Caesar the Canadian Wolf
Dates are important to Caesar Lobos. His name holds meaning too.
“I love my name Caesar, because it represents the Roman Empire. I mean, it’s a civilisation. It’s got war, it’s got history, it’s how to build a society. I love it. My last name is Lobos. It means ‘wolf’ in Spanish.”
Lobos was born in Guatemala in July 1974. He lived in Guatemala until he moved to Canada in September 1983, aged nine. Lobos remembers the exact dates of both—and even the time he arrived in Canada: “I came around five o’clock in the afternoon that day,” he tells me.
“When I came to Canada, I was young. I was coming from a country that was having a civil war. So because of that civil war, my mother thought that we would have a chance to have a better future in Canada. She was having high hopes that with the education in Canada, I would end up something like an engineer.”
It didn’t quite play out that way.
“Any person who’s moving to a new country, the reality is far from that,” Lobos explains. “I had problems adapting to Canada, especially with the language barriers, so I did struggle a lot in school.” That led him to start drinking around age 12 or 13, which in turn led him to become homeless.
“I was homeless for almost eight to nine years, living on the street. It was for two years at least that the alcohol just took over my life, so I couldn’t make the right choices. I lost my family, I lost my sons.”
There was a date in 2024 where Lobos drew a line in the sand. “Last year, on the 5th of November, I decided that it was finished, it is time to say goodbye to homelessness and recover myself. So I from one night to another, I decided no more alcohol in me.”
Dates no longer hold such significance. “Here I am, from November, December—I even don’t count the months until now that I don’t consume alcohol.”
Travelling to Norway is the first time Lobos has left Canada. He’s grateful to the newly re-formed Canadian Street Soccer Association, who saw the potential in him and invited him to join the programme and, ultimately, the 2025 Canadian Homeless World Cup team. “For the first time of my life, I’m playing against the whole world thinking that I’m playing like my idol in soccer,” Lobos says. That idol is Maradona.
For Caesar the wolf, this tournament, playing out in August 2025, feels like the start of a new chapter. “So far, I don’t need alcohol, and I can accomplish many things. I will continue on from this event, continue transmitting that flame that they gave me, that energy, that soul, that that new life.”
Written By Craig Williams, Photos By Anita Milas & John Anderson