The boys were supporting Big Time Rush on their first trip to Canada in February 2012 and had a brilliant time. Niall, Harry and Zayn wore blue-and-white Toronto Maple Leafs ice-hockey tops, and Liam and Louis wore Raptors basketball vests for their show at the Air Canada Centre. Harry posted a photo on their Facebook page with the message, ‘Do you think we look like tourists in these?! –Harry. x’.
He also tweeted, ‘In Canada getting ready to play the ACC! In the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Dressing room. We’ve locked Paul in the toilet’.
All the boys loved their time in Toronto, with Liam writing on Facebook, ‘I had the most amazing time last night. You guys were LOUD we could hear every word! Hopefully we can come back and do our own shows soon. Lots of Love Liam x’. He also tweeted, ‘Toronto was amazing last night cant wait to do it all again :)’
Louis was a big fan of the food he had sampled, tweeting, ‘If anyone wants to eat in toronto go to @loudawgs. Very very good brownie! @loudawgsryerson’.
When One Direction were in Canada in February and March 2012, they didn’t stop, doing so many TV and radio interviews, including a great appearance on MuchMusic in Toronto. They were also interviewed by Musique Plus in Montreal. They were so grateful to all the fans that came to see them. After leaving Canada, they had to head to Australia, New Zealand and America before flying back to Canada to perform two nights of their Up All Night Tour in Toronto on 29 and 31 May.
Niall said to TV show ET Canada presenter Cheryl Hickey during an interview, ‘We were just saying last night actually, when we arrived at the airport, we actually really like coming to Canada, there’s such a good vibe around.’
On the day of their final concert in Canada, they were interviewed by MuchMusic again, and asked how they were going to stay sane with more than 100 tour dates in 2013. Harry told the host Lauren Toyota, ‘It’s nice for us to bring our friends sometimes out with us on tour, and family members and stuff, it’s nice for us to kinda have people to hang around with as well as each other.’
The boys admitted that on their days off they like to have lie-ins, play video games and go sightseeing. They find that once they have left their hotels (and the fans waiting outside) they can have a pretty normal day – but they do sometimes have to sneak through the kitchens in restaurants to escape if too many people are following them.
The boys favourite Canadian is Michael Bublé. Niall told ET Canada, ‘I think he’s just such a natural performer, he’s got a great voice, he looks good … he’s a really, really nice guy.’
YTV Canadian cable channel were given the task of finding the Canadian Bring Me to 1D winner and so invited fans to submit a one-minute video saying why they should win the title of One Direction’s number-one Canadian fan. They were bombarded with more than 24,000 videos!
After watching all the videos, they created a shortlist and then picked the fan they felt deserved the award the most, 17-year-old Amanda from Nepean, Ontario. Amanda actually filmed the video with her identical twin sister Brittany (of course, she picked Brittany to go to New York as her special guest!). The girls found out they had won when they arrived home after volleyball practice to find Carlos, the presenter of YTV’s The Zone in their kitchen. To see their winning video, go to YouTube and type in ‘Canada Loves One Direction – Please Bring Me To 1D, YTV!’
The girls took lots of videos during their special day with 1D in New York and uploaded them on their YouTube channel ‘CanadaLovesOneD’. They also set up one of Canada’s first Tumblr accounts, canadalovesonedirection.tumblr.com, and received a letter from the boys’ management company thanking them for helping promote the boys in Canada.
Vanessa is 16 and from Toronto. She met One Direction on 30 May 2012. The boys don’t come to Toronto very often so, when she found out they would be spending their day off in the town, she decided to try and find them along with her friends Amanda, Celine and Amira.
‘We literally looked all over Toronto to try to find them (looking in loads of Starbucks),’ she remembers. ‘And when we got to their hotel, the Ritz Carlton hotel, we were relieved that there weren’t many people. We waited for a little bit but decided to just keep searching around because why would they stay in their hotel on their day off? As we were crossing the street, we spotted Louis and his girlfriend Eleanor just walking around. We went up to them very calmly and they were honestly so sweet to us. There were only five of us so we all got to chat with him for a couple of minutes. He is honestly the sweetest person ever. He didn’t need to stop for us but he did. We weren’t allowed pictures but we didn’t complain because we ended up in a paparazzi one, which was posted online and in magazines. (As they are walking, you can see me in the middle of them in the background.)
‘Meeting Louis literally meant the world to me. I had so many emotions running through me and till this day I still can’t believe that I got to meet him. After we met him, we kept walking and saw the boys’ tour bus in the parking garage. We talked to the security and, of course, they tried to convince us that the boys weren’t there, but we knew they were. So we waited and, finally, the tour bus was coming out, but they didn’t stop. We still got them all to look out of the windows and wave, which was amazing. We ended up chasing the tour bus until they were near the highway (oops). Every single time the bus stopped, we stopped and, every once in a while, Harry would stick his head out and tease us (he’s so cute, I’m so in love). They were going to Niagara Falls.
