Listowel honours 1959 arena collapse victims with new memorial

The names of Pete Leppard’s peewee hockey teammates who perished in the collapse of Listowel, Ont.'s arena in 1959 are never far from his mind.

“Five or 10 times a day you think of the boys, or what happened that day,” said Leppard.

On Feb. 28, 1959, under the weight of a large snowfall, the roof of Listowel Memorial Arena came crashing down, trapping more than two dozen peewee hockey players and their coaches — Leppard was one of them.

“We were just changing lines, and we were all gathering at the player’s bench. I was just going through the door, and it came down, and I was trapped in along the boards,” he recalled.

Keith Bender was also trapped in the debris.

“I was knocked out at the time, because a beam was laying on the back of my neck. I was on the player’s bench. The memories fade, once in a while, but they do come back,” said Bender.

Both Bender and Leppard lived to talk about their harrowing ordeal. Seven teammates, and the town’s recreation director did not, and perished in the roof collapse.

Bender and Leppard are now part of a group of Listowel residents turning the former site of the collapsed arena, demolished two years ago, into a memorial park, including a commemorative wall for those lost.

Artist rendering of the planned Listowel Memorial Arena Park. (Source: Municipality of North Perth)

“It’ll look like the end boards of an arena that look out onto eight memorial trees. At the back of the memorial there will be the names of the victims, plus eight pairs of skates that will be there forever and ever,” explained Listowel Memorial Arena Park Committee Chair, Jerry Rozendal.

Fundraising for the $1.4 million project, which will include a playground, gardens, a skating rink and markers denoting centre ice, and the four corners of the former arena, is well underway, with nearly $200,000 raised so far. Rozendal said they hope to begin and complete construction of the memorial park in 2023.

“I was expecting a little memorial, which would have been fine. But, especially for people new to town, who through no fault of their own don’t know about the arena collapse, this park will forever keep this in people’s minds,” said Bender.

“’We got to do something,’ I told my wife. 'The boys are being forgotten.' We started this [Friends of 59 Committee], and it’s been a tremendous success, not for us, because we’re just fortunate to be here and be a part of it,” said Leppard.

The site of Listowel Memorial Arena Park, as seen on Dec. 23, 2022. (Scott Miller/CTV News London)

To learn more about the Listowel Memorial Arena Park and fundraising efforts, you can visit the North Perth website.

A display at the Steve Kerr Memorial Arena in Listowel, complete with items from the 1959 collapse, also has more information about the new memorial park.

Jimmy Hastings, Kenneth Hymers, Ricky Kaufman, Jackie Rheubottom, Bryan Seehaver, Barry Smith, Keith Wight and Ken McLeod perished in the roof collapse. Many of their families, and of those that survived, are part of the Listowel Arena Memorial Park Committee.