The end is nigh for the building once known as Northlands Coliseum

EDMONTON — Spruce trees crawl up the sides of the old Northlands Coliseum, like weeds obscuring an old, abandoned merry-go-round. 

Outside, the sidewalks are cracked and the doors locked with long lost keys. A discoloured base is all that’s left of where the statue of Wayne Gretzky once stood, and with each passing winter, the old place we once called The Coliseum grows another year wearier. Another year closer to the inevitable. 

Inside, pigeons flutter from rail to ledge. And that thing you saw fly past all herky jerky? That’s probably a bat. 

Step inside the rink that the team anointed as the greatest ever to play the game entertained its fans. A prairie cathedral where they contested Briers, World Figure skating Championships, held Canada Cups and Stanley Cups, and from 1974 to 2017 hosted nearly every act worth hosting, from ABBA to ZZ Top. 

Back in the day, they would haul five tons of dirt inside to host the rodeo. Then, when it was over and the hockey team returned to play, they would haul four tons out — the rest finding a home among the speakers, banners and rafters above. 

Northlands Coliseum. Edmonton Coliseum, Skyreach Centre, Rexall Place ... 

Call it whatever you want, today it belongs to the mice. Varmints who haven’t had a fresh kernel of popcorn to nibble on since she hosted her final gig: The Canadian Finals Rodeo, in November 2017. 

In December, Edmonton’s City Council finalized a schedule for the demolition of the old Coliseum, planning to complete the demo in 2025. So, we went back for one last look, and we’ll bring you along, through abandoned hallways to dressing rooms that saw every great player from Howe to The Hip, from Plante to Pavarotti. 

Those shell casings on the floor? That’s from the Edmonton Police Service tactical squad, which was training in here for a while. 

The old scoreboard? Long since recycled, the way everything in here will have to be before the exterior walls come down. 

Every TV and internet cable has to come out before the demo. Every electrical line. All the wood. All the ceramics — every sink, toilet and urinal. Every light fixture, until all that is left is a concrete shell. 

There is asbestos inside the concrete walls, and lead-based paint everywhere. All the steel — those iconic girders, the press halo and accompanying stairwells — has to come out. 

By far the easiest part of this $35-million demolition will be to swing the wrecking ball at an empty concrete shell. 

“It’s a very significant-sized building that sits next to an LRT (Edmonton’s subway system) line and a major transportation corridor (Wayne Gretzky Drive),” said Pascale Ladouceur, branch manager of infrastructure, planning and design for the City of Edmonton. “Add on all of these complexities, and you’re looking at a big price tag. And, on top of this, the building sits on 600-plus piles. We’ll have to do something (with those) to let redevelopment of the land become possible.” 

Squint through the dust and dilapidation, and you can still see a place where many of an Edmonton kid’s top 10 memories occurred. David Lee Roth doing a spread eagle off a stack of amps, Meadowlark Lemon pouring a bucket of confetti on some courtside fans, or Bill Barber’s futile dive as Gretzky scored his 50th into an empty net in Game 39. 

There’s the old visitors' stick bench, from back in the day when players would file, cut and curve their wooden sticks with a blowtorch. With a cigarette between his fingers and another behind his ear, “Planet” Al Iafrate would hop up on that bench, light a smoke with the torch, and give a young reporter 20 minutes of gold. 

Remember the night Patrik Stefan over-skated that puck and missed a sure empty-net goal? 

Today, a city truck is getting washed on the spot where Ales Hemsky scored the ensuing goal, and a massive trailer inhabits the wing where Ryan Smyth took the pass from Jarret Stoll before feeding Hemsky. 

One night on the local station ITV, broadcaster Darren Dutchyshen described how Dave Brown started his lawn mower here at big Jim Kyte’s expense. Now, the only fight left is to thwart the weekly break-in attempts that have a security guard making his rounds twice a day, looking for signs of life beyond bird, bat or beast. 

There was, when Rogers Place opened downtown, an initial surge of ideas to re-purpose a building that opened its doors to host a World Hockey Association game between the Oilers and the Cleveland Crusaders on Nov. 10, 1974. 

From condo to a giant farmers market, nothing quite took root. The folks from the mega-church decided that the financials didn’t have a prayer, while plans for an aquarium simply did not hold water. 

“Cost to transform,” Ladouceur said. “You can’t just come in, turn on the lights and start operating. You have to make modifications to the safety systems, the electrical systems, the mechanical systems. ... You would have to invest millions of dollars to turn it into to something that is occupiable and operational.” 

Hockey Canada went the furthest down that road with a multi-rink facility that would include a hockey academy, in partnership with the Oilers. But, alas, like a Todd Marchant breakaway, it fizzled out as the goal line neared. 

“Every time, purpose-built is cheaper than the transformation of this space,” Ladouceur said. 

Two years from now, give or take, this will be an empty piece of land. We’ll drive past, and we’ll tell our kids about all the fun we had there, all the things we saw. 

And for people like me, who were crafting our game stories long after the fans had gone home, we will — as Jackson Browne once sang — hear the sounds of slamming doors and folding chairs. 

Browne played the Edmonton Folk Fest, our Jubilee Auditorium and Rogers Place, but somehow he never rocked the old barn on 118^th Ave. Which is too bad. 

Like so many others, it would have been a hell of a show.