The One that Got Away

For 75 years, Si Miller Arena was the home of hockey in Cornwall, Ont. We got there right before the wrecking ball.

BY SHANNON PROUDFOOT | PHOTOGRAPHY BY FINN O’HARA

When the cooling system in Cornwall’s Si Miller Community Arena was shut down for the last time, it took a week for the ice to melt away, leaving the ghosts of bluelines, faceoff circles and goal creases in chalky pigment on the concrete. When the demolition equipment moved in at the beginning of October, the smell of sweat had faded. And by the end of November, all that remained of the 75-year-old arena was an empty 14px.

Canada’s hockey history lives in its old barns, their architectural oddities and local legends telling the story of the game as it once was. But, sadly, this is also a country in which Maple Leaf Gardens just reopened its doors as a grocery store and the Montreal Forum has morphed into a movie theatre. In big cities and small towns, aging shrines are endangered, or worse, disappearing; communities like Belleville and Halifax fight to save their rinks, while others, like Cornwall, have lost the battle.

From centre ice, ‘The Si’ looked like an obsessively organized box of crayons: the massive arched roof was painted bright yellow and the seat backs were narrow boards lined up like picket-fence slats, with different sections painted blue, red and yellow. All those winters of snow had bowed the thick steel roof beams and there were deep trenches worn into the concrete at one end of the rink where the Zamboni sat.

In September, a few weeks before demolition begins, André Jodoin and Mark Miller lean against the boards, reminiscing about legendary games and the time someone went into the corner and came out with part of his ear still attached to one of the posts. The men, both 54, grew up side by side in this rink, usually with Miller at centre and Jodoin at right wing in their minor hockey days. “Anybody who ever watched a game here when it was a full house—you could feel the game,” says Jodoin. The rink’s official capacity was around 1,500, but he swears they packed in twice that number in the early 1970s, when the Cornwall Royals were the only Ontario squad in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

Built in 1936 and originally christened the Cornwall Community Arena, the rink was renamed by the city to honour Miller’s father when he retired as the long-time director of parks and recreation in 1994. Jodoin worked for 30 years as a maintenance worker and ice maker at the arena and Miller, working as a skilled labourer for the city, often joined him there. Miller points to a gap in Section C where his parents’ seats were recently rescued from demolition to be enshrined at the gleaming new recreation centre across town. “I grew up in this place,” he says, eyes filling with tears. “I have a hard enough time when I drive by here and see it boarded up.”

Back in the 1970s, when ‘The Si’ roared with standing-room-only crowds, the north wall sprouted a thick fur of frost inside on really cold nights, and the first row of seats was close enough to the ice to lend credibility to the tale that before the glass was added, an angry fan once dumped a cup of coffee on a referee. The dressing rooms were basically caves dug out a half-storey below ice level. A small door at the back of each one offered plumbing access and a glimpse of the dark, raw earth below the arena floor—the perfect makeshift beer fridge, when that sort of thing was allowed.

And Cornwall’s old barn had its brushes with hockey greatness. Hall of Fame goalie Billy Smith was between the pipes for the Royals in 1969, and Guy Lafleur played there when the Quebec Remparts came to town in the same era. In 1942, the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins played a pre-season game in which a 21-year-old Maurice Richard notched his first NHL assist and goal. The following pre-season, Richard was sitting in a Cornwall dressing room when his coach told him he’d just become a father; Richard swapped the No. 15 jersey he had been wearing for the famous No. 9 in honour of his nine-pound daughter.

Last April, Cornwall held a wake for ‘The Si’ with one last public skate; locals scrawled farewell messages on the cinderblocks and pilfered small items as souvenirs. By the time Jodoin and Miller wander through the arena on a warm fall day, the spiderwebs have taken over. “Once they said that was it, it was time for me to move on,” says Jodoin, who changed jobs when they closed ‘The Si’ because he couldn’t bear to work in another rink. He heads for the Zamboni entrance and begins shutting off the lights, but Miller lingers near one of the goal creases, running a hand over the glass and peering silently into the rafters. Finally, he trudges across the powdery remains of the ice to join Jodoin, who thumbs a button to close the big garage door. For a moment, nothing happens, then the door grinds into motion and the two men walk out of their arena for the last time.