With its veiled facade, the confines of Maple Leaf Gardens withhold the hollow interior of an abandoned warehouse. Bought by grocery conglomerate Loblaws it sits as a building stripped of its historical moorings; stripped from the jovial ethos that once filled the city of Toronto with a feverish admiration of their sports franchises. Pieces of equipment were sold at auctions and delivered to inhabit disparate locales; the memories held within seats, framed paintings, sections of dressing rooms and banners were delegated to different owners. It was like slicing a delectable cake into thread-like pieces in order to accommodate a plethora of guests, each trying to savour the taste but unable to capture the full brunt of its palatable potency and texture. But for those who found themselves endeared to this sanctuary of sports at any point of its 60 years of venerable charm, the memories lived in the Gardens will prove to override its disjointed and displaced appearance.
It housed 11 Stanley Cup victories earned by the Toronto Maple Leafs. With the overhaul of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, a massive sports consortium that oversees most of Toronto's franchises, and the construction of a new sports venue in the Air Canada Centre (ACC) - which has housed the Maple Leafs and NBA side Toronto Raptors as its primary tenants since 1999 - the city has yet to observe any parallels to the Gardens.
Celebrating its 10-year anniversary only a few weeks ago, the ACC has left sports fans in a perpetual search for something that holds as tangible and distinguished worth as any memory extracted from the Gardens. If only a story as rich and vivid as that displayed in Maple Leaf Gardens could be weaved today.
