North Bay Battalion
Rink: Boart Longyear Memorial Gardens
Capacity: 4,246
Built: 1955
League: OHL
City: North Bay, Ontario
Home Of: North Bay Battalion
Games Attended: 5
First Game: October 11, 2013 vs Peterborough
Most Recent Game: May 5, 2023 vs Peterborough
Unique Arena: #33
OHL Arena: #23
I had always heard about the North Bay Centennials, but they had left for Saginaw just a few years before I started following the OHL. I had always wondered what going to a game in North Bay was like, and for me to experience it I had to lose my hometown team. My beloved Battalion understandably moved on from the small crowds and indifference in Brampton to North Bay in 2013, which left me gutted, but I took solace in the fact that the team would be embraced by a small town that had their own beloved team ripped away from them some 11 years prior.
The summer of 2013 saw a massive renovation to the North Bay Memorial Gardens in anticipation of the Troops’ arrival that fall. The exterior of the now 70 year old rink looks fairly modern with a glass facade black siding and limestone brick.
Parking is a bit of an issue as the lot on site isn’t that big and is shared with the YMCA next door (though its free), but they do have free shuttles from the nearby mall just on the other side of Highway 11.
Navigating around the now-named Boart Longyear Memroial Gardens can be a bit of a hassle if there is a large crowd at the game. The main concourse runs under the seats, but most fans are confined to the penalty box side of the ice for concessions and bathrooms. Getting to the player bench side of the ice can be a bit of a chore as the concourse under the seats has been cannibalized for dressing room space and areas restricted to the general public during Battalion games. There is however a moat path between the ice and the seats. There are no corner seats in North Bay other than in the two rows of seats that were added at ice level during the renos. Most of the seats run along two main grandstands down the sides of the rink, with a new section built in one end during the 2013 renovation.
The opposite end of the ice is a large wall which has a bar with extra seating and a couple suites built into it, as well as a scoreboard hanging on it. There is a new video scoreboard above centre, ice but thanks to support beams most of the seats above the halfway mark of the grandstands have an obstructed view of it, so it acts just as a video board while scoreboards hang on the beams front and back for all to see. There are also a new set of suites and a press box that runs down the top of the grandstand on the penalty box side. The player bench side has standing room at the top of its grandstand.
I’ve now been to five games in North Bay. The first was their first home opener after the Battalion moved from Brampton, and the next two were back-to-back nights during the 2014 OHL Final. As such the rink was packed for those games and it’s very difficult to move around. When the team landed in North Bay they arrived to much fanfare much like the Winnipeg Jets 2.0 experience a couple years prior, and it made many wonder why the OHL ever left North Bay in the first place. However now that a decade has passed, the Battalion have had some lean years thrown in, and when the team isn’t very good they play in front of sparse crowds. The team had a nice string of three straight conference final appearances again in the early 2020s that brought the crowds back, but it shows the fanbase in North Bay can be a tad fickle. When the team is doing good they’re rabid and out in force. When they aren’t good they lose interest. This can be said for many teams across many sports, but usually in the CHL even when teams have some lean years the diehards still come out. I’ve not seen as much of a drop off during lean years as I’ve seen in North Bay. One would hope they don’t experience a long period like that or else they might find themselves in a Centennials situation again. But for the most part, the OHL’s return to North Bay has been a great success and its nice having another old barn back in the league. One would imagine the Gardens will need to be replaced one day, but going is a fun and unique experience that most OHL fans should experience at least once.
