruiting volunteers since March for a variety of roles across the full twelve days, everything the tournament needs to actually run, and the sign-up form is still open. Filling it out only registers your interest and availability; it doesn't commit you to anything, so there's no reason to sit this one out if you've been curious. Questions go to Zoe Abraham, the event's lead volunteer coordinator, at [email protected]. With the tournament starting Monday, this is close to the last call if you want in.

NOTL is reviewing how it talks to residents and gathers feedback, and is asking residents to weigh in on the process itself before it drafts a refreshed Community Engagement Framework. The online survey is open now through August 4 on the Join the Conversation platform, about ten minutes, anonymous. If you'd rather talk to someone directly, there are four drop-in pop-up sessions with no registration required: Memorial Park (Wed July 22, 4:30-6pm), Virgil Sports Park (Wed July 22, 6:30-8:30pm), the Community Centre lobby (Thu July 23, 9:30am-noon), and Sparky's Park (Thu July 23, 2-4pm), plus a formal Public Information Centre at the Community Centre's Simpson Room Thursday, July 23, 5:30-7:30pm. Consultant StrategyCorp is running the review; a draft framework goes to council in September.

Rugby found him in a Niagara Falls parking lot playing flag rugby as a kid. Now it's taking him to Scotland for a year.

Nolan Grealy, 17, moved from flag rugby into full-contact tackle young, and once his family found the Burlington Centaurs, they made the drive out several times a week for practices and games, no small commitment for a NOTL kid chasing a sport this town doesn't have much of a scene for. It paid off: this August he's one of just 30 under-18 players named to the Canadian Howlers' touring side for a XVs tour of Argentina. From there, he heads to Melrose, Scotland, for close to a year with Melrose Rugby Club, one of the sport's most storied clubs, an opportunity that came through contacts at the University of Guelph, where he's committed to study commerce with a focus on real estate. He's deferring that to go play men's rugby overseas first.

Ask him what keeps him coming back to a sport built on getting hit for 80 minutes straight, and he doesn't talk about the physicality. "You battle for 80 minutes, but once the game is over, everyone gets together. You leave everything on the field," he said. That's the part he says actually matters.

Nolan Grealy | Burlington Centaurs RFC, bound for Melrose Rugby Club, Scotland

Last week we asked where NOTL's first seniors' independent living building should go: the old hospital on Wellington Street, or town land at Veterans Memorial Park. Clive and Debbie Wilkins made the case for the old hospital. "It feels more like part of the town... seniors need to feel a part of something vibrant and stimulating to keep them feeling young," they wrote, adding that Pleasant Manor, their closest current option in Virgil, already has a long waiting list. Thanks to everyone who wrote in.

This week NOTL hosts athletes from 35 countries, most of whom have never set foot here before.

What's the one thing you'd tell a first-time visitor to do that isn't on any tourist list?

Reply to this email. Best answers run next week.