The OHL Arena Guide - Barrie Arena, Barrie Colts

It couldn't last forever. Barrie Arena was a relic of a bygone age, a never-renovated building where most everything inside was wood, from the floors to the seats to the ceiling. The ancient arena was finally demolished in 2008 and replaced by a fire station, but I managed to make it to the rink for a couple of trips before it was razed.

Barrie Arena stood on a street corner in the old section of Barrie. It looked like many other arenas around the province with a round barrel roof and lots of aluminum siding. There was also a mural painted along the whole side of the building. Once you went inside, though, you realised that this place was different from any other building you've been to.

When we went to the Barrie Arena to visit, we walked in the front door and the place was absolutely rocking with crowd noise. What could be causing that noise? Try about a hundred parents at a kids' game. Barrie Arena is designed for sound, and the roar must have unbelievable with a full house. Structurally speaking, the arena was virtually falling apart. The wooden seats were all long wooden benches with backrests, painted dark green and bolted to wooden floorboards. The arena seemed to glow in the dim light. The score-clock was essentially non-existent. The seats ran down both sides of the building, and in one end was a warm room for kids, nursing mothers, and wusses.

The Arena's past history wasn't completely on display, but it was there. The Barrie Flyers' old Memorial Cup banners hung in one end, and some other memorabilia from Barrie's more recent minor hockey past was also here and there. Finally, in the arena office was the old Barrie Flyers' team portraits from the early 1950's, one of which featured an impossibly young-looking Don Cherry. I have no idea where the stuff has been moved to, but I would be interested in finding out.

Barrie Arena was home of the Barrie Flyers back in the 1950's, and was drafted back into OHL service in 1995 because of construction delays on the Molson Centre. The new arena finally opened on New Year's Eve, 1995, and that was it for the building's history in the OHL. Barrie Arena was never going to last forever, and the city bailed on the place when the maintenance bills grew too high. It's rubble now, but the memory will live on.