Category: QbyN – Spinning Tales

A few years ago, while vacationing/working in Napa, California, I needed the services of a tailor and, as luck would have it, I found one conveniently located in downtown Napa, called Cervone & Son. I remember thinking at the time that signs like the one above, and the one hanging over the tailor shop, were perhaps from another era or symbolic of small-town U.S.A. I am not suggesting that there are no signs like this in big cities, I am sure there are, but there is a certain “quaintness” to them that, in my mind at least, places them in towns that still have “angle” parking (Napa does!). Over a couple of summers in Napa, I frequented the shop a few times, and after the second visit, started to chat a little with the owner, a man in his mid-late 60s. I never saw anyone else in the shop employee-wise except for Mr. Cervone, so one day I asked him about his sign that read Father & Son, to which he replied: “I am the son!” And now you know why I was thinking the way I was. It was only a few years later that I found out that he had retired, and the shop was closed…the end of the line, so to speak.

For some reason, I was thinking about this memory the other night and was trying to figure out why I felt the way I did about father and son businesses, and the type of relationship that is forged between a father and son when they work together. All that got me thinking about the television shows I grew up with in the 50s and 60s that featured fathers and sons. Shows like “Father Knows Best” (1954-60), “Leave It To Beaver” (1957-63), “Bonanza” (1959-73), “The Andy Griffith Show” (1960-65), and finally, “My Three Sons” (1960-73). If you compare these with shows featuring fathers and sons from the 1990s-2010s…well, let’s just say times have changed. Of course, these are scripted shows with actors playing “roles,” but when you’re ten-years-old, as I was in 1960, the depictions that emanated from the black and white screen did leave an impression. However, none of these shows, with the exception of “Bonanza,” had fathers and sons in business together, and the business model, if you can even call it that, for “Bonanza” did not feature a quaint sign hanging over a store and there were three sons. It wasn’t until “Sanford and Son” (1972-77) that we got to see the machinations of a father and son together in a business, and even that wasn’t a store, it was a junkyard. And by then, I was in my twenties and no doubt thinking about other things.

I had several friends growing up who eventually went to work with or for their fathers, but for me that was never really an option. My dad was a travelling salesman in the jewelry business when I was growing up, so there was no store, no business to learn and take over, and definitely no possibility for a sign saying Shubert and Son(s) – I have a brother. There was his car, large sample cases, and motels scattered across Quebec and Ontario. From what I could tell as a kid, he was really good at what he did, but what impressed me the most from the few times that I travelled with him on some of his trips, first for companionship and later to help with the driving, was his ability to forge lasting relationships with many of his clients that went way beyond him selling them product for their stores. For example, when one of his fairly new clients in a small town about an hour east of Toronto found out that he was coming to town, he phoned the motel he knew my dad was going to be staying at and cancelled his reservation. When my Dad showed up at the store, they did their business as usual, and when it was time for my dad to leave and check in to his room, his client informed him that he had cancelled his reservation, because from now on, he would be staying at his house with his wife and two young sons. That friendship lasted the rest of their lives. They talked business when they had to, and the rest they made up as they went along. By the way, both of the sons eventually worked in the store with their dad, and he went on to open a second store in a neighboring town.

Just because there was no store, no business, and no sign, does not mean that there are no father and son stories about “working” together. They may not be the same as the ones I heard from my friends who worked with their dads over the years, but there are stories. The one that I still think about happened when we were on one of his, as he used to call them, “sales trips” and I was the designated driver. It was the summer of 1968, and I was 17. We were headed from Montreal to Rouyn-Noranda in Northern Québec, about 395 miles away. For about 140 of those miles, you are driving through a small portion of this amazing wilderness park called Parc La Vérendrye, which boasts some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen, not to mention about 400 lakes. There is a welcome booth at both the southern and northern ends of this stretch of the park, where you have to stop and sign in, and they ask you if you are spending time in the park or just driving through. Since it was the latter for us, they handed me a piece of paper with our license plate number, the number of people in the vehicle, and the time we checked in. When you arrive at the other end, you need to hand the paper to the attendant. They do this so that they can clock how long it took you to get from A to B, and if it’s too quick of a time, they give you a speeding ticket! Thinking about this over the years, it dawned on me that this is a pretty clever way to stop speeding. Unless, of course, you dad is a smart man.

