The National Post - Canada - Eyewitness

Diehard fans fight to save Maple Leaf Gardens: Public forum tonight to discuss future of hockey shrine by Peter Kuitenbrouwer

Not so long ago, all Toronto --heck, much of Canada -- would turn its gaze to Maple Leaf Gardens during the hockey playoffs, but these days, only Renee Zellwegger and Russell Crowe get to go into the place -- to shoot a Ron Howard boxing movie, Cinderella Man.

The rest of the city gets the locked door, the papered-over windows, the bare flagpole. It looks forlorn: This 1931 Art Deco masterpiece, home to hockey legends, concerts by the Beatles and Elvis, and speeches by Trudeau and Churchill, deserves better.

A group of locals who care about history and architecture has had enough of this neglect. Calling itself Friends of Maple Leaf Gardens, the group tonight brings Senator Frank Mahovlich, the hockey legend, and Phyllis Lambert, the architecture visionary, to a free public forum at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, on Front Street, on the future of Maple Leaf Gardens.

"It must remain as a hockey arena," says John Martins-Mantiega, founder and director of Toronto's Dominion Modern museum, and founder of the Friends. "I'm not interested in having Cirque du Soleil in here. I'm not interested in Loblaws. I'm not interested in defacing or defiling this building."

The Leafs won 11 Stanley Cups at Maple Leaf Gardens. Senator Mahovlich helped them win the last four. Since leaving the place, the owners have tried to sell it, but with the sacrilegious -- one might say -- stipulation that any new owner is forbidden from reviving the place as a hockey rink. So far, many negotiations have fallen through.

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Inc., which moved the Leafs to the Air Canada Centre in 1999, declined to attend tonight's forum, and Bob Hunter, executive vice-president, says he finds it a pointless exercise.

"In the past five years I've listened to 20 proposals for the Gardens," he says. "Unfortunately, 18 had no funding. What we care about the Gardens is retaining the facade." He says he is in active negotiations right now to sell the place, but he won't say with whom.

Over lunch at the Golden Griddle yesterday, in a window that looks out over the Gardens, Mr. Martins-Mantiega talked about his special attachment to the hockey shrine, where he got his first job, in 1975, as a busboy in the Hot Stove Lounge. He was 14.

"The girls wore these blue uniforms with short short skirts and they had these white go-go boots and they were just, like, beautiful," he says. "They were like pros. It was my first introduction to horseradish." He worked at the Gardens for five years, cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping the stands, and he remembers Harold Ballard, the former owner, glaring down at him, with arms folded, watching the work.

" I was rather shocked in 1999 when hockey fans were so willing to leave it and walk away," he says. "The city runs on money. It's all about the new. It's all about shopping and consumerism. To me, this is one of the most important buildings in Canada. If we say that hockey is in our blood, then let's prove it and save this building."

He dismisses the city's preservationists: "They saved Old City Hall and then they ran to Cabbagetown and the Annex and they gutted and sandblasted all those Victorian houses and they just forgot -- hey, there's a downtown here!"

The guy at the next table, eating an omelette with filthy hands, work socks poking from his boots, stops eating his omelette and interrupts. Fred Keegan is his name; he's all for saving the Gardens. He's just come from placing rebar on the Radio City condos, a project that preserves a heritage school on Jarvis Street.

"The favourite time of my life was watching Dave Keon and Ron Ellis win the Cup," Mr. Keegan says, eyes glittering under his ball cap. "I was only five years old. The last time I was in there was Alice Cooper's Pain and Pleasure tour in 1987. Personally, I think keep the facade."

Mr. Martins-Mantiega pivots. "We can't have an entire city of facades," he says. "It doesn't mean anything. It's like a movie set."

One hopes the gravitas lent to the cause by Ms. Lambert can help. The daughter of Seagram's founder Sam Bronfman, Ms. Lambert studied under Mies van der Rohe and convinced her old man to hire van der Rohe to build the great Seagram's building in New York. In 1979 in Montreal, she founded the Canadian Centre for Architecture, of which she now chairs the board.

But perhaps it is the passion of people such as Mr. Martins-Mantiega that is the Garden's greatest hope.

"People say, 'You're nostalgic,' and it's a bad word," he says, finishing his coffee. "When I say nostalgic I mean it in a European sense. It's a deep, throbbing pain. It's like Newfoundlanders. They have a pain, they have to return home."

- Tonight's forum, at 27 Front St. E., begins at 7:30 p.m.