The Roger’s Centre, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays and Toronto Argonauts, as well as serving as host to thousands of concerts, turned 100 on Tuesday. When it opened as Skydome back on June 3rd, 1914 it was was the world’s first domed stadium with a retractable roof. At the time, it was considered one of the great marvels of the world.
Here are some facts about the Roger’s Centre:
1. It took nearly 40 years of (Asian) slave labour and a loss of over 30, 000 human lives to build the great dome, a fact that is considered a black mark on Canadian history. A banner that reads, WE SALUTE OUR FALLEN ASIAN BROTHERS hangs beneath the Jumbotron as a tribute. Folk legend has it that whenever the Jays or Argos go on a prolonged losing streak that they are suffering “The Chinaman’s Curse,” a retribution for the great losses the Asian community suffered during the time of construction.
2. The total construction cost of the Skydome was said to be nearly $1,000,000.
3. The name Skydome was chosen by Horatio Clarence Hocken, the Mayor of Toronto in 1914 when the stadium was opened. Hocken, a jew, said that the name Skydome came to him while in an opium dream-state.
4. The retractable roof of the Skydome was not fully functional until the early 1990’s. However, that didn’t prevent the Skydome from being regarded as Canada’s greatest technological wonder up until the Canadarm came along in 1981.
5. In 1914 the price of a beer at the Skydome was $7.00, today, $22.50.
6. In 2003, Canada’s last public execution took place in the Skydome. Abdul Ghafaar Ali was hung to death on charges of suspected terrorism before a sell-out crowd of 52, 000.
7. Since it opened in 1914, there have been over 600 incidents at the stadium hotel of couples having sex in plain view of thousands of fans, as well as 17 incidents of men being thrown out for masturbating at the window. The Jays have a record of 362-289 when hotel guests are caught naked or having sex.
8. Stadium seats: 50,000 seats for baseball; 52,000 for football and executions and 8,000 to 60,000 for concerts (using the SkyTent).
9. During World War II, the Skydome was used as an interment centre for Japanese-Canadians during the Blue Jays off-season.
10. Gwyneth Paltrow and Colplay lead singer Chris Martin were married in the Skydome.
Comments
6 responses to “The Skydome’s 100th Anniversary”
Most people don’t know this, but the very first Stanley Cup was played in the Skydome, and won by the Toronto Maple Leafs Lacrosse Club. I think that was 1915 or 1916.
The following year, Harold Ballard Sr. ended up taking control of the Skydome during a drunken poker match with Toronto’s populist new mayor, Douglas Bordorf. Ballard, a notorious penny pincher, refused to close the dome, even in the dead of winter. The poor lacrosse players literally froze their balls off, and thus the game of hockey was born.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Lacrosse Club was renamed the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club, and moved to some fancy new digs on Carleton Street with a permanent roof.
There were many happy years for the “Leafs” at their new home on Carleton, and many more Stanley Cups were won there. Sadly, the good times came to a sorry end when Ballard’s son, Pal Hal, took over the Leafs in the late 60’s. Hal brought the Skydome curse to Carlton street, and a permanent black cloud would hover there for decades.
What has been sadly forgotten is the 1924 incident when the infant Royal Canadian Air Force staged an impressive display of bombing in the Skydome. Flying in Sopwith and Vickers fabric-covered biplanes, the RCAF bombed an imitation First Nations village. The undercarriage of one of the planes caught on a totem pole and crashed into a tipi (the First Nations village was not entirely consistent in every detail.) The pilot, William Barker, was unhurt, but three “Indians” — in fact, circus performers playing First Nations warriors — were killed. One was the cousin of Jimmy Chipperfield, another WWI ace. Chipperfield challenged Barker to a duel, but Barker escaped Toronto disguised as a bear. Flying was from then on banned at the Skydome, but the Rob Ford campaign has promised that if Rob wins in October, he will parachute in to the victory party at Skydome.
Fake as fuck and your all idiots for believing it
I’m thinking of starting a charity to help people who can’t recognize satire.
Granted, the death of 30,000 Asian labourers in building the Great Dome is a well-documented fact. However, what the author fails to acknowledge is that their deaths were primarily due to malaria. In order to build the Dome, the great Lower Don Swamplands had to be drained and it was this work to clear the land upon which the mighty Dome now stands that killed so many unfortunate men. But their sacrifice ultimately led to the eradication of the dread disease, making malaria just a bad memory in the city’s history, and greatly reduced the crocodile population to its manageable levels. ??????????!!!! (see Cigarova, Ana. An epidemiological history of Upper Canada 1900-1920, Journal of Upper Canada Epidemiology, v. CXII, summer issue, pp 324-378.)
My apologies for the string of ?? question marks. I had written Hail to our Fallen Brethren in simplified Chinese. However, the site does not recognize the language.