By Steve Fisher • Photos by Corbin Smith

Sports coverage tends to focus on major league teams, but every day in Toronto people make fun (and sometimes wacky) activities an important part of their lives. Sporting Goods looks at some of these.

A firing team prepares to “breach” a building and clear the ground floor.

 
Creeping along a second-storey walkway to an open window that gives me a good view of the minivan at the end of the street, I spot an “insurgent” poking his head out from behind the vehicle. I pepper his position with rounds, and he withdraws behind his cover. That’s when someone opens up on me from the first-floor window across the street, and I throw myself back against the wall, as rounds go whizzing by my head. I’m covered in sweat and splattered in paint, but I don’t care—I’m completely focused on winning this battle.

I’m taking part in a session of paintball games at CQB Tactical Paintball & Training Academy. (A short walk down Sterling Road from Dundas West Station, CQB is the closest paintball facility, indoor or outdoor, to the downtown core.) Torontoist photographer Corbin Smith and I are “embedded” in fire teams taking part in urban warfare scenarios with Team Vice, a house team of CQB regulars—guys (all the participants for the day are male, though a few women show up to watch from the observation booth) who spend several afternoons and evenings a week gearing up and waging war with paint.
“Most of the guys here today are gun owners,” says Naro De Souza, a Team Vice member who was our initial point of contact. By gun owners, he means experienced paintball players who own their own equipment; they’re kitted out with their own tactical vests, helmets, and firearms, some markedly different from the standard-issue carbines, vests, and face masks CQB provides to their renters. “I come for the adrenaline rush, for the challenge, for the friends—some of whom I’ve met right here,” says De Souza, indicating John Cadiz, who sports a pair of silver pistols in quick-draw holsters on both hips. “We’re teammates—Team Vice is here two to three times a week, or more.”

Team Vice member Naro De Souza cautiously “clears” the top floor of a building.

 
“When we’re open, these guys are here—I can’t get rid of them!” jokes Alex “Too Tall” MacLeod, who’s obviously just as passionate about paintball himself. He’s been working at CQB since it opened in 2008 at its original indoor facility, down the road from their current out-of-doors space. There are pros and cons about their new location; noise was less of an issue at the old warehouse, concedes MacLeod. The current facility, which opens at 3 p.m. on weekdays (noon on weekends), usually shuts down well before 11 p.m.
That’s still plenty of time for a whole series of different tactical games, and the layout is impressive. It resembles neither the “out in the woods” expectation many have of paintball, nor the dingy dark warehouse many of us recall from “laser tag” as kids. It’s a series of two-storey buildings along a dusty road, with all sorts of debris littering the street, simulating a war-torn urban environment. MacLeod says that part of CQB’s business is law-enforcement officers, military personnel, and private-security trainees learning how to operate in a hard-to-secure area.

The field of play at CQB Tactical Paintball and Training Academy.

 
But for most of the players here, this is a hobby—an extremely addictive one. That can lead to an obsession with the most cutting-edge gear, or in the opposite direction, paring equipment down to the essentials. “I got to the point where I preferred just carrying a pistol sometimes,” says Juan Caballero, another Team Vice member, “and now, I sometimes play with just knives.” He shows me a rubber-bladed combat knife, the hilt absolutely covered in little x marks, one for each “knife kill” of the 110 he’s racked up in a year of playing. For the last game of the day, Caballeros does indeed leave his custom rifle behind and goes into the arena with just two knives, tapping opponents with the blade to take them out. (I’m just glad he’s on my side.)
After the first game, where we defended the “hotel” at the end of the street from an opposing force (and were the last to be “killed” or captured), our photographer asks for a weapon so he can shoot more than just photos. He’ll spend the rest of the day with his camera positioned directly over top his borrowed pistol.

De Sousa (at right, with the shield) leads a firing team up a heavily defended staircase.

 
At the end of our third game, a heated argument breaks out between De Sousa and an opponent; in the final minute, he’d led a charge up to a second floor, where a half-dozen opponents had pelted him at close range, and he accuses some of firing multiple times after he’d declared himself “out.” MacLeod gets between the two players, both displaying welts. “He’s bleeding, so you obviously got him good,” he tells an aggrieved player with paint all over his neck. “It’s paintball, shit happens—you can call it a day or calm down and play again.” De Sousa opts to sit the next game out and later shows us multiple angry looking welts, a couple of them with broken skin. “Every point on that staircase was well defended,” he explains to us. “Six guys, all trained on the direction I was coming up, shooting at close range.” The shield he was carrying obviously couldn’t keep him safe from all those angles. I ask him how he’ll explain the marks at work, and he laughs. “I’ll keep my sleeves down, so I don’t have to explain them—it does look like someone was beating on me with a stick, eh?”

Alex “Too Tall” MacLeod (at left) covers a teammate making a dash across no man’s ground.

 
“That happens almost every day,” chuckles MacLeod when I ask him about how often he has to defuse arguments. “Tempers flare in paintball—adrenaline is pumping through everybody’s veins. I usually just keep saying, ‘It’s paintball—shit happens.’ If you’re going to get all bent up about it, you can go home and play video games.”
By our last game of the day, I’m feeling pretty cocky; I’ve had to surrender twice when players got the drop on me (thankfully, not Caballero and his knives), but I haven’t been “taken out” of a game so far with a shot to the torso or head, and my own welts—one on my knee, the other my upper arm—are barely noticeable marks compared to De Sousa’s. In the last few minutes, though, firing at multiple targets from my second-floor window, paint splats across my visor from a well-placed head shot. I raise my arm, shouting “Out!” multiple times as I return to the safe zone, watching players moving from cover to cover, as the “bomb” is advanced to my teammates’ stronghold in a sort of reverse “Capture the Flag.” Three hours of play has me sweaty and exhausted, but I can’t wait to do it all again.
“It’s incredible exercise, and we’re all hopelessly addicted to the adrenaline here,” says MacLeod, who admits he’s played every day the past week. Looking at the wide grins among the paint-splattered players waiting until the next game begins, both veteran and new, I definitely understand the addiction—red welts notwithstanding.
All photos by Corbin Smith/Torontoist.

CORRECTION: August 4, 1:48 PM Juan Caballero was originally referred to as “Juan Caballeros” in one instance in the article. This has been corrected.