Edmonton Journal du lieu suivant : Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 19

ieas EDMONTON JOURNAL SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2008 A1 9 Should we preserve the shrines? 1 i Ida it Tlf- vpw sj For fans, sports is about shared memories, where beloved teams and players make history. But with many buildings and stadiums now gone, Edmonton is lucky to still enjoy Rexall Place at least for now mmM "te 1 E0 ZXjrA wm S4M a ma Li 1 wr, w. mthi 'i-'iimmh' imniirMi mmmh ih.iimim.iimhi mmuimjLi RICK MacWILLIAM. THE JOURNAL, FILE In April, 2006, rigger Wayne Collins aligns lights at Rexall Place to illuminate new banners celebrating the Oilers' five Stanley Cup victories. Active NHL arenas that have hosted a Stanley 6 The best part of Fenway Park, however, remains its Its just a shame the Yankees didn't realize that.

Frankly, any stadium in which the Babe hit a home run should be protected by federal statute.5 ESPN writer Jim Caple mp win I Rexall Place, 1984, 1985, 1987,1988 I Nassau Coliseum (Long Island, N.Y.), 1980, 1981, 1983 I Madison Square Garden IV, 1972, 1994 record previously set by Maurice Richard. Or where Gretzky, then a member of the Los Angeles Kings, scored his career point, breaking the all-time record set by Gordie Howe. You can sit in the building where Glen Sather and Badger Bob Johnson would scream at each other during heated Battle of Alberta contests. You can lean over and talk to a season-ticket holder who has been in the exact same seat for 25 years, and she'll tell you about the infamous 1984 Canada Cup round-robin game between Team Canada and Team U.S.S.R., when Mark Messier rearranged the face ofVlaclimir Kovin with his elbow. You can hear, if you listen, the unaccompanied Rexall crowd sing the Canadian national anthem before Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals in 2006.

You can show your daughter the retired numbers up above, and tell them that Gretzky, Messier, Kurri, Coffey and Fuhr became Hall of Famers right there, right there, in front of an admiring I Joe Louis Arena (Detroit), 1997,2002 I Pengrowth Saddledome, 1986 I Verizon Center (Washington), 1998 I HSBC Centre (Buffalo), 1999 I Pepsi Center (Denver), 2001 thathave been exploded, I can't help but feel that we as a city have an obligation to ourselves, as well as to the game, to find a way to keep our team playing in that stadium. So much of the value in sport is tied into its ability to create history, generate nostalgia, and form traditions. So much of its value is in connecting generations through a shared, and common, experience. That value should be promoted and protected. Are any of us really keen on staring at a plaque or a dilapidated building, 20 years from now, and saying to our children or grandchildren, "this used to be The Rink That Gretzky Built?" Andy Grabia is an Edmonton freelance writer and lifelong Oilers fan.

lie is a co-contributor to The ANDY GRABIA On May 5, 1999, 1 had the pleasure of seeing a baseball game at Fenway Park. The Sox got beat up, some college students near to me got arrested and (thrown out for celebrating Cinco de Mayoabittoothoroughlyand the men's i'ibathroom looked like something out of the movie Trainspotting. It should have been a rough day. -) It wasn't. I was at Fenway Park, and I was in awe.

"The best part of Fenway Park, however, remains its history," ESPN writer Jim Caple wrote last year, in an article comparing the improved Fenway Park and the soon to be demolished Yankee Stadium. "You just can't replace that type of his-tory, no matter how much money you squeeze out of the taxpayers and tourists renting cars. Ifsjustashame the Yankees didn't realize that. Frankly, any stadi-' urn in which the Babe hit a home run should be protected by federal statute." protection should have also been afforded to Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. I'll never be able to step foot in the stadium where Robinson played baseball.

I'll never be able to point out ia 1947. Ebbets Field was demolished in February of 1960; all that remains now a plaque and some run-down apartment buildings. It's the same for fans looking to visit or attend games at historicNHL arenas. The fact of the matter is that you can walk into very few arenas in the NHL today and instandy be a part of history. NHL teams, for the most part, have destroyed or abandoned their built her-.

ijtage. The Stanley Cup has been awarded seventy-nine times to eighteen dif-1 Jerentteams since the 1926-1927 season. sadly, most of those Stanley Cups were raised by jubilant victors in arenas that have either been demolished or are no longer in use by NHL teams. Six-. ty-one of seventy-nine Stanley Cups, or 77 per cent, to be exact.

i A fan can't visit the arenas where audience eyes. You can drive up Wayne Gretzky Drive happily, knowing that at its xzr. I St. Pete Times Forum (Tampa), 2004 I RBC Center (Raleigh, NC), 2006 I Honda CenterPond, Anaheim, CA, 2007 end is sacred, and holy, ground. You can do all that at Rexall Place, in Edmonton.

For now. It's funny that in a city so proud of its hockey traditions, a city that mythologizes its hockey history, there has MONTREAL GAZETTE. CANWEST NEWS SERVICE. FILE Bobby Orr during a 1973 playoff game between Montreal and Boston been so little talk about precisely because it is Battle of Alberta, a hockey blog on the NL greatest rivalry. This article is an abridged version of a longer article that where some of the game's greatest mo- A 1111 1LO nave WA-UHCU.

