Shawinigan and Trois-Rivières are only 30 minutes apart and even with it getting late in Shawinigan, there was still some light left by the time we reached Trois-Rivières.

I had slight hopes that driving south might bring me to lesser snow depths, but there was no way I could even shovel or work around the mess at the Trois-Rivières skatepark. The snow was a foot deep.

While the Trois-Rivières skatepark looked promising, it wasn't even close to the primary reason I found myself in the hometown of Jean Beliveau. For a long while, the top two stadiums I wanted to see in North America were Qualcomm (former home of the San Diego Chargers), and the Colisée de Trois-Rivières.

Le Colisée was on the list for a few years too as I planned on seeing a game whenever I happened to find myself in Trois-Rivières. As Trois-Rivières is right in the middle of the corridor between Montreal and Quebec City, I didn't think this would take that long to end up here and check out an LNAH game - the LNAH being the lower level, amateur goon league up here in Quebec.

I briefly thought I waited too long when the LNAH took away Trois-Rivières' team in 2018, but thankfully I soon discovered that the local university still plays here.

Game on.

The Colisée de Trois-Rivières is located within the city's Exhibition Park and was built during a great overhaul of the area in the 1930s.

Amidst the depths of The Great Depression, Quebec had a program for municipal work projects to employ the many men out of work. Trois-Rivières applied for money under this program to heavily renovate and expand their Exhibition Park in the northwest sector of the city, which at the time only had some old, wooden, 19th-century buildings and a simple horse track.

With the provincial money, the City of Trois-Rivières constructed a glut of new cement buildings at Exhibition Park, including a baseball park, this hockey stadium, an outdoor swimming pool, two large dressing rooms, cattle pavillion, horse pavillion, and public washrooms in a faux windmill.

Away from that faux windmill, all of the other Exhibition Park buildings were built in the Streamline Moderne style, a late branch of Art Deco.

Streamline Moderne features long wide windows, rounded corners, horizontal lines, flat roofs and unique window placements or unique windows themselves (think portholes). This style came about because of new movement speeds in trains and ocean liners, represented in the architecture by the smooth and continuous lines. It was then often applied to transportation hubs like bus depots and airline terminals, while also being applied to personal items to make them seem fresh and modern - things like clocks, vacuum cleaners and Airstream trailers.

The Great Depression assistance program only came into effect with the election of the Maurice Duplessis Union Nationale political party in 1936. It then took until 1938 for Trois-Rivières to start work on these buildings, and then the work was quickly interrupted by World War II in 1939.

With most of these buildings barely built, the Canadian Army took over Exhibition Park and set up a military camp on the property. Some of the soldiers would finish work such as plastering, while also converting the buildings from places for cattle shows and hockey, to things like a place for training exercises and administrative offices in the case of the Colisée specifically.

Following the war, Trois-Rivières reacquired the buildings and the Colisée was mostly a roulathèque - an indoor roller skating rink. It also served as a place for poultry shows, boxing matches, and the "Monsieur Trois-Rivières" annual bodybuilding competition.

I should mention here that I won Monsieur Trois-Rivières eight straight years in the 1980s. Stay thirsty my friends.

The City of Trois-Rivières installed a refrigeration system to make artificial ice in 1951, marking the point where it was finally time for the chickens and bodybuilders to go.

Le Colisée then became the main arena for Trois-Rivières and a grand inauguration was held, with a game between the local Trois-Rivières Reds and the Montreal Canadiens played, and the event attended by the premier, Maurice L. Duplessis.

The Trois-Rivières Reds became the Trois-Rivières Maple Leafs after a sponsorship agreement in 1966. The Maple Leafs played 3 seasons in the Quebec Junior Hockey League (QJHL) before it merged with the Metropolitan Montreal Junior Hockey League to create the QMJHL. Upon joining the QMJHL, the Maple Leafs were renamed the Trois-Rivières Ducs, until 4 years later when they became the Trois-Rivières Draveurs (a Draveur being a Raftman).

The Draveurs played 23 QMJHL seasons in this rink, twice going to the Memorial Cup championship for all of junior hockey. In fact, in the second trip to the Memorial Cup it was Quebec's turn to host the tournament and they went with 3 different host cities for that 1978-79 tournament - one of which was Trois-Rivières (along with Shawinigan & Verdun). Unfortunately, there was no storybook hometown ending to the tournament, as the Peterborough Petes won & Trois-Rivières never returned to the finals.

