The Pacific Coliseum has been standing strong along Renfrew Street in Vancouver since 1968, where it was pivotal in bringing the NHL to Western Canada. Now, it enters a new era as the first home for the PWHL’s Vancouver expansion team for the upcoming 2025–26 season.
The building has a storied hockey history in its nearly sixty years of operations, and the PWHL’s newest team adds another chapter to its legacy.
The ground was broken for the new arena in 1966. The minor professional Vancouver Canucks of the first Western Hockey League were outgrowing their nearby home of the Vancouver Forum, and its limited capacity of just over 5,000 was a catalyst in Vancouver being rejected from the 1967 NHL expansion wave. The Coliseum, which would hold a capacity over three times larger, was enough to convince the NHL that Vancouverites were ready for the major professional team they had been itching for for years.
The Vancouver Canucks of the NHL would call the Coliseum home for 25 years. From their inaugural 1970–71 season until the upgraded GM Place (now Rogers Arena) opened downtown ahead of the 1995–96 season, the Pacific Coliseum was the place Canucks fans from Metro Vancouver and beyond would flock to to see their team. The building hosted two Stanley Cup Finals — one in 1982 where the New York Islanders led by Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin, and Bryan Trottier swept the Canucks in four games en route to one of the strongest dynasties in the modern NHL, and the hard-fought 1994 finals against the New York Rangers that ended in seven games. The building also hosted the 1977 NHL All-Star Game, where the Wales Conference beat the Campbell Conference 4–3 after MVP Rick Martin scored twice to win the game for the team led by Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman.
Many Canucks legends made their names in the Coliseum’s concrete walls, including Stan Smyl, Trevor Linden, Pavel Bure, Kirk McLean, and the late Gino Odjick. The team went through major changes aesthetically too, as their time in the Coliseum began with the west coast inspired blue, green, and white combo on the stick and rink logo, shifted to the black, yellow, and red of the “flying V” and the fan-favourite skate logos. The ever familiar orca wouldn’t make its first appearance until the move to GM Place and the “West Coast Express” era would begin in the late 1990s.
Once the Canucks left in 1995, the Coliseum would be void of hockey until the major junior Vancouver Giants of the modern WHL would take over the building after the franchise was founded in 2001. The Giants would play there until 2016, when dwindling attendance numbers forced them to move eastward to the smaller Langley Events Centre, where they play to this day. The Giants played host to the 2007 Memorial Cup, where they defeated the Medicine Hat Tigers in the finals to win their first and only Memorial Cup to date, after losing to the Tigers in game seven of the WHL finals. The tournament at the Pacific Coliseum is still the record holder for the highest total attendance for the Memorial Cup series, with 121,461 having attended the nine games hosted in the building. The building also hosted the 1977 Memorial Cup series, where future Canuck captain Stan Smyl and the New Westminster Bruins (now the Kamloops Blazers) would defeat the Ottawa 67s in the finals to win their first Memorial Cup.
The arena would also be home to many short-lived hockey endeavors, including the major junior Vancouver Nats from 1971 until 1973 (now the Seattle Thunderbirds), the World Hockey Association Vancouver Blazers from 1973 until 1975, and the Roller Hockey International Vancouver VooDoo for the 1994–95 season, after playing at the PNE Agrodome the previous season, which now serves as the practice facility for PWHL Vancouver. The Coliseum hosted the fourth game of the historic 1972 Summit Series, where the Soviet Union beat Canada 5–3, and was one of four venues in British Columbia to host the 2006 IIHF World Junior Championships. The building also served as a filming location for the 2004 film Miracle as a stand-in for Madison Square Garden while telling the story of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.”
Aside from hockey, the Coliseum was also a venue during the 2010 Winter Olympics, hosting figure skating and short-track speed skating for the international games. Team Canada would also play two qualification matches for the Billie Jean King Cup of Tennis at the Coliseum, the first against Latvia in 2022, and the second against Belgium in 2023, the year Canada went on to win their first championship in the tournament. Then-North American Boxing Federation heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali would defeat Canadian boxer George Chuvalo at the Coliseum in May 1972, and notable musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, George Harrison, ABBA, Bob Marley, and David Bowie played the venue in its long history.
The Pacific Coliseum has held a myriad of events, and remains an iconic venue for all Vancouverites — whether their memories stem from the days of the Canucks, the Giants, or one of the many other attractions the building has had to offer in its storied history.
With the PWHL coming to town permanently after the highly successful Vancouver stop on last season’s takeover tour, it will be exciting to see how the newest addition to professional sports in this city builds its own legacy on the grounds so many others were created upon.