B
building babel
Guest
My ears actually hurt during that Who concert and I was deaf as a post for several hours afterwards.
Won't get fooled again.
Won't get fooled again.
Toronto Ryerson's Mattamy Athletics Centre + Loblaws at the Gardens | ?m | ?s | Ryerson University | Turner Fleischer
B
Bogtrotter
Guest
Yeh they were notorious for loud of course. I drove from Montreal to see them in 88 at the EX, their next but definitely not last farewell tour :rolleyes . The loudest band I saw was probably an English metal band in the 80's called Saxon, which I saw at the Montreal Spectrum. Terrible crap and my ears were ringing for two days.
edit: Never saw a show at MLG btw. I guess the acoustics were pretty good for an arena.
edit: Never saw a show at MLG btw. I guess the acoustics were pretty good for an arena.
B
building babel
Guest
My Gardens concert list consist of The Moody Blues, Jefferson Starship, Roxy Music ( or was it just la Ferry ? ) and The Who. And I saw Torville and Dean swishing around on the ice once.
A
andreapalladio
Guest
Endless loops of Duran Duran's video for The Reflex, filmed there in the early '80s, possibly with the bucket used for the cheapest special effect in history displayed alongside?
S
spmarshall
Guest
Maybe the OPP patch from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. According to local legend, it had to do with a certain Sgt. Pepper who was on security detail at the Gardens.
There's lots of non-hockey history of that building.
There's lots of non-hockey history of that building.
B
Bogtrotter
Guest
The Who also performed their 'last' concert there in 1982. Speaking of the Who, I wonder if there will be a section on Gordon Stuckless, John Paul Roby and Dennis Morin.
B
Bogtrotter
Guest
Montreal was my town growing up so most of my concert experience was at that other hockey shrine the Montreal Forum. Worst concert ever was Aerosmith- Steve Tyler was so drunk he fell off the stage. Best experience was probably Dire Straits, excellent show and we met the band members. Stevie Ray Vaughn was memorable as well as he was killed not long after. My last Forum experience was a bad movie.
Unfortunately my only Garden experience was a hockey game during the Darryl Sittler era. Seems like my next experience will be buying tomatoes and riveeta crackers.
Unfortunately my only Garden experience was a hockey game during the Darryl Sittler era. Seems like my next experience will be buying tomatoes and riveeta crackers.
B
building babel
Guest
Those long, trough-like "no peeking please" urinals - if they still exist - would be ideal for attractive displays of fresh fruits and vegetables when it becomes a Loblaws.
B
Bogtrotter
Guest
I think there has been a lot of 'peeking' in that building- sadly.
A
adma
Guest
Wuss. Wiener. Dork. And doubly so if it's the Mickey Thomas-era Starship...
T
tudararms
Guest
I would be satisfied as long as the walls and roofline of MLG were preserved. For me, a condo with extensive ground level retail would probably have been the best usage for the building. The memorabilia from the Gardens, along with Foster's gondola (if it still exists) and panels of boards or seats etc. would make perfect exhibits for the Museum of Toronto....wait a sec', there is no museum for Toronto! Dang!!
W
wyliepoon
Guest
The Star
Link to article
A modest proposal: Maple Leaf Museum
asks If London can turn a power station into the Tate Modern, why can't we transform a hockey shrine? John Lorinc
Feb 04, 2007 04:30 AM
An open letter to David Crombie
Dear David,
In these pages last week, you ruminated about your long search for a Toronto museum, a journey that has led you to St. Lawrence Hall, on King St. E. Here's my unsolicited advice: shift your gaze several blocks north, to a hulking, vacant building that sits squarely in the middle of this city's emotional core.
Maple Leaf Gardens.
As president of the Canadian Urban Institute, you've been involved in developing a heritage plan for the Gardens as Loblaw, its current owner, attempts to transform the house that Conn Smythe built into yet another big box store.
It's time we begin thinking very differently about what is inarguably one of Toronto's most culturally significant structures. And you can kick-start this discussion.
Let me lay out the case for the Gardens.
By next year, the last of the city's major cultural building projects will have been completed, providing both the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario with spacious new wings and galleries.
But even after these expansions, both institutions will have far more in their collections than they can display. This mismatch will only grow in coming years.
A decade from now, the Gehry and Libeskind additions will be familiar features of our architectural landscape, and both the AGO and the ROM will be pondering the problem of how to provide new and innovatively designed space to satisfy the cultural cravings of an ambitious global city.