Trois-Rivières would make news one last time in 1991. With an injury to their backup goaltender, the Draveurs signed female goaltender Manon Rhéaume as a backup to Jocelyn Thibault. After riding the bench for a few games, Manon finally entered a game on November 26th, 1991 against the Granby Bisons. By entering that game here at Le Colisée de Trois-Rivières, she became the first woman to ever play in a major junior hockey game in Canada.

The Draveurs were excelling once again as the years moved into the 1990s. It's during the 1991-92 season that they finished 2nd overall in the league with a record of 45-21-4 for 94 points, eventually making it to the playoff finals against the Verdun Collège Français.

For years the Draveurs had been only averaging about 1100 or 1200 people in attendance, while executives said that number needed to be closer to 1900 or 2000 to ensure viability. One of the reasons the executives blamed was that many people in Trois-Rivières were too invested in the Montreal Canadiens-Quebec Nordiques rivalry to care about junior hockey.

And even during this league final of 1991-92, there were still empty seats at the Colisée during Game 6 of the entire QMJHL final.

The owners saw the writing on the wall and sold the team to a group from Sherbrooke during that summer.

During my visit there weren't as many empty seats as these pictures would lead you to believe. Isy and I actually stopped at the rink first to take some exterior pictures, and then went inside to use the washroom. That's why many of these interior photos actually come from about 3 hours before game time.

Following that stop, we went downtown to our accommodations, where Isy couldn't head back to the arena with me as she needed to get some schoolwork done. Instead, I caught a solo cab back up the Colisée, but don't feel bad for me, as here I was seeing one of the sporting stadiums I wanted to see the most on my birthday. Not too shabby.

Speaking of not too shabby, I don't have to rank this poutine because this wasn't a QMJHL game, but Trois-Rivières' poutine came correct regardless. These were some lovely, pillowy curds, b'y.

Even though I went to a Canadian university, I'd never attended a university hockey game before. I always meant to go see the Windsor Lancers so I could attend another game at the old Windsor Arena, but my dumb ass never actually put those plans into action...and now they store salt in the old Windsor Arena and they'll never play hockey there again.

Anyway, back to the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières Patriotes, who had a decent and lively crowd for a university game in an older rink. Unfortunately, I imagine that the Patriotes time at Le Colisée is up. Trois-Rivières recently decided to build a new $60-million dollar rink, which is fancy and shiny enough to steal the ECHL team from St. John's, and you'd have to think it's also glamourous enough to steal this university team from Le Colisée.

On the other hand, can an ECHL team share a rink with a university team? I can't seem to find any articles that say one way or the other, but I know that the University of Windsor plays in the ho-hum Capri Pizzeria Recreation Complex (South Windsor Arena), not at the WFCU Centre. So who knows, maybe Le Colisée isn't as dead as I think it is?

Regardless, I was so happy to finally see a game here. I was hoping to attend more UQTR Patriotes games, but we shall see.

Leaving the game to walk back downtown, I discovered another impressive part of the Parc de l'Exposition as I stumbled upon the Pacifique-Duplessis gate, also built in 1938.

The road through Exposition Park closes each year for the Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières race and the racers actually drive through this enormous gate as part of the course.

Isy was now done her work and it was time for dinner and maybe a few celebratory birthday drinks.

The downtown of Trois-Rivières was bumping with lots of people out on this Friday night and we found a bar with a great selection of music. Lots of classic rap videos, sprinkled in with a great taste of the modern (like A$AP Rocky & Skepta's Praise The Lord).

This bar also had these drinks with full, upside-down Coronas in them & you know I had to get one. Isy was helpful and got a very close-up picture of my big head sipping on this to startle everyone on Facebook with my ugly mug, lol.

Morning came soon enough and it was time to leave our fine downtown accommodations that were only $101 taxes in. The Les Studios du Huard building actually dates to 1875 and was a house that was at one time used as an American consulate.

Trois-Rivières had some enticing old & cheap motels, but I couldn't pass up this deal in the heart of downtown that made almost everything walkable.

Anyway, more to come.