Breadcrumb Trail Links
Published Apr 03, 2026 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 6 minute read
The Montreal Forum before a game between the Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks in the 1960s. Photo by Gazette files /jpg, KI, apsmcArticle content
The Bell Centre, home of the Montreal Canadiens, recently turned 30 years old. If there was a birthday bash, it was likely low-key. Celebrating a building’s 30th year is like bragging about the new sedan having just turned over 1,000 km. Big whup.
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Should the arena nicknamed the “phone booth” — it was originally christened the Molson Centre — feel slighted by the subdued salute to three decades of structural sturdiness, corporate might respond with direct and humbling advice, such as:
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“Buck up, shinny barn, your time will come. I’m sure they’ll do it up right for you on your 50th. In the meantime, keep the turnstiles spinning, the merch moving, and the ice cold and hard. And please, no roof leaks. Oh, and how about stringing up a few Stanley Cup banners of your own, something to go with the two dozen plucked from the rafters of your predecessor, the Forum. Start with one.”
Ah yes, the fabled Forum. It closed 30 years ago, leaving behind a glorious star-speckled history and a mountain of memories.
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For oldtime Canadiens fans who are hopelessly afflicted with nostalgia, the famous arena at the corner of Atwater Avenue and Ste. Catherine Street was as welcoming as their own living rooms.
One of the most awe-inspiring playgrounds in all of professional sport, the Forum ended its illustrious 72-year run on March 11, 1996. Journeyman Russian forward Andrei Kovalenko tallied the final goal. An overwhelmed Maurice “Rocket” Richard was given a 16-minute standing ovation at the closing ceremonies. Once labelled “the most storied building in hockey history” the Forum is now a Cineplex movie theatre, its signs, sin bins, stanchions, and most of the folding wooden seats sold off after the death knell sounded. Today, visitors and moviegoers pause to snap selfies in a small, authentically steep bank of cardinal-red seats positioned above a centre-ice circle and two CH emblems.
The Kingston Whig-Standard’s Noon News Roundup
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Feeling nostalgic about all this, I asked a few knowledgeable locals, among them a couple of NHLers who had played there, to share their memories of the Forum.
“I first played there in junior with London and with Niagara Falls,” former NHL/WHA defenceman Jim Dorey recalls ice battles with the Yvan Cournoyer-led Junior Canadiens. “We changed in the visitor’s dressing room, which was also a real thrill because it was an actual NHL room.
“To have had the chance to play in that old barn, with all its history, retired numbers, banners and such, it’s still a remarkable memory for me.”
A small surgical scar on Dorey’s shoulder serves as a lasting memory of the Forum. “I got in too deep on a rush and (Canadiens defenceman Pierre) ‘Butch’ Bouchard levelled me behind the Habs net, broke my shoulder,” Dorey, 78, remembers. “It was my first game with the New York Rangers after the trade from the Leafs, and it was also my last game ever at the Forum.”
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With 24 championship pennants and a gallery of great players, the Forum generated enough memories to last several lifetimes.
The longest game in NHL history (1936) was played on Forum ice. Kingston’s Gus Marker was on the losing end of a 1-0 Detroit win that took six hours to complete.
The infamous Richard Riot touched off on March 17, 1955. Overzealous fans rioted inside and outside the Forum, irate over the Rocket’s league-imposed suspension for coldcocking a linesman.
The caskets of three Canadien legends, Howie Morenz, Richard and Jean Beliveau, were laid in state on Forum ice while tens of thousands of mourners passed by.
Canada’s collective hockey pride was jolted by a freewheeling squad of Soviets, who laid a 7-3 thumpin’ on our lads in the Forum-hosted Game 1 of the 1972 Summit Series.
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Retired Corrections Canada employee Steve Dine winds his memory back 60 years to recall his first game at the Forum, which came about courtesy of a family connection to a man who lived in the same Montreal apartment building as then-NHL president Clarence Campbell. “Prime seats right beside the penalty box,” says Dine, “and me a huge Habs fan. For a 10-year-old kid, it didn’t come any better.”
The game actually played second fiddle to the Dine family’s train ride back to Kingston. A host of Habs — the team was en route to Toronto to play the Maple Leafs the next day — passed through the Dines’ car on route to the club car, “a parade of famous faces,” Dine, 70, says. Among the famous faces was the battered mug of Dine’s childhood hero, goaltender Lorne ‘Gump’ Worsley. “I was a flopper too, just like the Gumper,” notes Dine, who played goal in the blue-chip Rotary Kiwanis minor-hockey loop. “I just never thought I’d end up looking like him.”
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There was the night in the late 1950s when explosive hip-checker Leo Boivin sent the Rocket into orbit. In a 1990 feature piece on the squat hall-of-fame rearguard, I asked Boston Bruins’ legend Milt Schmidt to recount his favourite Boivin belt. Schmidt answered in an eyeblink. “One night at the Forum, Leo caught the Rocket in full flight,” said Schmidt. “Richard did a complete somersault in the air and landed right on his chest. I must’ve seen Leo do that a thousand times, but that one sticks out because it was right in the Rocket’s backyard.”
Retired Kingston hotelier Venicio Rebelo spins the calendar back to 1975 and his first trip to the Forum with friend Dan Meehan. “I remember all the women and men being dressed up to the nines and almost everyone seemed to be smoking,” Rebelo, 67, says. “Everything looked so clean and bright, the emblem at centre ice, the painted lines, the red seats, the gleaming white boards with no advertising. Then you gazed up at the retired numbers and all the Cup banners and, well, as a Hab fan you were simply in awe.”
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Rebelo indoctrinated his son Jonathan in Hab history and patronage. At the Forum’s farewell souvenir sale, Jonathan purchased one of the wooden seats.
Yours truly’s initial visit to the Forum happened March 21, 1973, a date that l’d be hard-pressed to remember at gunpoint if not for an historic highlight that makes it easily researched — Canadiens winger Frank Mahavlich’s 500th career goal. I stood with a pal along the rail near the roof of the arena.
What stands out in my memory was the ovation from 17,000-plus throats when Mahavlich potted the milestone marker that clinched a 3-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks. The cheering was deafening and unlike anything I’d heard before. Passionate patrons in standing room were suddenly in a state of joyous delirium, me included. A second thunderclap of applause erupted once the goal was announced over the PA system. “Le but de canadiens compte par…”
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Kingston-born Dennis Kearns played 10 seasons with the Canucks including the night the Big M deposited his 500th. Each time he visited the Forum Kearns had the same feeling — “Awestruck,” the 80-year-old blueliner recalls from his home on the West Coast. “That’s how you felt when you looked around and took in all the history. You got the sense you were in a special place.
“Montreal GM Sam Pollock parked his Lincoln right inside the Forum,” Kearns adds with a laugh. “I guess if you were a hockey architect like him, you could park anywhere you like.”
For Kingston businessman and lifelong Habs fan Brent Neely, his first visit to the Forum remains an indelible memory several decades later. “It sounds cliche, and it is cliche, but being inside the Forum for the first time was almost a religious experience,” Neely, 56, recalls the 1992 visit. “The energy, the atmosphere, the vibe — it was all incredible. Walking around, looking at the photos, looking up at the banners, you felt this genuine sense of history from year to year.
“I was 22 years old at the time, not exactly a kid, but I felt like one. The place could do that to you.”
Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter and hardfast fan of les bleu, blanc et rouge. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com
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