There's little doubt Toronto needs a museum to tell the story of its historic continuum, as well as its multicultural present. But let's not forget about the future. In recent years, the city's top private collectors have amassed vast troves of contemporary art but have no place to display the bulk of this work.
Toronto also has an internationally recognized fine-art photography scene that is constantly struggling to show its face. Other visual-art aficionados point to the mounting interest in the contemporary aboriginal art being produced in Canada and around the world.
Rather than start from scratch on an isolated waterfront site (as has been proposed for the city's Humanitas scheme) or in the cramped salons of St. Lawrence Hall, we should first leverage our existing heritage assets, as is being done with the Wychwood Car Barns.
And instead of saddling a cash-strapped municipality with a $200 million capital project, we should be talking to the boards of the ROM or the AGO about a partnership that would secure the Gardens as an annex for future expansion. After all, these institutions already have the administrative and curatorial infrastructure, as well as the fundraising savvy.
It's the brand of off-site expansion that's been undertaken in many other great cities as their leading cultural institutions outgrow their digs.
The most potent example is London's Tate Modern, which opened in 2000 in the monumental Bankside Power Station, on the south shore of the Thames. Built in 1947 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and decommissioned in 1981, the station was acquired by the Tate, whose trustees hired architects Herzog & de Meuron to transform it into a gallery for modern art. The Tate Modern, which offers free admission to many of its exhibits, has become London's largest single tourist draw.
The Tate Modern's power lies in not only its collection, but with the fascinating restoration of a mammoth, utilitarian structure that was never intended to be a museum. Some of the turbines have been retained, as has the internal generating hall. This wasn't a work of "starchitecture" so much as a supremely imaginative example of how a city can preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of its industrial past.
We could do the same with the Gardens – a 76-year-old barn redolent of the gritty, working-class ethic that characterized early 20th-century Toronto. And though we mustn't overlook the victims of the abuse scandal during the Harold Ballard years, the Gardens had an electrifying impact on hundreds of thousands of kids who went there to see their first NHL match. I can vividly remember the purely aesthetic experience of first setting foot in that cathedral-like space, with its brilliant collage of colours and noises.
To me, it's also revealing that the late media mogul Ken Thomson was both a major fine-art collector and a dedicated hockey fan who frequented the Gardens. The building is evidently a place that has resonated very broadly across our city's culture.
Quite apart from the collective civic emotion invested in the space, the Gardens' distinctive heritage features – its cascading yellow brickwork, the iconic dome and the interior lattice work that supports it, and the buffed self-assurance of the letters that adorn the Carlton St. entrance – represent the raw materials of what could become an internationally recognized symbol of innovative heritage restoration.
As far as I know, no other city has tried to transform an aging sports stadium into a museum. As was the case with the Boston Garden, most cities just knocked them down to make way for arenas with better seats and cushier boxes.
Toronto, at least, had the wisdom not to demolish the Gardens when its ownership passed from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to George Weston Ltd. for an undisclosed sum. Over objections from activists, city council in 2004 approved plans to renovate the arena into a supermarket and liquor store. "Adaptive re-use" it was called.
Ever since, Loblaw, a Weston subsidiary, has been telling shoppers and investors that the new store will be opening imminently, but each deadline has come and gone with no evidence of construction activity.
It's not hard to see why: the company is battling fierce competition from Wal-Mart and other chains, and has seen its share price and profits drop sharply, culminating last month in the announcement it would cut 800-1,000 employees.
When the supermarket chain bought the Gardens, many critics bemoaned its fate. But I'd argue that the Weston family's ownership of Toronto's hockey shrine should be seen as potentially encouraging news for Toronto's heritage and cultural advocates.
The Westons have a long track record as exemplary cultural patrons, supporting the growth plans of local institutions, including the Ontario Science Centre, the Don Valley Brickworks naturalization, and the ROM Crystal (Hilary Weston chaired the fundraising campaign).
Internationally, the family's U.K. foundation donated £20 million to the stunning Millennium restoration of the British Museum, by Norman Foster, as well as many other cultural venues.
With Loblaw's current market challenges, the financial case for refurbishing the Gardens couldn't be terribly attractive, especially given its close proximity to two rival supermarkets that have opened within a few blocks of the arena in recent years.
So perhaps the time has come for someone to approach the Westons about envisioning an alternate future for this Toronto landmark, one that dovetails with their own philanthropic interests in museums, culture and education.