After we checked in, my dad said he was going to take a nap and that I should enjoy the drive and the scenery. He also mentioned that there was a small store about 40 miles or so before reaching the exit point, and I should stop there because they had the best ice cream. Who could argue with that? I loved the drive on this beautiful two-lane highway number 117, which is a northern section of the Trans Canada Highway. When I arrived at the little store, I parked and woke my dad up, anxious to get my hands on an ice cream cone. My dad looked at his watch, looked at the slip of paper beside him, looked at me and said: “Hey Mario, were we being chased?” Let’s just say that the stop for ice cream went from we will be back on the road “in no time at all,” to “taking more time than we needed to,” hanging around the store for over an hour because of my lead foot. We came home via a different route, so mercifully there was no chance of a repeat! I may not have been an apprentice tailor working in my father’s shop, but it was a father and son moment that I will never forget!

Los Angeles 2023

The other night, Tuesday June 13^th, to be exact, I turned on the TV to watch the last period of the Stanley Cup finals between the Florida Panthers and the Las Vegas Golden Nights. The score at the beginning of the 3^rd period was 6-1 in favor of the Golden Nights, and since they only needed one more win to clinch the trophy, the outcome was almost certainly a forgone conclusion…but I watched anyway. Oh yes, they did win by a score of 9-3. Later that night, I had a dream. I dreamt about an unfortunate, young Montreal hockey player who, at the age of 16 in 1966 (a year before the NHL expanded to 12 teams from 6), was knocked into a coma after a rather vicious hit into the boards. Miraculously, he suddenly woke up from that coma 53 years later on June 13^th, 2023, and when a nurse came running into the room, he looked at her and the first words out of his mouth were: “Who won the Stanley Cup?” The poor nurse was worried that what she was about to tell him would send him right back into a coma, but she quietly whispered, “The Las Vegas Golden Nights.” The look on his face said it all.

I was the same age as this unfortunate hockey player in 1966, but my reaction to Las Vegas winning the cup comes with having been awake through the various expansions of the NHL, and even though the league was made up of six teams before 1967, four of those were located in the US, albeit in states knowing that ice wasn’t just something that went into cocktails. Don’t get me wrong; I applaud the players, coaches, management, etc. for not only winning this coveted trophy, but for doing it in only their sixth year as an NHL team. This, by the way, is a new record, which was previously held by the expansion Philadelphia Flyers (seven years). And let’s not forget the fact that the Nights also made the Stanley Cup finals in their first year, which is a pretty miraculous feat. However, I was born in Montreal, started playing hockey when I was around six, organized ice hockey at ten, and I ate, slept, and breathed the Montreal Canadiens. So, when teams from States without a capital “W” winter win the cup, a little piece of me dies!

Too over-the-top? Maybe, but here are my reasons, for whatever they may be worth. The Stanley Cup is the oldest sports trophy around. It was donated in 1892 by Sir Fredrick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, and son of the Earl of Derby, to be presented to the championship hockey club of the Dominion of Canada. The first team ever awarded the trophy was the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association in 1893. From 1910 – 1926, the National Hockey Association took possession of the cup as a symbol of professional hockey supremacy. Since 1926, only NHL teams have competed for the trophy. The Montreal Canadiens have won the cup a record 24 times since their existence; they also won it a record five consecutive years from 1956-1960, six more from 1965-1973, and then four more consecutive wins from 1976-1979. What does all this mean? Well, it means that from the year I started playing hockey at age six to when I turned 29, Montreal won the Stanley Cup 15 times in 23 years. So, when a city located in the desert, which cannot reproduce the image seen above, and image that was an integral part of my youth, it gives me pause.

