Gabriel Diallo, of Canada, plays a shot to Fabian Marozsan, of Hungary, during their Davis Cup qualifying match in Montreal in February.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Tennis Canada will bar spectators from a series of Davis Cup matches to be played in Halifax this weekend between Canada and Israel due to what it described as escalating concerns over safety and the potential for disruptions.
In a Tuesday press release, Tennis Canada said it had made the decision to close the doors to spectators for the Davis Cup World Group I tie, scheduled for Friday and Saturday at the Scotiabank Centre, in consultation with the International Tennis Federation.
“Intelligence received from local authorities and national security agencies, combined with disruptions witnessed at other recent events both in Canada and internationally, indicated a risk of significant disruption to this event,” the organization said.
Calls had been growing to cancel the match because of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, including an open letter signed by the grandson of Nelson Mandela urging the Canadian team to boycott the match, which will be released on Wednesday.
A separate open letter to Sport Canada and Tennis Canada, signed by hundreds of academics from universities across the country, athletes, and others, calls on the sporting bodies to “refuse to legitimize this contest and to forbid Canadian athletes to compete against Israeli athletes at the Davis Cup and all other international events.”
Among the signatories are Moh Ahmed, the four-time Canadian Summer Olympian, and the author Naomi Klein.
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In a statement announcing the closure, the CEO of Tennis Canada said it was the organization’s responsibility “to protect people while ensuring that this Davis Cup tie can still take place.”
“We were forced to conclude that playing behind closed doors was the only way to both safeguard those involved and preserve the event itself,” said Gavin Ziv. “While this outcome is very disappointing, it allows the tie to proceed in Halifax and ensures that our athletes can continue to compete at the highest international level. We are looking forward to returning to Halifax with Team Canada in the coming years to ensure we can fulfill our mission of promoting tennis and creating opportunities for fans and players to engage with the sport in Nova Scotia and across the country.”
The matches will also be closed to news media, but carried by CBC and TVA Sports.
The event has drawn increasing criticism as preparations heated up. Last month, after a presentation by a Tennis Canada executive to a Halifax region special-events advisory committee focused on the economic impact of the Davis Cup matches, Sue Uteck, a local business leader, told other committee members she felt compelled to “address the elephant in the room.” She added that the event would be “very contentious to our city, under the current political climate.”
Uteck said committee members had “been inundated with e-mails” and urged them to not recommend Halifax provide Tennis Canada with $50,000 from its hotel levy fund. (The city ultimately approved that funding at an Aug. 19 council meeting. The province of Nova Scotia provided $100,000 in funding.)
During that meeting, on Aug. 13, Billy Comer, the manager of special events for the Halifax Regional Municipality, told committee members that, while safety was a concern, the arena management company, Events East, had brought in an external security consultant and Halifax Regional Police were monitoring the situation. Risks at that point, he said, were “low.”
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On Tuesday, Uteck, who represents the city’s business improvement districts, said she felt bad for Tennis Canada, the athletes, and fans, and noted the International Tennis Federation had previously sanctioned other countries over military action. “This lands squarely at the feet of the International Tennis Federation, whether they want to sanction somebody or not.”
In a statement, Michael Levitt, the president and CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal, said the decision was a disappointment. “Whether it is the intimidation of Jewish and other businesses, the cancelling of Jewish and Israeli voices, or the targeting of sports, arts, Pride and political events, extremists are increasingly taking over our public spaces, making them unsafe and infringing on the rights of all Canadians to enjoy them.”
The event faces opposition from other luminaries. An open letter to Tennis Canada and the Canadian Davis Cup team signed by former justice minister Allan Rock, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations Stephen Lewis, and Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, urges the squad to follow in the footsteps of Canada’s 1978 Davis Cup team, which boycotted part of the tournament to protest South Africa’s apartheid regime.
“That boycott didn’t just change scoreboards; it helped topple a regime built on human suffering,” reads the letter, which was shared with The Globe and Mail ahead of its public release on Wednesday. “Your refusal to play Israel would be a thunderclap of moral clarity. It would tell every person watching that justice matters more than any trophy.”
In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, Rock said he signed the letter because of his “conviction that the conduct of the government of Israel is so outrageous and unlawful that Canada should use every means to express its deep disapproval.”
Canada’s Davis Cup team will consist of Gabriel Diallo, Liam Draxl, Alexis Galarneau, and Cleeve Harper, and will be captained by Frank Dancevic.