The Garden City Arena and the Neighbourhood

Maps are useful tools to help us visualize geographic and spatial information, and they hold an important role in communicating ideas to the public, especially in museum exhibits. They help keep us engaged by being readable and visually interesting, while providing us with a better understanding of spatial context. They are powerful, and aid in our understanding of history. In the digital age, GIS (geographic information systems) have become effective mapping tools that allows us to integrate and manage various datasets. By using GIS, historians can visualize and present data in an effective and engaging way.

Our interviews revealed that people’s memories of the arena were deeply intertwined with their experiences in the Downtown and Queenston neighbourhood. Several businesses, some of which still exist today and others that are no longer here, continued to pop up in our interviews. It became clear that there was a symbiotic relationship between some businesses in the Queenston and Downtown neighbourhood and the arena. Additional research into the businesses mentioned in our interviews revealed that these were important hubs for the Garden City Arena community.

Click here to view the ArcGIS map of the Garden City Arena and Queenston Community, created by Brock History student Paige Groot in HIST4F00 - "Voices of the Past: Oral History."

Podcast about the Garden City Arena and the Queenston Community, created by Brock History student Daniel Chibani in HIST4F00 - "Voices of the Past: Oral History."

I decided that an interactive map would be an effective way to visualize the relationship between particular businesses and the arena. By using GIS, we can get a sense of what the neighbourhood looked like and interpret how the neighbourhood and the businesses have evolved over time.

In order to create a cohesive visual experience that was easy to navigate but also enhanced our understanding of the arena and the neighbourhood, I decided to divide the business represented on the map into three categories. The first, represented with red pinpoints, are primary businesses with direct relationships with the arena. This includes major media enterprises who covered the sports at the arena: The Standard, CKTB-Radio, and CHSC-Radio along with businesses that were integral to people’s memories of the arena. This includes the Queensway Hotel, Tony’s Treats, Bob Patricks Cycle and Sport, and Herzogs.

Leslie's Pedicures, a former local business owned and operated by Leslie Thorburn. 

Contributed by Leslie Thorburn. 

The second category represented with smaller blue pinpoints are businesses of interest. These are businesses that people mentioned in their interviews which have connections to the arena but not primary relationships like the Queensway Hotel or Bob Patricks. Although these businesses may not have a primary connection to the arena, their inclusion is important because it aids in our understanding of the impact the arena had on the neighbourhood. Take into account, Philcraft, a small business that sold imported goods from the Philippines, owned by Lina Kudera. Jerome Kudera, Lina’s son, and contributor to the Garden City Arena project, said:

So in 1976, my mom opened up a store called Philcraft -  and of course, with the hospital, with the hockey games business flourished back then for her, right? Because there was, there's a lot of, a lot of traffic, a lot of traffic, like, you know, it's good to have nurses, doctors as your clients.

Places like the St. Catharines General Hospital and the Garden City Arena brough folks into the Queenston and Downtown neighbourhoods. As a result, there was a lot of consumer traffic, and the beneficiaries were the local businesses like Philcraft. If we consider the neighbourhood today, the hospital gone, and other modern arenas attracting sports teams and spectators, the traffic that the arena once produced has shrunk. A small business that once flourished along Queenston Street may no longer be able to attract as many customers.

Various locations of Bob Patrick's Cycle and Sport over time.

The third category included on the map are represented with small green pinpoints. These are other locations of businesses already represented on the map. This is a useful category for visualizing change over time. Consider Bob Patricks Cycle and Sport, shown on the map in one primary location and three prior locations. By plotting these locations on a map, we can see that every move the business had brought it closer and closer to the arena. We can consider that by moving closer to the arena, Bob Patricks Cycle and Sport was benefitting from close proximity. Several interviewees told us how they would get their skates sharpened at Bob Patricks before hockey games or public skating at the arena. Jerome told us “And it was as soon as you had your skates sharpened you run as fast as you can to the arena to get to go public skating.” 

Photo of Tony's Tasty Treats also known as Tasti Treat, Tasty Treat, and Tasti-Treet at 19 Queenston St.

Contributed by Mark Montefiore.

There were two major obstacles in creating this interactive map. First, it required extensive hours studying the 20^th century St. Catharines City Directories. City directories are victim to human error, as most primary sources are, and there were volumes with discrepancies where businesses were listed under the wrong address or had seemingly disappeared from the directory just to reappear the following year. There is also the issue of changing business names. For example, the popular restaurant located at 19 Queenston Street was listed using the following names between its operating years of 1955-1990: “Tasti-Treet”, “Tasty Treat”, “Tony’s Treats” and “Tony’s Tasty Treats”. This created some difficulty when trying to navigate the directories. The second obstacle is an extension of the first. St. Catharines has inevitably changed since the early 20^th century, and that includes geographical changes that could impact business addresses. For example, what was 128 King Street in the 1940s may no longer be what we consider 128 King Street today. This can cause obvious issues when attempting to plot historical business locations on a modern map with nothing but a street address. Luckily, neither of these issues have an enormous impact on the presentation of the interactive map. Any aspects of the map that reflect errors in the city directories or changes in building addresses over time should have little impact on the visualization of the map overall.

My hope is that this map will help people visualize the arena’s relationship with the surrounding neighbourhood and its businesses. I hope that when you read about the rowdy crowds at the Queensway Hotel between hockey periods, or hear a childhood memory of watching the sparks fly on the skate sharpener at Bob Patricks, or of teenagers enjoying a foot-long hotdog at Tony’s Treats after a Falcons game, you can use the map to help visualize these meaningful memories and take in the legacy of the Garden City Arena.