There are currently 32 teams that make up the NHL, seven of which are located in Canadian cities. Las Vegas is not the only team situated in a city without “winter.” There are some, especially Canadians, who feel that Canada has lost ground when it comes to hockey being Canada’s game, but there are always two ways of looking at things. When the league had only six teams, with four located in the US, around 98% of the players were Canadian born. Now, that figure is somewhere between 50-65% which, if you just look at the percentages, tells a story of declining prominence. But percentages can be misleading. Take the Stanley Cup winning Las Vegas Golden Nights for example. Their 36 player roster consists of 23 Canadian-born players, seven American born, and the rest hail from Russia, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, and the Czech Republic. That boils down to 60% of Vegas’s team being Canadian, but this is another percentage that needs further context. Canada, with a population of around 38 million people, is providing 60% of the players. The rest of the players, seven American and 13 in total, come from countries whose combined population total is 503.9 million people. Now the percentage reads: 60% (23 players) from 38 million people; 40% (13 players) from 503 million people. Let that sink in.

And now for the irony. I have lived in three major North American cities: Montreal, as mentioned above, Vancouver, which entered the NHL in 1970 and has yet to win a Stanley Cup (that’s 53 years of “maybe next year,” making Vegas’s achievement even more striking); and finally, Los Angeles, the city I now call home. In all my years in Montreal, the closest I have ever been to Lord Stanley’s trophy was in a display case at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. However, eight years after moving south of the border, I now possess a picture of me with my arm around the cup, courtesy of the LA Kings and the President of AEG, who just happened to be a parent at my wife’s school and used the opportunity of the Kings 2014 Stanley Cup victory to put on a fundraiser for the school using the cup as bait. So, call me a hypocrite for my rant about Vegas being a desert team. The LA Kings are a close second on that front, but it was the Stanley Cup!

Los Angeles 2023

My career in teaching (1991-2018) did not follow what some might call a “normal path.” Firstly, it started at 41 years old. Secondly, it began at a University in Canada and ended at a private school in Southern California. I went from lecturing in three different departments – Communications, Canadian Studies, and Geography – to teaching high school English and creative writing to “gifted” (aren’t they all?) children considered to be on, what is called, “the spectrum.” This refers to kids with high-functioning Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, ADHD, and other such afflictions, which often come with the second label: “neurodivergent.” For the most part, as with any group of teenagers, these were good kids who would have, for a variety of reasons, struggled at more traditional schools. Many of them benefited and thrived because of the smaller class sizes, more personalized curriculum, and readily available support services. Now, after saying all that, many of these students’ strengths were in one or more of the following three areas: math, science/technology, and the arts/music. I was the English teacher.

Teaching, a.k.a. “professing,” at a public university is light years away from “teaching” at a private school, not to mention that they were in different countries. The curriculum, the level of academic rigor, and everything that encompasses are naturally going to be different, but the other major difference is that in my 15 years at the university, I had never spoken to or communicated with a parent(s) of one of my students, except for that one time that I had a mother and daughter taking one of my classes together. I can tell you that the 12 years I spent at the private school more than made up for that lack of parental contact! To be perfectly honest, my “training” for my first foray into teaching was non-existent, as it began as a “teaching assistant” when I started my Masters and morphed into lecturing and course development shortly after that, but only because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. My “qualifications” for the private school gig were essentially the credentials I had from the first gig, with the exception of a two-week orientation before my first year. Oh, I almost forgot, I was 55 when I started at the private school.

Let’s just say it was an interesting journey, with a very steep learning curve, and it was certainly a challenging 12 years, before I put myself out to pasture in 2018. At the university gig, I can honestly say that I never heard the phrase, “a teachable moment” used by other professors, and it was definitely never directed towards me, but I was aware of the term and what it meant, and its application in other spheres of life. Like the teachable moment you have after waking up having had one too many tequila shots the night before. Then came private school, and the teachable moment floodgates opened. There is, however, a particular one that stands out, but it didn’t come from an “ah-ha” revelation that I had in the classroom; rather, it was suggested to me as a solution by an administrator when I told him about an absolute screw-up of “epic” proportion that I had made. In retrospect, “epic” does not feel strong enough to describe my gaffe. And who was I to argue with the teachable moment solution being handed to me, for what I thought at the time would most likely get me fired faster than _________insert cliché here? Yeah, I know, you want to know what I did that was so terrible.

