It's been 10 years since the Leafs deserted their namesake building, but the memories linger
By BILL LANKHOF, TORONTO SUN
Last Updated: 28th December 2008, 4:33am
In the shadows of the great city the once revered temple of hockey lingers like a discarded love that will not vanish into time.
It's facade bears the cracks and crevices that come with age. Its vitality has been sapped in the name of progress. Its glory days, like the blush of youth, are faded into misty memories.
It is 10 years since the Maple Leafs deserted Maple Leaf Gardens.
The Cashbox at Carlton St. sits empty, the ghosts of Barilko and Ballard, Bailey and Broda left to frolic in perpetuity with the background sounds of a city night and a midnight moon as their only spectator.
"What knocks me out even now when you walk around in there is the immensity of the building. It's wonderful and you can feel the old ghosts from the old Maple Leaf teams -- you know, the ones that used to win -- particularly now that it's empty," says David Crombie, a former Toronto mayor, instrumental in attempts to preserve at least part of the building as a heritage site.
"It's a hall of great memories."
And, a source of great controversy.
Numerous proposals have been suggested for the building in the past decade. Everything from turning it into a homeless shelter, to a velodrome to renovating it into a new home for the Hockey Hall of Fame. The latter would seem most logical except that it is already nicely located at Front and Yonge Sts. The closest it has come to a reincarnation was as a retail and entertainment outlet. Currently it is owned by the giant Weston Foods chain which recently scuttled plans to turn it into a Loblaw outlet that would've included a museum located in the old Doug Laurie sports store at Church and Carlton.
"That (a museum) is ready to go and those plans are retrievable at any moment," says Crombie. "But that was prefaced on a store going in there ... things have changed at Weston's, at Loblaw and in the world and they've been reassessing their intentions. I don't know if they've come to any conclusions."
Company executives did not return telephone or e-mail inquiries. But a public relations spokesperson for Weston said "the building is being well maintained, prior to any development commencing."
But they didn't say what century that "development" might commence.
There had been indications that the Gardens' structure might be a roadblock because the concrete seating area can't be removed since that is what holds up the walls. Then there is the sputtering economy which has made many corporations hold off on expansion. But the spokesperson indicated Weston hasn't entirely scrapped the idea of a food store.
"Loblaw intends to create a food store (format to be determined) but likely as a conventional ... store. At this time Loblaw is focused on improving the performance of its existing stores and therefore limiting new store development. When the time is right Loblaw will commence development."
And, so it remains -- the last of the Original Six NHL buildings -- standing alone like an aged aunt at a funeral. Desolate. The arena's facade still guards the domed, yellow-brick walled building that became as familiar to generations of Canadians as their own living rooms. It's as if the bus carrying Gordie or The Rocket from out of town could pull up any moment for another Saturday night extravaganza. One of the shrines of hockey, along with The Forum in Montreal, Detroit's Olympia and Chicago Stadium, it was home to the Maple Leafs from 1931-1999.
Built by Leafs managing director Conn Smythe in a nine-month period during 1931 at a cost of $1.5 million, it would become home to 11 Stanley Cup championship teams from 1932 to 1967.
"Just the construction was an incredible feat," says Crombie. "You can't get through an environmental assessment in nine months today. It was also quite progressive because there's no bad seat in the Gardens."
Where fans in contemporary stadiums in Chicago or Boston had to peer around pillars and concrete pylons, the Gardens "was the first stadium built without pillars," says Crombie. "It was a wonderful work of art."
It actually was more than a hockey arena. It's walls reverberated with the screams of girls swooning at the sight of John, Paul, George and Ringo, the beat of Elvis Presley doing Jailhouse Rock and it was home to Canada's 4-1 win in Game 2 of the 1972 Summit Series against the USSR.
"Most people think first of Maple Leaf Gardens because of the hockey. But then you remember it was actually a cultural cathedral," explains Crombie, hired by Weston to oversee inclusion of a museum in any plan to reincarnate the building. "Wrestling was there, boxing, six-day bicycle rides. They played Aida there; that's where Elvis left the building and they had the war bonds victory rally there in World War II, political conventions. For six or seven decades if something was important it happened at the Gardens."
It would not be until much later that we all learned of the seedier side of what lurked within those walls -- a tale of sex abuse, pedophilia and eventually suicide. That has some believing there's nothing wrong with the Gardens that can't be fixed with a couple hundred pounds of strategically placed dynamite.
Some within the community see garbage around the building and the street people who use its alcoves as a handy latrine. They speak of a building that looks almost as if it were vacated by some holocaust -- dishes and glasses left behind in a kitchen and record books collecting dust on office shelves, even the occasional dead rodent.
But others look at the same pile of bricks and they see a historical edifice, they see a part of their childhood slowly disintegrating, they see a love being lost.
