page_title: Victoria Skating Rink
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Victoria Skating Rink / History
caption_attribution_description: Fancy Ball at the Victoria Rink, Montreal, 1865–1866
context_page_description: The Victoria Skating Rink was an indoor ice skating rink located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Opened in 1862, it was described at the start of the twentieth century to be "one of the finest covered rinks in the world". The building was used during winter seasons for pleasure skating, ice hockey and skating sports on a natural ice rink. In summer months, the building was used for various events, including musical performances and horticultural shows. It was the first building in Canada to be electrified.
  The rink hosted the first-ever recorded organized indoor ice hockey match on March 3, 1875. The ice surface dimensions set the standard for today's North American ice hockey rinks. It was also the location of the first Stanley Cup playoff games in 1894 and the location of the founding of the first championship ice hockey league, the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada in 1886. Frederick Stanley, the donor of the Stanley Cup, witnessed his first ice hockey game there in 1889. In 1896, telegraph wires were connected at the Rink to do simultaneous score-by-score description of a Stanley Cup challenge series between Montreal and Winnipeg, Manitoba teams, a first of its kind.
context_section_description: The Victoria Skating Club was incorporated on June 9, 1862, with a sizable capitalization of $12,000, for the purpose of buying the land and building the rink. The directors included members of prominent families of the Square Mile: John Greenshields, whose family owned the largest drygoods wholesale firm in Canada and James Torrance, whose family owned a prosperous provisions wholesale firm. The Rink, one of the first and largest indoor rinks in North America, was completed and opened on December 24, 1862. However, it was not the first indoor rink in Montreal. The first had opened in 1859, at the north end of St. Urbain Street, for the Montreal Skating Club. It was the first of numerous ice rinks in Canada to be named after Queen Victoria. By about 1880, membership in the Victoria Skating Club had reached 2,000, mostly drawn from Montreal's upper classes, who enjoyed considerable leisure time and could afford to participate in such events as the fancy-dress balls, which were a regular feature at the rink.
  A quote from the 1870s that appeared in the book Montreal Yesterdays captures the essence:
  When many hundred persons are upon the ice, and with every variety of costume, pass through all the graceful figures that skaters delight in, the scene presented to the spectator is dazzling in the extreme.
  The rink became a major attraction for visitors to Montreal. In 1886, visiting Captain Willard Glazier described the scene:
  One of the principal points of attraction in both winter and summer is the Victoria Skating Rink, in Dominion Square. This extensive building is used during the milder months of the year for horticultural shows, concerts and miscellaneous gatherings. In the winter the doors of this place are thronged with a crowd of sleighs and sleigh drivers, while inside, skaters and spectators form a living, moving panorama, pleasant to look upon. The place is lighted by gas, and men and women, old and young, with a plentiful sprinkling of children, on skates, are practicing all sorts of gyrations. The ladies are prettily and appropriately dressed in skating costumes, and some of them are proficient in the art of skating. The spectators sit or stand on a raised lege around the ice parallelogram, while the skaters dart off, singly or in pairs, executing quadrilles, waltzes, curves, straight lines, letters, labyrinths, and every conceivable figure. Now and then some one comes to grief in the surging, moving throng; but is quickly on his or her feet again, the ice and water shaken off, and the zigzag resumed. Children skate; boys and girls; ladies and gentlemen, and even dignified military officers. Some skate well, some medium, some shockingly ill; but all skate, or essay to do so. It is the grand Montrealese pastime, and though the ice is sloppy, and the air chill and heavy with moisture, everybody has a good time.
  The Rink hosted pleasure skating and masquerade balls during the 1880s Montreal Winter Carnivals, which took place a city block to the east in Dominion Square.
caption: Fancy Ball at Victoria Rink, 1865
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