 A couple of summers before this “fiasco” (not the round-bottomed glass flask for wine, think Chianti), I was reading a book that I thought I might be able to use for my 11^th grade classes. It was Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004) by Chuck Palahniuk. If that name sounds familiar, it is because you may be familiar with some of his novels, especially Fight Club (1996) and Choke (2001), both of which were made into movies, or perhaps Invisible Monsters (1999), Lullaby (2002), and Rant (2007). I had read all of these by that time but was unfamiliar with his non-fiction. I apologize for this gross generalization, but one could say that his novels are “quirky,” which is exactly the same word I would use to describe my students, so it seemed like a good fit. Since most of my students were not really into English literature, I tried to find books and other material outside of what would be considered the standard curriculum for the grade, material that I thought would pique their interest, the “perk” that comes from teaching at a small private school without a standardized curriculum.  And when I did teach a book that was more “standard,” like Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, I not only showed them a movie version of the book, as many of my students were visual learners, but I also tried to find some unique ways to present the material. For example, there was an exercise comparing rap lyrics to lines from Shakespeare’s play. I showed movies for other books as well, like Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and the graphic novels Persepolis and Watchmen. In fact, I took my class to the opening midnight showing of the movie Watchmen when I first taught the novel. I know what you’re thinking, but sainthood is not for me.

It was exactly two summers later, and I was figuring out what books I wanted to be on my reading list for my 11^th grade class starting at the end of August, when I remembered Palahniuk’s Stranger Than Fiction and thought to myself, “Yeah, that would be a great fit for these guys.” I did not remember every story in the book, but what I did remember was that the stories were definitely “out there,” and I was sure that they had never read anything quite like this before. This turned out to be quite prophetic. The book was divided into three sections: People Together, Portraits, and Personal, all under the umbrella theme of people getting together. What could go wrong with that? In his forward to the book, Palahniuk writes: “Every story in this book is about being with other people. Me being with people. Or people being together.” Stories like “Where the Meat Comes From,” about wrestling, “Confessions in Stone” about castle building, “Reading Yourself” about Marilyn Manson, and “Demolition,” a story about a demolition derby but instead of cars, it’s farm combines. Like I said, quirky.

The book was ordered, given out to the students when the semester began, and I instructed them to have it read in a couple of weeks. I told them that we would not be looking in-depth at every story, but they should read the whole book, which would give them a better understanding of the overall concept. I knew that most of them would not have it read when we started (this was the norm), but there was one student in this particular class who was an avid reader, and I knew that she would start it and finish it well in advance of the discussion start date. She did not disappoint, walking into my classroom about a week after I handed it out with this sly grin on her face. I had not taken a look at the book yet to finalize which stories I wanted to work on, so when she looked at me and asked: “Do you know what is in this book?” I was, needless to say, I bit alarmed. As it turned out, rightly so. I told her that I had read it some time ago but had not looked at it recently. She smiled, opened the book, and read me the first paragraph of the first story in the book, which just happens to be titled: “Testy Festy.”

A pretty blonde tilts her cowboy hat farther back on her head. This is so she can deep-throat a cowboy without her hat brim hitting him in the gut. This is on a stage, in a crowded bar. Both of them are naked and smeared with chocolate pudding and whipped cream. This they call the “Co-Ed Body Painting Contest.” The stage is red carpet. The lights fluorescent. The crowd chants, “We want head! We want head!”

She was about to read the second paragraph, but I somehow managed to stop her as I grabbed my copy from the shelf, furiously rifling to the first story with a look of abject horror on my face. As I read, the look of horror turned to that oh-shit-I’m-fucked look. She was laughing hysterically. And just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, she told me that she started reading it in the car as her dad was driving her to school, and when she began laughing hysterically after reading the first paragraph, her dad asked her what she was reading, and instead of answering the question, she read him the entire story! I wanted to die. How was I going to break the news to my wife, also a teacher, that I just got fired for assigning a book with a story depicting graphic sex acts on a stage at the annual “Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival,” at a bar 15 miles south of Missoula, Montana? And then I wondered if Starbucks was hiring.

After she left my classroom, I hightailed it it the head of school’s office, because I sure as hell did not want him to hear about this from anyone else, especially the dad. I told him the whole sordid saga. He asked me how graphic it was, to which I responded: “You really don’t want to know,” because if you think that first paragraph was bad…After an uncomfortably long pause, he looked at me and said: “Well, if you frame this the right way with your class, it can be a valuable ‘teachable moment.’”  Indeed.

