The Garden City Arena: Home of the Falcons

The wall of St. Catharines Falcons team phones in the Garden City Arena.

Contributed by Kat Rice.

The History of Junior B Hockey in St. Catharines 

The relationship between the Garden City Arena and the St. Catharines Falcons was long and remarkable. The Falcons are known as the oldest and largest organization in the Golden Horseshoe. The St. Catharines Junior B Falcons originated in 1968 and began to participate in the Niagara District Junior B Hockey League. The St. Catharines Falcons were created by a group of hockey-minded men such as the president, Doug Favell, and a board of directors that included names such as Walter Marsh and Earl McNeil. When asked in 2015 about why he helped create the team, McNeil stated, “In St. Catharines, there’s no league once you finish juvenile. You’re just out of hockey. So we got together, Doug was the first president, and we organized the Junior B Falcons.” The St. Catharines Falcons stayed in the Niagara District Junior B Hockey League until the 1974-75 season when they joined the Golden Horseshoe Junior Hockey League (GHL). The Falcons played within the GHL from 1974-75 until 2007 when they entered the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League (GOJHL). The St. Catharines Falcons finally won their first Sutherland Cup in the 2011-12 season, and during the 2017-18 season, the St. Catharines Falcons celebrated their 50th anniversary as a franchise, a truly incredible achievement. Although Junior A hockey has come and gone in St. Catharines, the St. Catharines Falcons remained, illustrating their importance to the city.

A hockey fight featuring Mike Kobylansky while he was with the St. Catharines Falcons.

Contributed by Mike Kobylansky.

The Physicality of Junior B Hockey 

Although many St. Catharines Falcons players who laced up their skates were extremely skilled, Junior B hockey has notoriously been known for its physicality. Occasionally, Junior B games within the Garden City Arena would turn into all-out brawls. On March 9, 1993, a bench-clearing brawl occurred in the third period of a playoff game between the St. Catharines Falcons and the Thorold Blackhawks. Equipment littered the ice and even a coach was punched. The only thing that stopped the brawl was when the Niagara Regional Police came to the Garden City Arena, but even then, the police had to go on the ice to stop it! After the game, St. Catharines Falcons coach Mark Barrick stated, “I don’t condone what happened, but it happens in hockey.” The fans seemed to agree, as around 2,000 fans attended the next game on March 11 at the Garden City Arena. It seemed as though this type of physical nature was embedded within Junior B culture.

A hockey fight featuring Mike Kobylansky while he was with the St. Catharines Falcons.

Contributed by Mike Kobylansky.

Former St. Catharines Falcon, Mike Kobylansky, who played for the Falcons during the 2003-04 season, recalled having “24 [fights] in the league but four on [Garden City] ice.” For Kobylansky, dropping the mitts was his game, and when asked about why he became an enforcer, he replied:

I think it’s built into you…. I want to be there to protect my teammates. I want to stick up for the guys who can't stick up for themselves. I don't like people bullying so that comes out in me and on the ice. And, you know, that's who I am and, touch my goal scorer or whatever. I do my best to make my team feel safe out there.

Physicality and “dropping the mitts” are seemingly entangled in the Canadian experience of hockey, “always a part of ‘our game,” as Kobylansky said, and it has been on full display in Junior B hockey and an important aspect of why fans attended St. Catharines Falcons games at the Garden City Arena.

St. Catharines Falcons championship banners hanging in the Garden City Arena.

Contributed by Elizabeth Vlossak.

The Falcons and The Community 

The St. Catharines Falcons became much more than a hockey team as the Falcons became embedded within the St. Catharines community. The fans who attended the games had different reasons for being there. For kids, Falcons games became a place to hang out with friends and explore. Broderick Kelly remembered going to Falcons games on Friday nights as a child was “more of a social event than anything.” Doug Hunt recalled that he could “trace my sort of like independence developing within that arena” due to the number of games he attended with his father over the seasons. For Jerome Kudera, who moved to St. Catharines in 1974, he remembered as a kid how:

Every Friday night, we'd go down to Garden City Arena to go cheer on the St. Catharines Falcons and that was very enjoyable for us kids that, you know, there'll be groups of us from school like five or six of us friends…We all thought they were NHL superstars, but we didn't know any difference. And we'd grab a hot dog across the street afterwards and got to stay up till 11 o'clock on Friday nights, that was my childhood.

The St. Catharines Falcons provided the community and kids with a chance to make memories that would last a lifetime.

Former St. Catharines Falcons Mike Kobylansky.

Contributed by Mike Kobylansky. 

The popularity of Junior B was also due to those who owned their teams “for the love of it.” Peter Spencer, president of the St. Catharines Falcons in 1996, answered why he and the board of directors owned the team by stating, “I think the first reason is that everyone on our board of directors just loves hockey and wants to put something back into the community.” One might be hesitant to believe the owners, but Falcons tickets were always sold at low prices. Kudera remembered how it was, “a buck 50 to watch a Friday night Falcons game” while Hunt described Falcons games as, “It wasn’t a sporting event for the elites per say, like anyone in town could afford the $5 you needed to get into a Falcons game.”

