Plans for an arena in the downtown area were completed by 1938, with funding of $70,000 arranged through a debenture and subscriptions and donations. The selected location was a former garbage dump near Silver Lake. After the start of the
Second World War in 1939, however, plans for the Waterloo Civic Auditorium were shelved and money returned to donors. It was not until August 1945, that council agreed to proceed again, starting by issuing a $50,000 debenture. A contractor from Preston (now
Cambridge, Ontario), N. O. Hipel Company, was retained; work on the structure began in May 1946, and was completed in less than a year. The cost exceeded estimates, and totaled roughly $150,000, including the equipment. In addition to use by the public for skating in 1947, the arena was the home of the Intermediate B Waterloo McPhail's, the Waterloo Kent Junior C team, and the Waterloo Tigers. In the early 1950s, the Waterloo Hurricanes began to play there but lasted only two seasons. In later years, the arena was home to the Waterloo Siskins; the
Kitchener Rangers played there occasionally into the 1980s. The Siskins won the
Sutherland Cup (Ontario Hockey Association Junior B Champions) on 12 occasions, most recently in 2018-19 (of course, they had moved to the rec-complex after the arena was demolished). In 1963, the facility, now named Waterloo Memorial Arena, required remedial work to stabilize the subsoil. By May 1987, the building was deemed structurally unsound and closed. The walls and roof were removed and an air-supported dome was installed, allowing the arena to be used for over a decade, finally being closed and demolished in spring 2001. By that time, the much larger, nearby Waterloo Recreation Complex had been in use for eight years; it was renamed in 2002, and has since been called the
Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex. After the arena was demolished, the
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics was built at that location. ==References==