Los Angeles 2023

The importance of the hockey arena to Canadian society is best summed up by a statistical curiosity published in Harper’s Magazine (circa 1998): The ratio of ice rinks to hospitals in Canada – 3:1. Now, this may have said more about the state of health care in this country at that time than it did about Canadians’ love for the game of hockey, but there is no denying that hockey holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many Canadians. It has been referred to as “our game,” “the Canadian specific,” “our common passion,” “the language that pervades Canada,” and “the game of our lives.” It is part sport, part spectacle, part religion, and as a religion it has its places of worship.

Hockey arenas in this country come in all shapes and sizes, from the numerous small community facilities with perhaps a hundred seats, to the huge (fifteen thousand plus capacity) sports-entertainment complexes of the National Hockey League (NHL). We tend to hear and know more about NHL arenas and the cities in which they are located because of the top-down world of professional sport. During the 70s and 80s, many cities in both the Canada and the US built new NHL arenas, while others lost their bids for new facilities, and in some cases these cities lost their teams. The prime Canadian examples from those years were Winnipeg and Quebec City, and they have subsequently taken their place in the mythology of hockey in Canada. While their respective battles to save local NHL hockey – and as some saw it, to save their cities – was intriguing and to some even heart-wrenching, for myself, it paled in comparison to the story of Radisson, Saskatchewan in the 1980s!

In 1986, Radisson, a small prairie town of 434 people, was trying to raise funds to replace their aging arena. The issue was simple: replace the arena or lose the community. The people of Radisson had reasoned that the first thing to go is the arena, then in succession the gas station, the school, the co-op, and finally the town itself. While this may seem a tad melodramatic, it is a scenario that has frequently played out over the years in many small towns like Radisson across the country. It is also something that the people of Saskatchewan have been dealing with for some time, as technology and changing cultural and economic patterns made obsolete many of its 800 communities. The ones that survive are the ones that can provide the amenities to keep the people there.

Why is this story more intriguing than the examples of Winnipeg and Quebec City? It is really a question of scale: when a fundraising dinner was held to kick off Radisson’s arena campaign, 420 of the community’s 434 people attended! This kind of dedication to the cause was repeated time and time again over the course of the campaign. But the most amazing aspect of this story, and the one that perhaps best illustrates the importance of hockey to Canadian culture and community, is the now legendary story of Joe Tutt. Tutt, then a twenty-five-year-old driveway contractor who had heard about Radisson’s situation through a national media campaign sponsored by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, decided to cycle around 1,875 miles from his home in Milton, Ontario (yes, he did not even live in the province let alone the town of Radisson), to Radisson to raise funds for the arena. He not only completed the trip, raising $25,000, he subsequently refused the return air ticket purchased for him by the townspeople, because the trip had raised less than he hoped for. He got back on his bike after a few days’ rest and cycled back home, raising an additional $10,000! To my knowledge, there has never been an effort made such as this to raise money for a new hospital, which might explain in part the statistical oddity quoted in Harper’s Magazine mentioned above!

There are two reasons for this rather protracted introduction to the cultural significance of hockey arenas: first, it is important to understand how widespread and deeply ingrained the game of hockey is on the Canadian psyche; and second, while the discussion that follows deals specifically with NHL arenas, this by no means indicates their superiority over smaller regional facilities. Again, it’s a question of scale. The focus here is primarily on Vancouver and Montreal, as both these NHL cities opened new state-of-the-art arenas in 1995 and 1996. The contrast between the new buildings, as well as the ones they replaced, is quite revealing.

One does not have to look too deeply for evidence of a difference in dialect in “the language that pervades Canada.” While Vancouver’s newspapers reported daily on the Canucks’ progress as a team, the Montreal papers wondered if this year’s Canadiens team was another dynasty in the making. Canadiens fans have always believed in their history and legacy; Canuck fans are still waiting for theirs to materialize. Such is the difference in this country between a team founded in 1909, and one that was formed in 1970 after the league’s second expansion. The most illuminating evidence of this difference in dialect can be seen by examining the coverage of the closing and subsequent opening of each city’s NHL arena. When the Vancouver Canucks started the 1995-96 season in their new home, GM [General Motors] Place, little was said in the papers about their old home, the Pacific Coliseum., as it quietly passed into oblivion.