Beyond the ice the Falcons players are adored by the kids of St. Catharines. Kobylansky recalled his experience signing autographs for young fans during his short tenure with the Falcons, stating:

We got our Falcons jerseys on, the kids just love us. They think it's the greatest thing that we’re these big deals for autographs… I had Marcel [Dionne] right beside me. And these kids don't even care…they were more ecstatic to see us cuz we had our jerseys. They knew of the younger guys with the jerseys. Meanwhile, Marcel Dionne…he’s signing his name and then NHL HOF 92. He's in the NHL Hall of Fame. So he's right behind Gretzky and all the points and all that stuff and he's signing it Hall of Fame and they're excited to see us, the Falcons.

St. Catharines has always been a hockey city, but these memories illustrate how vital the Garden City Arena and the St. Catharines Falcons have been to the community. 

St. Catharines Falcons in the round robin of the 2022 Sutherland Cup. The Falcons defeated the Chatham Maroons 5-1 enroute to their second Sutherland Cup in franchise history.

Contributed by Elizabeth Vlossak. 

The Atmosphere at Falcons Games

The Garden City Arena itself had an enormous part to play in the atmosphere of Falcons games. Having played at the Garden City Arena for both the Niagara IceDogs and St. Catharines Falcons, Kelly described the ambiance of games from ice level:

You couldn't hear yourself think, you could barely talk to the guy sitting next to you. If coach is trying to get a word to the guys down in the bench, you can barely hear anybody. And the fans are on top of you. The stands are very steep and incline, and it feels like the fans when they're yelling at you, they're right on top of you.

If they're loud, you feel the vibrations through your feet while you're sitting on the bench. It was just a crazy place to play. And they used to jam like 4,000 people into that arena that probably only sat 2,500 and it would be awesome. It would be crazy. And we used to have the best time ever. And every game felt like the first game when you're playing in that place, because it's just crazy. It's like when you go to an NHL game and you can't hear yourself think, well, the Jack Gatecliff’s like that, just shrink by three or four times.

Local hockey fan, Dan McKnight, on the other hand, described what it was like watching a game in the Garden City Arena from a fan’s perspective:

You could almost touch the players it was so close, you know, and so intimate as a setting. Yeah, I mean, you can hear them talk, you can hear them skate by, you can feel the winds as they go by. Like, it's just, it's so amazing the Garden City Arena because it is so intimate.

The St. Catharines Falcons dressing room at the Garden City Arena.

Contributed by Kat Rice.

The atmosphere at Falcons games was extraordinary, which had a lot to do with the connection between the St. Catharines Falcons franchise and their fans. As Kelly stated, “I think that a lot these Falcons fans had been going for so long and they just have such a deep connection with the team.” Playoff game or not, Mike Schram recalled that every Friday night there would no parking around the Garden City Arena due to the Falcons’ fans deep-seated support:

They'd play on Friday nights and especially around that place where there's no parking, like it would be just cars everywhere. So, I think they drew better than a lot of the A games of the Fincups, at least back in that time, because they were always competitive…it's a Friday night, and it's a big game, it's a playoff game, even the non-playoff games, they've packed the place up.

The Garden City Arena has been home to the St. Catharines TeePees and Black Hawks, the St. Catharines Fincups, and the Niagara IceDogs, but whether it be a season or a dozen, the teams has always left, even if just to next door. The Falcons are the oldest team in the Golden Horseshoe division and, unlike other teams, they have stayed. “There was no OHA team here, the Falcons were it. And so, I mean, the whole community was invested in the Falcons,” said McKnight.

For Kelly, one of his greatest memories of the Garden City Arena was when he scored in double overtime of Game 4 of the Sutherland Cup final against Caledonia on April 29, 2014:

I remember coming down the ice, cutting to the right, closing my eyes and shooting, like I always do. And then I just remember hearing a horn and then I don't think I opened my eyes until I got into the dressing room cuz I don't remember, just guys piled all over me and it was crazy and the horns going off and the fans are going nuts.

St. Catharines Falcons shirt and hat from when they won the Sutherland Cup in 2011-12, the first in their franchise history.

Contributed by a Junior B hockey fan.

On May 4, 2012, the St. Catharines Falcons won the Sutherland Cup in the Garden City Arena, the first in their franchise history. This victory was more than a win for the players, it was a win for the community. A Junior B Hockey Fan recalled this moment, stating that it felt, “like something was lifted off my shoulders…It was like the Leafs won the Stanley Cup.”

A decade later, on May 29, 2022, the St. Catharines Falcons defeated the Chatham Maroons 8-2 to win the best of three series to bring home their second Sutherland Cup in franchise history. Though played in Chatham, the game marked the end of the St. Catharines Falcons long tenure with the Garden City Arena. “This is a moment we will remember forever,” said Tyler Bielby, the head coach of the St. Catharines Falcons. More than the Falcons, the 2022 Sutherland Cup victory will be remembered by the community as a final parting gift to their seasoned home. A hallmark in the St. Catharines community, the St. Catharines Falcons were able to send the Garden City Arena off with one final championship, no better way to say farewell to an arena that has stood in the heart of the community for more than eight decades. 

As the doors close on the old barn, the Garden City Arena has truly been the home of the St. Catharines Falcons. For 54 years, the two have been inseparable.