If you want to follow Vanessa on Twitter, her Twitter name is @nippleshire.
Krystle is 20 and from Mississauga, Ontario. She met the boys in March 2012 when they flew into Toronto Pearson International Airport. They had flown there to be on a hit Canadian YTV show called One 2 One. They were going to sing a few songs and be interviewed too. Krystle would have given anything to be in the audience but she couldn’t because the only way to be in the audience was to have connections or to win a radio contest on Kiss92.5. She had entered the radio contests but failed to win.
Krystle and her friend Lucas could have waited outside the TV studios but they figured they would have more chance if they went to the airport and saw the boys arrive. Krystle explains, ‘I went with my friend Lucas and we arrived at the airport at around 11am. We decided to go early so we could look for back doors and other places the boys might come out of. We decided to be there for each and every flight just to make sure we wouldn’t miss the boys. As we waited for the very last flight at about 10pm there were about 12 fans and two paps [paparazzi] waiting by us. The pap standing next to the side door shouted, “Now!” and then the doors opened and Harry walked through first, followed by Zayn, Niall, Liam and Louis. Harry looked as if he wanted to walk over towards us but his security team would not let him. I was the first to speak and I said, “Hi, Zayn, I love you, can I have a picture?” Zayn smiled. Paul, their bodyguard, said, “Walk with us,” which is what we all did. We gave them a huge amount of space between us and let them walk ahead. Will Wong, a celebrity blogger from Toronto, jumped in and he got a photo with Harry.
‘I loved being able to talk to Harry and I asked him to sign my CD. He said, “Sure,” but was pushed out the doors by security and right into their waiting car. The boys looked really upset as Niall shook his head and didn’t know what to do. I may not have gotten a picture with the boys but I saw them two feet in front of me and that made me so happy.’
Gillian is 19 and from Vancouver. She met the boys on 8 November 2012. Gillian had heard that Harry, Liam, Louis, Niall and Zayn would be performing on the The Ellen Show in Burbank, California, and really wanted to be there, even though it was over 1,000 miles away. She requested tickets on The Ellen Show website a week before their performance and a couple of days later received an email saying that she had two ‘stand-by’ tickets. This meant that Gillian and her friend Holly might not get to go in; it all depended on how many people turned up. Gillian was determined to go and booked flights for the two them.
‘My aunt lives in the Los Angeles County,’ she recounts, ‘so we stayed there for the weekend and we were able to borrow the car to get to the show. I didn’t miss many classes because luckily this was during the Remembrance Day long weekend. In the email I received, we were told not to show up at the designated check-in place before 10am, but we wanted to play it safe, so we showed up at 8.30am. We weren’t completely surprised that a massive line had already formed when we arrived. The Ellen staff started letting people through around 1pm. Thankfully, we got let through! Or else that trip would have been a waste. The fans we met in the line were great. They didn’t believe we’d travelled all the way from Canada – they even asked us to show them our IDs. Finally, we got our wristbands and were ushered in the charter buses that took us to the Warner Bros Studios (the check-in place wasn’t where the boys actually performed). There were around 5,000 people in the audience and they had an outdoor stage set up for the boys’ performance. When we got there, the staff were keeping the audience entertained by playing music while the remaining people arrived. Before the show was about to start, my friend and I were leaving to go find a washroom but, as we were leaving, everybody started screaming! I turned around and there was Harry – in the flesh! The rest of the boys followed suit. The audience went wild; it was bizarre. I was caught off guard and I wasn’t prepared so all I could do was smile. I started laughing because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’
Sibel is 16 and lives in Toronto, Ontario. She will never forget the day she logged into her Twitter account and found out that all of the boys from One Direction were following her. It was Friday, 23 March 2012 and Sibel had just got in from school. She was so excited that she started crying. All Directioners on Twitter dream of the 1D boys following them, so Sibel was over the moon to have all of them follow her on the same day. She loves all of the boys equally; however, if she were to choose her favourite, she would have to go with Niall.
A few hours later, Sibel checked her Twitter mentions and was surprised to read a tweet from someone saying, ‘Hello, I am the executive producer at MuchMusic, please follow me so that I can DM you.’ MuchMusic is a hugely popular music channel in Canada, but Sibel couldn’t understand why someone who worked there would want to get in touch with her.
She followed him anyway, and he quickly replied in a direct message saying, ‘MuchMusic is shooting a pilot TV show this Monday 1.15pm on superfans. You have to be at least 14 years old to participate. Interested?’
Sibel quickly replied, ‘Yes’. Of course she would be there!