By comparison, when the Montreal Canadiens began playing in the new, then called, Molson Center near the end of 1996, the closing of the old Montreal Forum was orchestrated as a nostalgia-ridden, gut-wrenching event. Consider the language of the following headline: “Vancouver City officials unsure of what to do with the Coliseum,” versus “Forum wake starts with silence,” or “Hockey’s temple passes into history.” As the author of the latter wrote, “when the Forum finally closes down for good this week, its passing will mark the end of an era, the sad demise of a venerable structure that has long been regarded as hockey’s high temple.” This kind of hyperbole was the norm in the days leading up to the last game to be played in the Montreal Forum. And while the more cynical among us may attribute this groundswell of emotion to shameless advertising on the part of the NHL, for myself it is hard to believe it was all insincere.

Earlier, when I referred to the “language” of hockey, I was really commenting on the inherent connection between language and culture. Since hockey is definitely a major part of Canadian culture – indeed, a culture unto itself – then its language evokes meaning and understanding from those that share in that culture, while leaving others baffled, perhaps understanding the words but not the way in which they are being used. In “Farewell to the Forum,” financial analyst Francis Scarpaleggia shared his connection with his readers:

I had entered a physical and spiritual landmark. The Forum was more than a hockey arena. It had value beyond the purely functional. It figured in anecdotes that became part of family histories, stood as a symbol of the national spirit, and functioned as a microcosm of the larger society outside…. The Forum is more than a storehouse of personal memories. It is a part of the soul of the nation, a place where the country’s myths are played out in weekly rituals. Players, rugged, independent yet graceful, move over frozen ground like coureurs de bois, overcoming the obstacles in their path with grim determination and roots carved from the wood of the land…Besides its role as guardian of the country’s sacred myths, the Forum has been a mirror of the society that surrounds it…The Forum is more than the world shrine of a fast and exciting sport…It is a crucible in which individuals from around the world are transformed into Canadians.

To some, this way of speaking about a building may seem unnatural, even a little overstated, but to many Canadians – and more importantly to many Montrealer’s – it is perfectly acceptable, even warranted. What is particularly interesting about this article is that it was written in 1989, when talk of a new arena was just that, talk. One can only wonder what Mr. Scarpaleggia would have been saying in 1996!

In Vancouver, debate over what to do with the Pacific Coliseum after the Canucks moved to their new home was virtually non-existent; in Montreal, there was a persistent “buzz” over the possibility that the Forum might be razed. At the time, Derek Drummond, the director of the school of architecture at McGill University, said that the proposed demolition of the Montreal Forum “focuses our attention on how fragile our urban environments have become; … it reveals how little our collective memories and traditions are valued by not only the corporations who make such proposals but also by those in our community who purport to protect our heritage.” Drummond, who felt that the Montreal Forum was regarded both locally and internationally as the “high altar of hockey,” also stated that, “As do all these great places, the Forum evoked an emotional response that was based on far more than its mere physical structure. In a society where hockey has always been more than just a game, the Forum assumes a role far greater than that of just another arena. To destroy it will be tantamount to cutting out a piece of the heart of Montreal.” Well, the Forum was never razed! However, after the departure of the Canadiens, the building was used to film some arena sequences for Brian De Palma’s 1998 film Snake Eyes, and then the interior was completely gutted and turned into an entertainment complex, which in my mind is pretty closed to razing! The Pacific Coliseum on the other hand has been updated and was used as a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics, as well as many other sporting and entertainment events.

What is immediately clear from Drummond’s thoughts is that there is much more to the Forum than its merits as a piece of architecture. Here, the importance of brick and mortar is supplanted by collective memories. It is the people that give these buildings life, and it is their shared cultural activities that give these buildings meaning. This is precisely’ what Drummond meant when he further stated that “for the vast majority of the population the urban places that evoke the most poignant memories are not necessarily those of architectural significance.” Montreal sports columnist Jack Todd summed it up best when he stated that it was “the people who made the building, not the building that made the people. The Montreal Forum has never won a Stanley Cup.”

