The OHL Arena Guide - Galt Arena Gardens, Galt Black Hawks

The Galt Arena Gardens is the oldest continuously-operating hockey arena in the world, having been built throughout 1921 and opening in January 1922. There are older arenas in North America - Matthews Arena, the Eastern States Coliseum, and the Ohio State Fair Coliseum to name three - but Galt is the oldest to have operated continuously as a hockey rink since opening and to have had ice installed each and every winter.

It was designed as the main arena for the town of Galt, which was later amalgamated with nearby Hespeler and Preston to become the city of Cambridge. The Arena Gardens sits in a run-down area of town surrounded by tiny houses on tree-lined streets. From the outside the building is one of the most gorgeous arenas you'll ever lay eyes upon, with an intricate brown brick facade and wrought iron sign on the building's front overhang. The arena has a high barn-like roofline and heavy steel doors.

Galt Arena Gardens was heavily renovated in 1996-97. The original design of the arena was comparable to the old Windsor Arena, with a small main lobby and then a tiny concourse under the seats. Inside the bowl, the seats extended all the way to the back wall of the building, nine rows in total, which resulted in a seating capacity of 2,200, though by the mid-90's, modern fire code made many of those seats illegal to sell or use anyway. The 1997 renovation basically gutted the seating bowl and re-profiled it, so now there is a concourse running around the top of the seats and only five rows surrounding the ice. The old windows that used to open on to the concourse were all bricked over, and four additional exit stairways were constructed in each of the four corners, dramatically expanding the building's footprint. I am certain that Cambridge didn't need the extra thousand seats that must have been removed, but for fans of old building design it's definitely a bit of a shame that the bowl doesn't feel more than the thirty-odd years old that it is.

But there are still loads of cool old building touches throughout. There's a small main lobby with concessions and ticket windows, and directly above that in the concourse they've built an Alumni Lounge with tons of photos and memorabilia from the old rink's history. In the far end in two corners there are other artifacts, including an old wooden phone booth from the 1940's, old wooden slat seats that were removed during the 1997 renovation, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

There is a huge mural on one end of the building above the goal featuring Mr Hockey himself, Gordie Howe, who played briefly in Cambridge as a member of the 1944-45 Galt Red Wings. The next season Howe was up to the minor leagues in Omaha, and by 1946-47 he had embarked upon his career with the Detroit Red Wings. The ceiling is original wood with iron trusses and features windows stretching from one end of the rink to the other, which brings in a ton of natural light on gamedays.

I first set foot in the Arena Gardens back in the early days of this website, but in the late winter of 2025, with trips to the United States seeming like a bad idea, I finally made it down for a GOJHL game. The gameday experience is solid, with a decent atmosphere and terrific views of the ice. It's hard to appreciate the intimacy of the rink until you see it in action, but I was reminded of all the things I loved about Val-d'Or - similarly, it's a tiny bandbox of an arena where you feel totally on top of the action. And it gets cold in there, so don't forget to bundle up! With Matthews Arena in Boston closing at the end of the 2024-25 season, Galt will soon be the oldest arena in the world at which you can still buy a ticket and go watch a hockey game. It's worth seeing for yourself.