Advertisement 1

CZECH POINTS: Yardmen Arena history can never be forgotten

Article content

Earlier this season, the AHL’s Belleville Senators changed the name of Yardmen Arena to CAA Arena.
As part of a sweetheart deal the Ottawa Senators signed with the city to shift their top farm club from Binghamton, NY, to The Friendly City prior to the 2017-18 AHL campaign, the B-Sens were awarded naming rights to the Cannifton Road coliseum. So, CAA Arena it is.
It’s been more than 40 years since the Yard Barn, as it is still affectionately called in this corner, first swung open its doors and soon became home to the then Tier II Belleville Bulls. The club would advance to a Centennial Cup (now RBC Cup) national Jr. A final in Halifax before moving up a competitive notch to join the OHL in 1981.
At first, Belleville’s brand new recreation complex was simply called the Quinte Sports Centre. Parts of that name still exist today, as an umbrella title for a facility that now includes the former Yardmen Arena, Wally Dever Arena, two minor hockey pads, a pool, indoor track, gym, fitness centre, cafeteria, pro shop, city recreation department offices and function rooms.
The Belleville Yardmen Benefit Fund (BYBF) members who helped get the building off the ground back in the late 1970s would be pleased with what’s going on inside the facility today. Original plans had called for a pool and indoor track; heck, even an athletic track and field complex was to be located out back where cars now park between the current complex and St. Theresa Secondary School.
When the CN workers created the BYBF raffle to pay for the construction of the proposed Sports Centre, the goal was to include all of the bells and whistles in the original plans. BYBF lottery tickets were sold across Canada and a lot of money was raised. During a 1987 interview with former Intelligencer reporter/editor and current city councillor, Chris Malette, former benefit fund co-ordinator, Jack Lundberg, said the BYBF depended on a vast network of community-minded individuals that included co-workers, spouses, family members and friends.
“We literally had hundreds and hundreds of volunteers,” said Lundberg. “Pretty well everybody who had anything to do with the railroad in this town had a hand in that fundraising drive. We were all darn proud of it too.”
By 1974, an incredible $3 million had already been raised through the efforts of the local CN yardmen and their deep team of supporters. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, not enough cash was collected to realize the original concept of the multi-faceted Sports Centre.
Soon after, an announcement by the province “issued the death knell for the benefit fund,” wrote the late Tom Gavey in The Intelligencer in 1996. When the province launched the Wintario lottery system, wrote Gavey, “it cut off local funds needed to construct more than an arena.”
So the ambitious plans for the QSC were altered. The rink was indeed built with an Olympic-sized ice pad, as per the original blueprints, but seating was scaled down to less than 4,000 and other items — such as the pool, gymnasium, indoor track and racket sport courts — were scrapped. Wintario had matched the cost of building the centre, half of about a $6 million sum. Speaking to The Intelligencer in 2002, former BYBF president Lorne Foley wondered, ‘what if?’
“If the government hadn’t stopped us, we would’ve had a swimming pool, recreation centre, etc.,” said Foley. “We had to spend the money to build what we could. We had to cut down our plans.”
Still, the CN yardmen and an overwhelming number of Quinte region sports supporters were thrilled with the bang they got for their bucks. For several years — with downtown Memorial Arena and the Dick Ellis Rink still operating, and with indoor pools at the YMCA and Sir James Whitney School — the scaled-down Sports Centre carried on and became the place to be on Wednesday and Saturday nights when the Bulls hosted hated rivals like the Ottawa 67’s, Kingston Canadians (later Raiders and Frontenacs), Oshawa Generals and Peterborough Petes.
The QSC quickly became known throughout the OHL for its loud, boisterous and fiercely loyal Bulls fans. Yardmen Arena was a tough place to steal a point on the road. Diehard Bulls backers even won a banner (wonder where it is now?) from Global TV for being voted Best Fans during one particular season of live OHL broadcasts. (Yes, unlike today, you were allowed to bring noisemakers into the rink, including horns and — later — cowbells too.)
The Bulls proved successful on the ice with a lengthy playoff streak and franchise-first (and only) OHL championship in 1999. But there was a constant conversation between Bulls majority owner, Dr. Bob Vaughan, and various city councils regarding enlargement of the QSC seating capacity and the addition of private suites and club sections. The cost of operating an OHL team was rising steadily and other towns were either erecting new fan-friendly arenas or upgrading their existing rinks with major renovations. When Vaughan sold the franchise to wealthy Uxbridge businessman Gord Simmonds in 2004, those discussions with council continued unabated.
The city eventually made plans to address the Sports Centre, and in particular Yardmen Arena (the actual announcement that the ice pad would be officially called Yardmen Arena took place in 1996), but ran out of time while Simmonds ran out of patience. He sold the Bulls to Hamilton area businessman Michael Andlauer in 2015 and the club was gone after 34 years on Cannifton Road.
When the perhaps long overdue Yardmen Arena signage was officially unveiled in 2001, Doug Moses, then the city’s director of recreation, praised the efforts of the BYBF, many of whose members had since died.
“The replacement value for this facility today would be about $23 million,” Moses told former Intelligencer reporter Derek Baldwin, for a story that appeared in the Aug. 30, 2001 edition of the paper. “You realize how much the city owes to the yardmen who made the building possible through their raffle sales.”
The city still owes a lot to those CN yardmen, their supporters and the BYBF. Perhaps too much to even attach a price tag.
But today it seems everything is for sale. Even tradition.

Article content
Advertisement 2
Advertisement
Article content
Article content
Comments
You must be logged in to join the discussion or read more comments.
Join the Conversation

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

Latest National Stories
    News Near Belleville
      This Week in Flyers