Of equal importance to the relationship between the arena and the people is the arena’s relationship with the city. As a civic monument, the arena becomes an outward representation of the city, a badge the city may wear with pride. In “The Stadium and the City: A Modem Story” (1995), Niels Nielsen wrote that “the city influences the stadium, just as the stadium influences the city; the stadium landscape is both staged by the city and a staging of the city.” This duality demonstrates the important role an arena can play in the overall landscape of a city. The conventional wisdom is that “world-class” cities, an oft-used phrase these days, have “world-class” arenas and stadiums, sometimes more than one. The importance of hockey arenas to Canadian and other country’s cities is highlighted by the phenomenon of team owners holding their respective cities for ransom with the threat of moving the team unless their demands for new facilities are met. And while larger cities might not lose their communities if they don’t get that new arena, they might lose their status as “world-class” cities which, some city officials believe, will result in grievous social, political, and economic harm.

One of the more disturbing attributes of the “world-class” city is that their landscapes are characterized by an increasing trend towards placelessness or sameness. Towering office buildings, fast-food-chain outlets, international airports, and standardized suburban housing designed and built without regard for the particularities of their physical and cultural locations lead “to every such place, regardless of the city, looking the same,” As Nielsen stated, “The similarities are so predominant that one may rightfully claim that young people from larger cities of different countries have more in common with each other than they have with fellow countrymen from rural areas. The new NHL hockey arenas that were built across North America also reflect this sense of placelessness. This is due in part to the “homogenization which necessarily marks a space for sports,” as well as to a need to increase seating capacity and revenues, especially in Canadian cities, as the costs of professional sport continue skyward. It has been 25 years since much of the events above took place, and if anything, it has gotten worse, or better depending on your perspective.

The overall impact of these new monuments to the business of hockey is difficult to measure, but when these new arenas replaced the old ones, the rumblings from hockey fans across the country were loud and clear. For the most part, people found these new buildings cold and impersonal. Instead of symbolizing the culture of the sport and its fans, many felt that they symbolized corporate control and money. I do not mean to suggest that the old Montreal Forum, for example, was somehow immune to the commercialization of hockey; it wasn’t. But that process developed over 72 years, and when suddenly replaced with something that so overtly represented corporate avarice, people were bound to react. By comparison, Vancouver was only in the Coliseum for 25 years before moving to their new digs. Montreal’s new Molson Centre (as it was called when it first opened, now The Bell Center) had to not only replace the Montreal Forum as a hockey arena, it also had to replace it as a site of collective, cultural worship. For this to occur the memories and patina of the old arena had to be transferred to the new one. The big question is: Can this be done?

In Vancouver’s case, team officials were not even trying to answer this question. They viewed their spanking new arena as what they thought, could/would be, a legitimate chance at a fresh start. When GM Place (now called Rogers Arena) opened, everyone wanted to believe that things would be different in Vancouver, that an indifferent team would fare much better in this new venue because this was now home, You can’t blame the team or the fans for wanting to believe, but they simply forgot that it’s not the building that makes the team, it’s the other way around. The Vancouver Canucks have never won a Stanley Cup. Montreal, on the other hand, have won 24!

You can get an idea of just how much has changed over the years by looking at the language used to describe Vancouver’s new arena, GM Place, and that was even before they started digging. When plans for the new arena were unveiled in 1992, this passage appeared in an article entitled “Rink of Dreams,” (echoing, of course, that baseball movie “Field of Dreams,” based on the book “Shoeless Joe”), in The Vancouver Sun:

Yesterday, fathers were telling sons how they played hockey on frozen ponds wearing tube skates and Eaton’s catalogues stuffed into their socks to serve as shin pads. Kids never believed those olden-day yarns. Today, an architect is telling us that the new rink in downtown Vancouver, a slap shot away from B.C. Place Stadium, will have 60 luxury suites, fancy restaurants with a view of the ice, an office tower, retail outlets, a fitness club and replays on vast scoreboards. The kids believe. They have been to Disneyland…. Hockey marries the 21st century in the Chapel of Electronic Dreams.

