Two of Prince Harry’s passion projects come together this weekend in Vancouver and Whistler: sustainable travel and the Invictus Games 2025 – a sporting competition for wounded, injured or sick military service members and veterans from around the world. A total of 550 athletes from 25 nations will attend the competition running February 8-16.
These are the second Games to be held in Canada and the first to include a selection of winter sports, including alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, skeleton and wheelchair curling.
Canada, of course, played a supporting role in the early days of Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle. The duo debuted their relationship in Toronto, where the former actor was living while filming the TV series Suits. There is an Invictus tie-in, too: it was at the 2017 Games in Toronto that Markle made her first appearance with her prince. Remember how fresh and natural the future Duchess of Sussex’s ripped jeans and “nudge-wink” white, oversized “boyfriend” shirt felt at the time?
British Columbia in particular holds special memories for the prince. In 1998, Harry and his brother, William, accompanied then-Prince Charles on a working holiday to Vancouver, with four days of skiing in Whistler that coincided with the Nagano Winter Olympics. The trio donned the famous Roots poor boy cap of the Canadian athletes, with the princes playfully sporting the Roots uniform jackets over their more formal shirts and ties.
This trip occurred only seven months after the death of their mother, Diana, so it was significant that it was a familiar Commonwealth destination for the young princes. Harry later brought Meghan and their infant son Archie to Vancouver Island, when they took an extended break from the media mayhem back home in England over the holidays of 2019, prior to their stepping down from royal duties the following March.
Harry has spent his life travelling as a global ambassador, first as a working member of the Royal Family and now as a philanthropist and entrepreneur. It was in the Caribbean in 2012 that the prince, on tour on behalf of the then-Queen, met a seven-year-old boy who brought home the reality of climate change. Harry shared the boy’s words when he launched his non-profit Travalyst seven years later: “Because of your country, my country’s coral reef is dying.”
Harry took the boy’s words to heart: Travalyst is dedicated to providing information for industry and consumers about the climate costs of travel, and the tools to help them make better choices. At Climate Week in New York this past fall, as the organization celebrated its fifth anniversary, Harry told attendees, “By 2030, we are expecting 1.8 billion international arrivals [globally] each year, nearly double the numbers we saw just two decades ago.”
Travalyst has brought together a consortium of major industry players – from Booking.com to Mastercard, Visa, Skyscanner and Expedia – to post clear and consistent comparative sustainability information on flights and accommodations. He was named to the 2024 Time100 Climate List to mark his work.
But it is Harry’s signature initiative, the Invictus Games, that is set to get the royal treatment in Canada. As a proud veteran himself (two deployments to Afghanistan), Harry founded the competition in 2014. This Games marks the seventh for the organization, and the second in Canada after the success of the 2017 Games in Toronto.
“This one is particularly exciting as it will be the first to feature winter adaptive sports in addition to traditional adaptive sports,” says Invictus CEO Scott Moore, who formerly headed up the empowerment program for diverse athletes, Uninterrupted Canada. Previous gigs running broadcasting at Rogers Media and at the CBC mean that Moore has worked 11 Olympics in his career.
“I’ve worked in sport all my life, and been aware of the power of sport to change lives. The Invictus Games does more than that, it saves lives,” he says. “The takeaway for many of them is a new outlook on life, and finding a new way back into society.”
What’s magical about these Games is not only about who wins gold, silver or bronze, says Moore.
“Winning a medal is a huge accomplishment, and so is the mere challenge and accomplishment of getting to the Games and to the start or finish line. How [the athletes have] overcome physical or mental injury to simply participate – that takes a huge amount of courage and resilience. In the military no one gets left behind, and this creed is so evident at the Invictus Games.”
The Games is a travel destination for friends and family of the international competitors, and a great opportunity for Canadians to travel with a purpose within our country. The opening ceremony, at BC Place, will have an expected audience of 35,000 fans and be broadcast live on TSN and CTV. Katy Perry and Nelly Furtado are scheduled to perform.
Moore calls the sporting events, with ticket prices as low as $13, “an affordable, family-oriented chance to share your gratitude with those who have served.”
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