"We walked in through the main doors and it's been all cleaned up; the floors, the walls. The original pictures aren't on the walls of the main floor but they've got old hockey photos. Actually it's a bit amazing in that they've turned the downstairs back into the old downstairs," says Scott Morrison, the former sports editor of the Toronto Sun, veteran sports writer, and now a regular contributor to Hockey Night In Canada.
"I don't know what the rest of the floors look like ... but while the boards are gone, you get a feeling that you could start playing again there tomorrow."
Along with the glass and arena boards, the seats in the lower part of the arena are gone, sold off to collectors. But with the lights dim and the floor painted the same colour as the seats were, it doesn't take much to imagine them still there. Harold Ballard's bunker remains, sitting silent in stark contrast to the bombast of its former occupant.
The place still stirs the imagination of what once was -- the press box where legends such as George Gross, Jim Proudfoot and Ol' Hunt once presided looks much the same as it always did. It's as though public relations man Stan Obodiac might yet appear once more to drop statistic sheets on press room tables holding the pre-game sandwich spread for writers, scouts and hangers-on.
Morrison returned to the Gardens recently to film a piece with Wendel Clark which was shown on CBC the night the Leafs raised his sweater into the rafters at the Leafs' new home in the Air Canada Centre.
"Actually, right from parking in the old Wood St. lot it was a little surreal, like going back in time. I mean, for 20 years I spent almost every day there. Walking in I still got a sort of tingle ... I remember the smell of the place, the hot dogs, the popcorn," says Morrison, "when you're walking on the floor you get a sense of how close the fans, especially in the blues, were to the ice surface."
The shell of the time clock still hangs over what used to be the playground of Mahovlich, Dick The Bruiser, Eddie (The Entertainer) Shack, the Toronto Tornados, and on more than one occasion when he escaped the grasp of a handler, Ballard's dog, Puck.
It all ended Feb. 13, 1999 when the Leafs played their last game at the Gardens, a 6-2 loss to Chicago. The final goal in MLG history was scored by Bob Probert. The building sat derelict for some time but since it was bought by Loblaw there have been some signs of renewed life. "Over the past several years, the building has been used for special events such as the One X One charity event or rented out for short periods," said a company spokesperson.
It has been used by film production companies to shoot movies, including the Russell Crowe film Cinderella Man. Some of the plumbing and other infrastructure has been modernized, allowing for some select public events. The Gardens was last open to the public on Oct. 4, 2008 as part of Toronto's Nuit Blanche contemporary art celebration.
This, and recent backtracking from turning it into a grocery store, has given hope to community activists such as John Sewell. The former Toronto mayor was a driving force behind Friends of Maple Leaf Gardens, a group dedicated to the preservation of the Gardens. It folded and shut down its website when city council approved plans for the Loblaws retail outlet.
"I'm happier about the Gardens now then I've been for a number of years because it looks like it will not be turned into a Loblaws. That holds out the opportunity that we can figure out a way to find some people who want to get hold of it and use it for ice purposes," says Sewell. "There are a number of people who'd like to use it. Women's hockey, the local community, Ryerson University. That would leave some room in the building to do other useful things."
But refitting the Gardens for any of those types of projects would take considerable money. Ryerson, which is interested in building an athletic and housing complex, has indicated it doesn't see the building as a financially viable alternative. The City of Toronto is already and always crying poor. So, no sugar daddy there.
"My hope is someone will come along. I wish the city would take a lead. It seems it doesn't have any interest at all, which," says Sewell, "is a real pity."
And, so it remains. An icon. A dinosaur. Loved. Yet forgotten. It sits in silence; the sports world's biggest tombstone.
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THE ORIGINAL SIX
The Olympia - Detroit
1927-1979
Capacity 16,700
Fate: Vacated & shuttered. Demolished 1987
Notable: Also known as the Old Red Barn. The U.S. National Guard's Olympia Armory stands on the site.
Chicago Stadium
1929-1994
Capacity 17,317
Fate: Demolished 1995
Notable: The centre of the Chicago Bulls' floor was moved into the trophy room of Michael Jordan's house.
Boston Garden
1928-1995
Capacity 14,448
Fate: Demolished 1997
Notable: The Naden mechanical overhead scoreboard is now hanging in the Boston Garden themed foodcourt of the Arsenal Mall in Watertown, Mass.
Madison Square
Garden III
1926-1968
Capacity 18,200
Fate: Shuttered, demolished over a number of years and turned into a parking lot. World Wide Plaza built on the site in 1989.
Notable: Originally named for a small park near its original Madison Ave. location. Today it is not located by a park or Madison Ave.
Montreal Forum
1926-1996
Capacity 17,959
Fate: Renovated into a downtown entertainment centre with shopping and theatres.
Notable: Parts of exterior preserved with marker reading "Forever Remembered."
Maple Leaf Gardens
1931-1999
Capacity 15,837
Fate: Undetermined.
Notable: When the Gardens opened Nov. 12, 1931 the best seats in the house could be had for $2.75 apiece.
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