In Vancouver, at least, childhood memories were being traded for a fresh start. Subsequent coverage by the Vancouver media focused almost entirely on the high-tech aspect of the new arena. Journalist Pete McMartin wrote that GM Place “isn’t built so much as wired.” It’s been built to be plugged in. It’s also a Yuppie dream and white collar to the core. General Motors Place is to the future of sports and entertainment as Microsoft is to communications.” Gm Place was seen as an “futuristic electronic village” more than an arena. It is interactive, wired for fiber optics, and has “smart seats.” It is the next generation sports facility. And if recent history has anything to say about all this, which it certainly does, it’s now 28 years later and all of the above appears rather quaint, and the reality is that the arena will soon have to have a major upgraded or be replaced!

There was a stadium and arena building boom in the late 70s and into the early 90s. According to a Vancouver Sun article in 1996, since 1985 professional teams have built, or are planning, 92 new buildings. This statistic, while substantial, especially considering buildings that were built since 1996, does not consider the many other sporting facilities going up around North America that had nothing to do with professional sport. This was particularly true of hockey arenas being built in Canada. For every GM Place and Molson Center there were countless regional and local facilities springing up around the country. One of the reasons for this was because so many of these hockey rinks were built to commemorate the end of World War II, and then another wave of building to commemorate Canada’s centennial (1967), and these buildings were starting to show their age. The most telling statistic to demonstrate the importance of hockey in Canada is the following, which shows the number of indoor hockey rinks in Canada, the United States, and Russia (2021): Canada, 2,860; United States 1,555; Russia 790.

The game of hockey went through a resurgence in the early 90s, despite the popular disillusionment with the business of the professional version. Minor, women’s and old-timer hockey leagues were all demanding more ice time and more arenas. These are the arenas where dreams and aspirations are born and nurtured. These are the arenas where player and fan alike are equal; there are no corporate boxes here, no “club seats” where you can have your designer hotdog delivered to your seat, no glitzy between-period entertainment. You go to these arenas either to play the game or to watch someone you know play the game – you go to be part of the cultural experience.

Mike Beamish of The Vancouver Sun (1996) wrote that “we live in an age when cities are compressing much of their creative instinct, culture and community into stadiums and arenas, yet GM Place doesn’t offer much [in the way] of spiritual significance beyond its purpose to entertain and make money.” The spiritual significance that Beamish alluded to is similar to the concept of topophilia, which in one sense is the antithesis to placelessness. Topophilia refers to the ties that unite humans and their material surroundings, especially the ties that combine emotion and place. This concept refers to both the “physical-spatial surroundings and to the more or less mysterious – and possibly quasi-religious – aspects of the experience. The “place” with which topophilia is basically concerned is characterized as authentic, carrying from time to time the stamp of the secular shrine.”

Hockey arenas, in this case NHL arenas, provide the physical space needed for a quasi-religious experience to be carried out The fans worship the players and are rewarded with the knowledge that they have taken part in a ritual that defines their own place within the culture. The arena is also the place “where the city and its inhabitants inherit themselves. Here, the city’s sense of history is expressed, not only through museum-like antiquity and the aura of the buildings, but also through the lived history prolonged by the sustained traditions and myths which are an integral part of culture.”

Arenas like the old Montreal Forum or Toronto’s old Maple Leaf Gardens have long provided Canadians a place to carry out these traditions and myths. They were, and in some way still, Canada’s secular shrines. These venerable buildings represented the outgoing culture of professional hockey, while the newer buildings like Gm Place – the “Chapel of Electronic Dreams” – and the new Molson Center represent the new culture. Professional hockey appears to be moving into less “sacred” buildings. Time, of course, will tell if these new buildings can replace the old ones, if indeed memories and patina are transferable. In the meantime, perhaps hockey fans will turn to their neighborhood arena for their spiritual fulfillment, arenas such as the one so eloquently described in this poem by Kelly Jo Burke:

there is

fluorescence

stale popcorn

wood scared by skate blades healed by falling beer

it’s so ugly and cold and

familiar

the guys

horning their lust and rage

offer smokes to the snow maidens

cold-eyed at seventeen

who smile hiding their teeth

and turn back to the game

the screams cut the Lutheran air

when everyone leaves

even the Zamboni man

when the unforgiving lights are finally down

and the ice is again virginal

skate out in the vaulting

dark

race and turn

like the great ones

the rafters reverberate with

your name

unassisted

the scoreboard shows

that Home has finally won.

Los Angeles 2023