I i appeared on that website. Some will say that VI we should just move Viml at www.battleofalberta.ca. -1 1 mm Howie Morenz, Jean Beliveau, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, King Clancy, Bobby Hull, Gump Worsley, Marcel Dionne, Gilbert Perrault, or Bobby Clarke played their home games. Those cathedrals are empty, otherwise occupied, or long, long gone. A fan can't walk into the Montreal Forum and imagine the atmosphere on March 17th, 1955, the night of the Richard Riot.

Nor can he walk into Boston Garden and picture May 10th, 1970, when Bobby Orr scored an overtime goal on Glenn Hall, giving the Bruins the Cup. Opportunities like that are no longer available to fans in the majority of NHL cities. But it can still be done in Edmonton. In Edmonton, you can walk up to the arena knowing that within those walls the last hockey dynasty was born, out of the ashes of another. The Oilers have won five Stanley Cups in seven appearances, and four of those final series ended at Northlands Coliseum, now Rexall Place.

Twenty Stanley Cup Finals games have been played at Rexall Place, the most of any active arena in the NHL. In Edmonton, you can look at the Stanley Cup, President's Trophy, Smythe Division, Campbell Conference and Western Conference banners hanging from the rafters and know that they were actually earned on the ice below. You can stand in the arena where a young Wayne Gretzky scored his 50th goal in his 39th game, blowing away a on, inai rresn memories will be made in a new, improved, ml i and therefore bet ter, facility. Yet looking at how few of the old arenas still exist, at SIJPPIKO In 1947, Jackie Robinson played in an exhibition game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was the first black player in major-league baseball history.

all the ghosts that have been exorcised and all the memories Alberta fringe right unites just in time for an election a Wdrose Alliance latest ujn line of parties courting conservatives 1 hope I'm not being premature or presumptuous, but let me be the first to wish the Wildrose Alliance a happy birthday. I realize the little tyke hasn't officially been born yet, but Alberta's newest political party is due sometime today at a. convention in Calgary, if all goes according to plan. i proud parents are the Alberta Alliance i which has one MLA in the legislature, PaulHinman and the Wildrose Party, 'i which is, politically speaking, still in di- itself. If indeed the two groups do consummate their relationship today it would 'make their offspring a Capricorn.

That, to my Internet sources, means i it will be "responsible, ambitious and resourceful," and shares its zodiac sign with Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton and Elvis Presley. According to same reliable sources, Capricorns are also "conceit- ed, unimaginative and dictatorial," with sleeve, the Separation Party of Alberta. It is easy to write them off as also-rans. In the 2004 provincial election, for example, the right-wing fringe groups got only about 12 per cent of the total votes cast. However, enough votes coalesced around the Alberta Alliance to give the party a victory in Cardston-Tdber-Warner.

That single win gave the party instant credibility. That credibility, though, has been on the decline ever since. In the Drumheller byclection last June, the Alliance finished fifth with less than five per cent of the vote, behind the Conservatives, Liberals, Social Credit and an independent candidate who ran on an anti-gun-control platform after being charged by police for owning, among other things, an Uzi submachine-gun. Consequently, the Alliance is desperately looking for a shot of momentum and media coverage before the upcoming election. So is the fledgling Wildrose Party, which qualified for official party status just late last year.

That's why we have today's joint convention, which is marriage, consummation and birth all wrapix'd into one. With an election campaign expected in a cou government has forgotten this." It's tempting to dismiss the Wildrose Alliance as just another fringe element from right field, a party that will be such a joke in the upcoming election its campaign button should be a plastic lapel flower that squirts water. But Byfield is right when he says there are a lot of unhappy conservatives in Alberta looking for a place to park their votes, either because they think Stelmach spends too much public money or he is hiking energy royalties too drastically. The conventional wisdom is those disgruntled conservatives will stay home astheydidin2004. What if they don't? What if the Wildrose Alliance strikes a chord with disgruntled Tories? Certainly not enough to win the election or perhaps even win many seats.

But maybe enough to play the spoiler by bleeding off votes from the Conservatives, and thereby making more ridings more unpredictable. In other words, making Alberta politics more interesting. In that case, welcome Wildrose Alliance. And many happy returns. j(li(imiiH(S ple of weeks or so, there wasn't a lot of time for romance.

Not that the two parties are incompatible. They believe in the same policies, which can be boiled down to the tenets of lowering taxes, cutting government spending, scrapping any plans to raise energy royalties, and snaking their fists at Ottawa. The nascent party is eagerly seeking credibility and a "big" name. In politics, one tends to follow the other. Right now, the Wildrose Alliance has neither, although it would love to have the blessing of someone such as Preston Manning who, so far, has wisely kept his distance from a party so new and unproven.

The Wildrose Alliance docs have some articulate voices, though, such as sometime-journalist and often-controversial Link Byfield who has proven himself a constant irritant to the status quo, and therefore always quotable. "We hope to emerge as a united force that takes scats in the legislature," said Byfield of today's Wildrose Alliance birth. "Many disenfranchised Albcrtans believe, as we do, that Alberta's prosperity was built on free enterprise, not on government spending. The Stelmach examples being Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph Stalin.

Joan of Arc was a Capricorn which, in the context of today's event, is strangely apt. There is often a whiff of martyrdom clinging to Alberta's more conservative groups, which routinely see themselves as a persecuted minority. It is a remarkable phenomenon to see a bunch of largely conservative, middle-aged white guys complain they're being ignored in a province run by politicians who are largely conservative, middle-aged, white and male. Over the years the fringe parties have included the Western Canada Concept, the Alberta Paity, the Alberta Fim Party, the Confederat ion of Regions Party and one that candidly wore its intentions on its.