News

Oak Bay's Patrick Arena

28 March 2025

Patrick Arena quick facts:

  • Sited on the east side of Epworth Street (then called Empress) at 2110 Cadboro Bay Rd.
  • 144'2" (i.e. 3 50-ft city lots) wide, 322'2" (i.e. 6.5 50-ft city lots) long
  • view on 1913 fire insurance maps, online here [static copy]. Chas E. Goad Co., Civil Engineers, Insurance Plan of Victoria British Columbia, 1913. Volume III p.323. Royal BC Museum collection, online via UVic Libraries.
  • Built 1911: blueprints are at Oak Bay Archives - view online here
  • Called "Victoria Arena", became known as "Patrick Arena" and sometimes "Willows Arena". The area was known as Willows or The Willows: the Fairgrounds were also known as the Exhibition Grounds or Willows Park; the south end of what's now Eastdowne Rd was called Willows Rd and the Willows Hotel stood near the intersection of Willows Rd and Cadboro Bay Rd (at 2184 Cadboro Bay Rd); the store at what's now 2405 Eastdowne was the Willows Park Grocery.
  • The Patrick Arena sometimes gets confused with the (nearby, later) Olson Arena (see below) but they did not exist at the same time or in the same place. Patrick Arena 1911-1929 at Cadboro Bay Rd x Empress (Epworth), south of Fair St; Olson Arena 1941-1944, inside the Fairgrounds in a disused agricultural exhibition building, north of Fair St.
  • Designed by Thomas J. Hooper for the Patrick family's Victoria Arena Company. Hooper also designed the Patricks' Vancouver arena, later known as the Denman Arena.
  • Often claimed as the first artificial ice rink in Canada, but Vancouver (Denman) Arena, also owned by the Patrick family, opened 5 days earlier on 20 December 1911
  • Victoria Arena opened Christmas Day, 25 December 1911, with 1500 skaters
  • Seated 4200 (3500 according to the fire insurance company's maps!)
  • Home of the professional Victoria Senators/Aristocrats (1913)/Cougars (1923) hockey team
  • Site of the first professional hockey game (in Canada? in the world?) played on artificial ice, 2 January 1912
  • Site of the 1925 Stanley Cup win by the Victoria Cougars
  • Burned to the ground on the night of 10 November 1929. Four houses on Epworth and a store on Cadboro Bay Rd were also heavily damaged.
  • not replaced until 1941, when the Horse Show Building at Willows Fairgrounds (aka Exhibition Grounds/Willows Park, present day Carnarvon Park and surrounding area bounded by Haultain/Henderson/Neil/Dryfe, not to be confused with present day Willows Park on Beach Drive) was converted into an ice rink by Barney Olson, known as Olson Arena or Willows Arena. The Olson Arena also burned down, in 1944.
  • the Victoria Memorial Arena at 1925 Blanshard was built in 1949, demolished in 2003 and replaced on the same site by the present Save-On- Foods Memorial Arena.

Patrick Arena history in the news as it happened

- from the historic British Colonist and Victoria Daily Times newspapers:

Copies of the 1911 blueprints for the Patrick Arena on display at Oak Bay Recreation Centre, March 2025, with a QR code leading to this page.


More about:

"Thomas Hooper", Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada [static copy]

"Thomas Hooper 1857-1935". Amber Dawn Whittle, Jeremy Buddenhagen, Tim Paulson, St. Ann's Academy & the Architecture of Faith, 2009. [static copy]

"A century ago, the Victoria Cougars won the Stanley Cup in Oak Bay". Ivan Watson, Oak Bay News, 28 March 2025. [static copy]

Victoria Cougars earned Stanley Cup in 1913. Roger McGuire, letter to the editor, Times Colonist, Apr 6, 2013 [static copy]

"The ghost of Denman Arena: Little remains of the stadium where Vancouver won its only Stanley Cup". Jon Azpiri & Squire Barnes, Global News, June 5, 2021. [static copy]

Wong, J. C. (2009). Professional Hockey and Urban Development: A Historical Case Study of the Vancouver Arena, 1911–1914. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 38(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.7202/038462ar

Patrick Arena, Gary Wilcox, The History of Oak Bay Website [static copy]

Olson / Willows Arena, Gary Wilcox, The History of Oak Bay Website [static copy]

Patrick Arena, Wikipedia [static copy]

Denman Arena, Wikipedia [static copy]


2025 commemoration

Many links on this page were broken/dead in less than a year. Links updated & static copies added for longevity, March 2026.