David, you have said for years that Toronto has become a prisoner of its dedication to incrementalism – a big city unwilling to make the big gesture. Maybe we can begin to change our civic culture by seizing the opportunity to re-imagine Maple Leaf Gardens by transforming it into an annex of either the ROM or the AGO, with a mandate to tell Toronto's stories and a commitment to a bold, unique heritage restoration.
The Westons have demonstrated their cultural vision before. Let's find a way of asking them to show it again.
Yours, etc.
John Lorinc is the author of
"The New City: How the Crisis
in Canada's Urban Centres is
Re-Shaping the Nation" (Penguin).
Link to article
A modest proposal: Maple Leaf Museum
asks If London can turn a power station into the Tate Modern, why can't we transform a hockey shrine? John Lorinc
Feb 04, 2007 04:30 AM
An open letter to David Crombie
Dear David,
In these pages last week, you ruminated about your long search for a Toronto museum, a journey that has led you to St. Lawrence Hall, on King St. E. Here's my unsolicited advice: shift your gaze several blocks north, to a hulking, vacant building that sits squarely in the middle of this city's emotional core.
Maple Leaf Gardens.
As president of the Canadian Urban Institute, you've been involved in developing a heritage plan for the Gardens as Loblaw, its current owner, attempts to transform the house that Conn Smythe built into yet another big box store.
It's time we begin thinking very differently about what is inarguably one of Toronto's most culturally significant structures. And you can kick-start this discussion.
Let me lay out the case for the Gardens.
By next year, the last of the city's major cultural building projects will have been completed, providing both the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario with spacious new wings and galleries.
But even after these expansions, both institutions will have far more in their collections than they can display. This mismatch will only grow in coming years.
A decade from now, the Gehry and Libeskind additions will be familiar features of our architectural landscape, and both the AGO and the ROM will be pondering the problem of how to provide new and innovatively designed space to satisfy the cultural cravings of an ambitious global city.
There's little doubt Toronto needs a museum to tell the story of its historic continuum, as well as its multicultural present. But let's not forget about the future. In recent years, the city's top private collectors have amassed vast troves of contemporary art but have no place to display the bulk of this work.
Toronto also has an internationally recognized fine-art photography scene that is constantly struggling to show its face. Other visual-art aficionados point to the mounting interest in the contemporary aboriginal art being produced in Canada and around the world.
Rather than start from scratch on an isolated waterfront site (as has been proposed for the city's Humanitas scheme) or in the cramped salons of St. Lawrence Hall, we should first leverage our existing heritage assets, as is being done with the Wychwood Car Barns.
And instead of saddling a cash-strapped municipality with a $200 million capital project, we should be talking to the boards of the ROM or the AGO about a partnership that would secure the Gardens as an annex for future expansion. After all, these institutions already have the administrative and curatorial infrastructure, as well as the fundraising savvy.
It's the brand of off-site expansion that's been undertaken in many other great cities as their leading cultural institutions outgrow their digs.
The most potent example is London's Tate Modern, which opened in 2000 in the monumental Bankside Power Station, on the south shore of the Thames. Built in 1947 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and decommissioned in 1981, the station was acquired by the Tate, whose trustees hired architects Herzog & de Meuron to transform it into a gallery for modern art. The Tate Modern, which offers free admission to many of its exhibits, has become London's largest single tourist draw.
The Tate Modern's power lies in not only its collection, but with the fascinating restoration of a mammoth, utilitarian structure that was never intended to be a museum. Some of the turbines have been retained, as has the internal generating hall. This wasn't a work of "starchitecture" so much as a supremely imaginative example of how a city can preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of its industrial past.
We could do the same with the Gardens – a 76-year-old barn redolent of the gritty, working-class ethic that characterized early 20th-century Toronto. And though we mustn't overlook the victims of the abuse scandal during the Harold Ballard years, the Gardens had an electrifying impact on hundreds of thousands of kids who went there to see their first NHL match. I can vividly remember the purely aesthetic experience of first setting foot in that cathedral-like space, with its brilliant collage of colours and noises.
To me, it's also revealing that the late media mogul Ken Thomson was both a major fine-art collector and a dedicated hockey fan who frequented the Gardens. The building is evidently a place that has resonated very broadly across our city's culture.
Quite apart from the collective civic emotion invested in the space, the Gardens' distinctive heritage features – its cascading yellow brickwork, the iconic dome and the interior lattice work that supports it, and the buffed self-assurance of the letters that adorn the Carlton St. entrance – represent the raw materials of what could become an internationally recognized symbol of innovative heritage restoration.