He replied, ‘OK. You and your sister need to be at MuchMusic at 1.15pm this Monday. On the John Street entrance. Have you been to Much before? Also, we need to keep all TV pilots confidential until they get fully completed.’
Sibel knew that the boys were supposed to be in Toronto that day but she didn’t think they would be at MuchMusic because the producer would have told her if they were – but she figured that being with other superfans would be cool. She found it so hard to keep the fact that she was going to a TV pilot a secret, only telling her sister and parents.
The day finally arrived and Sibel decided to get up at 7am. She had hours until she had to be at the TV studio but she was going to go into town early with her sister Melike to see if they could see the boys at their hotel. It had taken them three hours in freezing weather to get there and it got a bit much for Sibel, who started to cry (they’d actually gone to the wrong hotel). She really wanted to see Harry, Liam, Louis, Niall and Zayn so much, even if it was just for a second, but there was no sign of them.
Sibel was still feeling emotional when they arrived at MuchMusic and saw the other 20 or so Directioners who were gathered there. No one had any idea what was going on but they were quickly ushered inside and their coats and belongings were taken off them. Sibel was called over to one side and taken into another room (along with her sister). Inside was the producer who had tweeted her and he said it was nice to meet her and asked her a few questions. He then took them onto the stage and Sibel was handed a microphone to attach to her shirt. She was one of only three fans who was going to be interviewed by the host, Lauren Toyota.
When the filming started, Sibel was so nervous and thought she was speaking really fast when she was asked questions but, if you watch the video yourself on YouTube, you won’t be able to tell. Just search ‘One Direction Revealed – MuchMusic’. All the girls were really excited to be there and screamed when the host said, ‘We have a person who’s experienced being a Directioner,’– and the boys popped up on a TV screen that had been set up close by. They couldn’t believe One Direction were Skyping with them but, before Liam had chance to speak, the screen went black: the boys had been cut off. Sibel was devastated, yelling, ‘Noooo, my babies are gone!’ She’d forgotten they were being filmed. Lauren told them that they were having technical difficulties and two minutes later the lights in the room started going on and off. Sibel didn’t know what was happening, but then she looked to the left with the rest of the girls when a curtain fell, and saw Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis and Zayn in the flesh. The boys were in the studio with them!
Sibel started screaming and freaking out, so excited that she nearly fell on the floor with shock. The other girls were just as hyped, so Liam told them, ‘Slow down, girls! You guys are going to get hurt! Let us come to you!’ The girls went back to the spots they had been given and Sibel was right at the front by the couch. Sibel felt like pinching herself when Lauren told the three of them to move behind the boys – she got a huge hug from Harry. They hugged each other so tight that Sibel says it was by far the highlight of her life.
‘That hug was so intense,’ she explains. ‘I was like, “I Love You!” and he hugged me tighter, and then he was like, “Are you OK, babe?” and I was like, “Noooo,” and he kind of giggled, but we were still hugging. I whispered in his ear, “Harry, can I have a kiss on the cheek?” and he was like, “Of course, babe,” and then, while he was still hugging me, he turned his face round and kissed me on the cheek. And then I kissed him back on his cheek and then had to let him go. It was amazing. Harry gives the best hugs in the whole entire world and his cheeks and lips are so soft.’
Harry and the other boys were then going to be interviewed by Lauren, with Sibel standing a centimetre behind Harry and Zayn. Before the interviewed started, Sibel had the opportunity to quickly speak to Zayn and asked him, ‘Do you remember me from the email? You followed me on Tuesday!’ and he replied, ‘Yeah, I remember you, babe!’ In the email, she had asked if she could meet them while they were in Toronto; however, they had told her that the boys would be too busy to meet fans while they were there. Zayn knew how big a fan Sibel was because he’d watched her being interviewed earlier too in a backstage room.
During the interview, there was a scene involving a cake and Liam gave Sibel the biggest smile when she yelled, ‘Cookie Man!’ [In a Twitcam Liam did on the 15th March 2012 he introduced ‘The Cookie Man’, as he received cookies and a drink from room service.] She also made Louis laugh and Niall giggle when she told a joke. Zayn’s hands got covered in cake, so he asked for a tissue and Sibel couldn’t resist whispering cheekily, ‘I’d lick it off you.’ Zayn looked at her and smiled.
When it was time for the boys to go, their security team told the girls that there was no time for hugs but Sibel asked Niall for one quick hug and he did – he always puts fans first. Sibel was so happy and waved to Zayn as they were walking out, saying, ‘Bye, Zayn!’ She was so shocked when he came back and took her hand and held it, saying, ‘Bye, babe.’ It was better than she had ever dreamed.
If you would like to follow Sibel on Twitter, her account is @ILouv1Direction.