Canada’s men’s team didn’t get to play its final game at the Rugby World Cup, but it did play a part in helping the community of Kamaishi recover from Typhoon Hagibis over the weekend.
The Canadians, whose roster includes Newfoundlanders Patrick Parfrey of St. John’s and Ciaran Hearn of Conception Bay South, were supposed to play their final match of the tourney against Namibia in Kamaishi, but the game was cancelled by tournament organizers because of the expected impact of the typhoon which hit the community on Japan’s north-east coast early on Sunday.
Typhoon Hagibis has killed at least 23 people, leaving vast swaths of low-lying land in central and eastern Japan inundated and cutting power to almost half a million homes.
Many of the Canadian players and staff members spent some time helping in the local clean-up, filling up bags with accumulated mud and hauling it away.
“We’ve been hosted so well. We want to give back all we can,” said Canadian captain Tyler Ardon.
Canada was winless in its earlier three games in the tourney.
World Cup organizers chose to hold two matches — including Canada-Namibia — in Kamaishi in a bid to aid the region’s recovery after it was devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
More than 1,000 people were killed or went missing in Kamaishi following the 2011 tsunami. Uruguay beat Fiji in Kamaishi earlier in this tournament.\
With files from Reuters