As far as I know, no other city has tried to transform an aging sports stadium into a museum. As was the case with the Boston Garden, most cities just knocked them down to make way for arenas with better seats and cushier boxes.
Toronto, at least, had the wisdom not to demolish the Gardens when its ownership passed from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to George Weston Ltd. for an undisclosed sum. Over objections from activists, city council in 2004 approved plans to renovate the arena into a supermarket and liquor store. "Adaptive re-use" it was called.
Ever since, Loblaw, a Weston subsidiary, has been telling shoppers and investors that the new store will be opening imminently, but each deadline has come and gone with no evidence of construction activity.
It's not hard to see why: the company is battling fierce competition from Wal-Mart and other chains, and has seen its share price and profits drop sharply, culminating last month in the announcement it would cut 800-1,000 employees.
When the supermarket chain bought the Gardens, many critics bemoaned its fate. But I'd argue that the Weston family's ownership of Toronto's hockey shrine should be seen as potentially encouraging news for Toronto's heritage and cultural advocates.
The Westons have a long track record as exemplary cultural patrons, supporting the growth plans of local institutions, including the Ontario Science Centre, the Don Valley Brickworks naturalization, and the ROM Crystal (Hilary Weston chaired the fundraising campaign).
Internationally, the family's U.K. foundation donated £20 million to the stunning Millennium restoration of the British Museum, by Norman Foster, as well as many other cultural venues.
With Loblaw's current market challenges, the financial case for refurbishing the Gardens couldn't be terribly attractive, especially given its close proximity to two rival supermarkets that have opened within a few blocks of the arena in recent years.
So perhaps the time has come for someone to approach the Westons about envisioning an alternate future for this Toronto landmark, one that dovetails with their own philanthropic interests in museums, culture and education.
David, you have said for years that Toronto has become a prisoner of its dedication to incrementalism – a big city unwilling to make the big gesture. Maybe we can begin to change our civic culture by seizing the opportunity to re-imagine Maple Leaf Gardens by transforming it into an annex of either the ROM or the AGO, with a mandate to tell Toronto's stories and a commitment to a bold, unique heritage restoration.
The Westons have demonstrated their cultural vision before. Let's find a way of asking them to show it again.
Yours, etc.
John Lorinc is the author of
"The New City: How the Crisis
in Canada's Urban Centres is
Re-Shaping the Nation" (Penguin).
T
tudararms
Guest
Interesting. I like the idea, though I don't see the mandate of a possible museum of Toronto being quite the same as those of the ROM and the AGO. Still, unquestionably the expertise would be on hand to make this museum truly innovative and interesting.
Aside from the civic necessity of this type of an institution there is simply a great story to be told here.
Aside from the civic necessity of this type of an institution there is simply a great story to be told here.
D
Darkstar416
Guest
Nice letter by Lorinc. It's an issue I'm torn on personally (much like SPMarshall).
BTW, my MLG concerts are few, but they include: The Boredoms, Nirvana, Blind Melon, Lenny Kravitz, Nine Inch Nails, Spiritualized & Radiohead.
BTW, my MLG concerts are few, but they include: The Boredoms, Nirvana, Blind Melon, Lenny Kravitz, Nine Inch Nails, Spiritualized & Radiohead.
S
spmarshall
Guest
I was lucky to get a very personal tour of MLG back in 1993-1994, in the Pat Burns/Doug Gilmour era.
I remember being very disappointed by the little cubby hole where they filmed Coach's Corner - I could not believe they could film that in such a dank, small space. But we did get to see the bowels of the arena and meet about 2/3 the players by the time. Jamie Macoun gave the tour.
I also saw a game back in 1996 just after the infamous 1996 Canada Cup when Brett Hull, playing for the Blues, was roundly booed off the ice. Fun times.
Most of the concerts I saw around that time were at Massey Hall, Exhibition Stadium or Skydome, don't remember any from MLG.
I remember being very disappointed by the little cubby hole where they filmed Coach's Corner - I could not believe they could film that in such a dank, small space. But we did get to see the bowels of the arena and meet about 2/3 the players by the time. Jamie Macoun gave the tour.
I also saw a game back in 1996 just after the infamous 1996 Canada Cup when Brett Hull, playing for the Blues, was roundly booed off the ice. Fun times.
Most of the concerts I saw around that time were at Massey Hall, Exhibition Stadium or Skydome, don't remember any from MLG.