Thomas Meilleur-Giguère might be new to the Halifax Wanderers, but he’s not an unfamiliar face to their fans.

In September, it was his flick and finish in the 96th minute at the Wanderers Grounds that snatched a draw for Pacific FC and stunned the Halifax faithful into silence.

Now, with news that Meilleur-Giguère is joining the Wanderers ahead of the 2025 Canadian Premier League season on a two-year contract, he’s hoping to earn the forgiveness of those fans by providing a few Wanderers Grounds moments on behalf of the home side.

“We’ll have a lot of great moments in that stadium with them, I’m sure,” Meilleur-Giguère said, joking that he hasn’t yet apologized to Halifax head coach Patrice Gheisar for scoring to take away what would’ve been a crucial home win for the Wanderers.

For the record, Gheisar quipped that he also hasn’t forgiven the former Trident just yet, but that he’s ecstatic to have a player of Meilleur-Giguère’s quality joining his defence.

“I’m so excited to have him,” the Wanderers manager told CanPL.ca. “He’s a player that makes defending exciting and easy. You talk about modern day football, we see defenders and everything about them is about their passing; Thomas is one of the rare breed that’s a leader and can defend, loves defending.”

Gheisar added: “The way he commands his line, his leadership, his experience in this league, and I think he’s at the perfect age to take a big role and be a leader; that’s something that stood out to me. Every team in this league wants a player like that.”

Meilleur-Giguère first signed for Pacific in 2020 as a 22-year-old, and at the time his only experience with the CPL level was, ironically, his trip to the Wanderers Grounds in the Canadian Championship with the Ottawa Fury. Over five seasons on Vancouver Island, though, he developed into one of the CPL’s best defenders. He helped Pacific win the 2021 CPL Final over Forge FC, also playing a major role in three runs to the semifinals of the TELUS Canadian Championship in 2021, 2023 and 2024 (including the 2021 campaign where they memorably beat the Vancouver Whitecaps).

The native of Repentigny, Que. explained that Pacific and its fans hold a special place in his heart, after he spent so many memorable years there, but ultimately once this off-season rolled around it was the right time for him to move on.

In total, Meilleur-Giguère racked up 120 appearances with Pacific and now, as a 27-year-old, he comes to Halifax as a veteran in his prime — perhaps exactly what the Wanderers needed.

“The vision they have for me is really great,” Meilleur-Giguère said. “They had a very young backline with a lot of quality, but maybe lacking experience, game management, even emotional control. When I come there, I bring a lot of experience, a lot of discipline, and I think in that sense, it’s what they needed. I think it was a perfect match, and I want to really bring them to the highest level that they can get.”

He added: “I won a championship, and it was very hard mentally to do all the things to make sure we get to it. But with all the learning processes that you get from there, if I compare myself to when I came to Pacific, I was way more wild, always played football out of the back, trying all this little stuff. And that’s maybe something Halifax has been doing a lot, and maybe my presence now at the back would help them be able to find the perfect balance for when to play, and when maybe it’s time to go a bit longer, play a bit more simple, take less risks.”

Gheisar pointed out that last year’s Wanderers defensive group featured almost exclusively players born in 2000 or 2001, from Zach Fernandez and Wesley Timoteo to Dan Nimick and Cale Loughrey, and many of them had arrived in Nova Scotia with very little professional experience.

Now, Meilleur-Giguère will be expected to provide some calm at the back in those high-danger moments. Plus, as Gheisar explained, with the Wanderers looking to improve their form on the road, it was an asset to bring in someone like Meilleur-Giguère. Coming from a fellow coastal CPL club, he has experience with the ups and downs of travelling across the country over the course of a long season.

As one of several Québécois Wanderers, Meilleur-Giguère is excited to work with some of the club’s younger French-speaking players. He revealed that he’s planning on training with Nassim Mekideche and Jefferson Alphonse in Montreal this winter before touching down in Nova Scotia, so by the time preseason comes he’ll already have a solid connection with two of his potential centre-back partners.

Meanwhile for Gheisar, the work continues — alongside Sporting Director Matt Fegan and newly-appointed Senior Football Strategy Advisor Mark Watson — to build a Wanderers roster for 2025.

The club provided an update on Tuesday with the contract situations of various players, revealing that nine players have guaranteed contracts, with 11 players on club options that the Wanderers have until Dec. 31 to trigger.

After a disappointing 2024 season where the Wanderers missed the playoffs, Gheisar explained that it was important to keep a significant core of the team together, while also leaving some flexibility to add to the squad and bring in experienced players like Meilleur-Giguère.

“The planning that we’ve done to make sure we have the core of the group remaining together as long as possible — you’ve got to take learnings from Forge and Cavalry that have continued to dominate things, and they’ve always kept their core together — has been imperative for us,” Gheisar said. “We want to continue to play the same football, eliminate the errors and increase our maturity, so you can’t do that if you switch every year.”

Of course, several big-name players are currently out of contract, and it’s unclear whether the likes of Dan Nimick, Lorenzo Callegari or Yann Fillion will return next season. Gheisar admitted that the club is working to retain as many pieces as possible, but those decisions have not yet been confirmed.

“We’re not looking to reshuffle massive amounts of our roster,” Gheisar said. “Consistency will be an absolute key. Obviously, when you enter this period, you also need the commitment from the player, because if the player says, well, I need to change, then you want people that are happy to be there. …

“There’s some big names there that we are trying to fight to retain, there’s some decisions they have to make, we have some decisions that we have to make, but the objective is to return as many players as we can, because I believe in the team.”

Regardless of what else is to come in the Wanderers’ roster build, though, there’s no doubt the Halifax club has landed the first big splash of the 2024-25 CPL off-season.