Ottawa Exhibition Stadium

Lore & Background

The stadium's story is inseparable from Ottawa's identity as a city that lives and dies by sport. While the Senators' return to the NHL in 1992 began at the Ottawa Civic Centre, Exhibition Stadium remained a beloved venue for football and community events. Its concrete grandstands, narrow concourses, and open-air setting created a raw, unpretentious atmosphere that Ottawans cherished—whether watching the Rough Riders on a crisp autumn afternoon or attending a summer concert under the stars.

The stadium was never glamorous, but that was its charm. Fans bundled in layers, the smell of hot dogs and woodsmoke mingling with the sharp bite of cold air, the roar of the crowd carrying across the open bowl in a way an enclosed dome could never replicate. For a city that prides itself on a certain stubborn, unpretentious character, the stadium was a perfect physical metaphor.

When the Rough Riders folded in 1996 and the stadium entered a slow twilight, its renovation and rebirth as TD Place Stadium in 2014—home to the Ottawa Redblacks—was met with genuine public relief, a sense that Ottawa had preserved a piece of its civic soul. The site has since been redeveloped, but for those who remember, the stadium endures as a place where the city gathered under the open sky.

Reader's Guide

The stadium was a large, open-air concrete bowl set within the Lansdowne Park grounds, with a rectangular ice rink at its centre surrounded by tiered grandstands on all four sides. The outdoor setting meant the ice was exposed to the elements; on cold nights the boards frosted over and the surface took on a hard, glassy quality that made the puck skate differently than in a climate-controlled arena. The concourses were modest—narrow walkways, a handful of concession stands, and the ever-present smell of hot dogs and roasted peanuts.

Fans treated a night at the stadium as a small expedition. You bundled up, walked across the park grounds, and felt the cold hit your face before you even reached the stands. During games, the open-air acoustics meant every slap shot and every goal horn carried with a raw, unfiltered intensity. The crowd noise rose and fell with the wind, and on the coldest nights you could see your own breath as you cheered.

The stadium was never just a hockey venue. The same concrete saw CFL football, summer concerts, and civic gatherings, which gave it a layered, lived-in character. For Ottawa, the stadium was as much a community room as a sports arena, and its loss in 2003 left a gap that no new building has quite filled.

Did You Know?

• Despite popular belief, the Ottawa Senators never played an NHL game at Ottawa Exhibition Stadium; their home games from 1992 onward were held at the Ottawa Civic Centre.
• The same concrete bowl hosted CFL football and occasional OHL hockey, meaning the surface was resurfaced and reconfigured between sports seasons.
• The stadium's outdoor setting meant that on the coldest Ottawa nights, the atmosphere shifted noticeably compared to an enclosed arena—though no NHL team ever played a regular-season game there.
• The site's long association with the Ottawa Rough Riders meant that generations of Ottawans grew up with the stadium as a multi-sport, multi-season fixture.