New Westminster’s PCHA arena

The Pacific Coast Hockey Association was formed in 1912 with three teams in BC: Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster. The Patricks built rinks in the first two cities: the Denman Arena at 1805 West Georgia in Vancouver, and the Patrick Arena (also known as the Willow Arena) in Oak Bay, adjacent to Victoria.

Wikipedia will tell you both the Vancouver Millionaires and New Westminster Royals played their home games in the Denman Arena, which is accurate. However, it adds the Royals “would never play a PCHA home game in New Westminster as a result.”

Not so.

In June 1912, plans for a new arena on the exhibition grounds at Queen’s Park were announced, to be suitable for horse shows and other events. However, hockey was not initially contemplated. In October, The Vancouver Sun reported the Royals would play all of their home games in the new building after securing permission from the provincial government to use the building (they controlled the lease of the site). Frank Patrick began installing the ice plant and pipes required.

“With a rink in Westminster the coast league will be complete,” the Sun wrote. “Last season Westminster played its home games on the Vancouver arena, and the fans from the Royal City were required to make the jaunt of 12 miles to see their team in action, but this coming season, all this will be done away with.”

By mid-January, however, due to cold weather, the contractors had not been able to conduct critical tests on the piping, forcing opening night to be postponed.

About 1,000 people were on hand when the rink finally opened on Jan. 28, 1913. It was a sprightly looking building with an arched entrance, rows of windows, and a balcony. It had seats for 4,500, fewer than either the Vancouver or Victoria rinks, but its ice surface was larger, measuring 210 feet long and 90 feet wide. Frank Patrick expressed “great satisfaction at the appearance of the place, which has been converted into one of solid comfort.”

Soldiers in front of the New Westminster Arena, 1918. (City of Vancouver Archives AM 1535-CVA 99-665 and CVA 99-694.1, 1918)

The first game at the New Westminster Arena (aka Queen’s Park Arena) took place on Feb. 7. Vancouver won 3-2 in overtime in what was described as a “rough-house” game with “deliberate dirty work … very much in evidence.”

Subsequently New Westminster earned its first win in its new home, 6-1 over Victoria on Feb. 18 and followed it up with an 11-3 shellacking of Vancouver on Feb. 28. However, the Royals lost 1-0 on March 7. New Westminster and Vancouver then went on a Prairie tour and played a couple of make-up games in Calgary and Regina on March 17 and 18, possibly to test those cities’ potential for expansion.

(After meeting with unnamed parties in Calgary who wanted a franchise at season’s end, Frank Patrick declared he didn’t think the city was ready to join the PCHA. He suggested instead that Edmonton and Calgary form a minor league, with payrolls one-fifth that of the PCHA clubs. At the time Calgary was planning an artificial ice rink to seat 5,000 using Frank Patrick’s ice-making method.)

New Westminster and Vancouver next combined rosters to face a team of NHA all-stars in Winnipeg in the first two games of a series that then moved back to BC for games in Vancouver and New West that the eastern all-stars won 5-3.

So in the first season in their own rink, the New Westminster Royals split their four games. The following season, they played six of their 16 games at home (rather than eight, as we might expect), and went 3-3. The final game, on Feb. 13, 1914, saw them lose 2-1 to Victoria after more than 36 minutes of overtime. The following season, the franchise relocated to Portland. In all, New Westminster hosted 10 PCHA regular-season games plus one exhibition match.

During the First World War, Queens’ Park was turned into a training site for soldiers and its buildings were turned into barracks. After the war, the arena wasn’t used much, but in 1923 plans were announced to use it for indoor baseball, basketball, and boxing, although I don’t know if they were carried out. 

The building, along with others on the site, burned down on July 14, 1929. With the insurance proceeds, the city built a new civic auditorium the following year, although I don’t know if it was on the same spot as the old one. Ice was added in 1939 and the new Queen’s Park Arena became home to the second coming of the New Westminster Royals, a professional team in the PCHL and WHL from 1945-59, as well as junior hockey and lacrosse teams. The building is still in use.

Corrected on Dec. 23, 2024 to say the Royals played in their own rink in both the 1912-13 and 1913-14 seasons, not just the former. With thanks to Eric Zweig.