Despite being fanatical hockey fans (the cold type, not what all kiwi Indians do), they tend to have a self-deprecating view on the world. One of the guys doing the hop-on-hop-off commentary seemed to take a pride in the fact that the Toronto sports teams had record losing streaks.
He was telling us about the Rogers Stadium, the first retractable-roofed stadium to be built. It also has an attached hotel, with 70 rooms that look directly over the stadium. It has a couple of interesting stories from it's history. The first is from the opening ceremony.
On this day, the stadium was packed with the gliterati of Toronto, and a song had been written for the occasion. When it came time to retract the roof for the first time, the stadium erupted with a chant of "open the dome". It opened. So did the skies. It seems that it takes 20 minutes to fully retract the roof, and another twenty minutes to close the roof. It also seems that once the process begins, it cannot be stopped.
For 40 minutes, the wealthy and influential of Toronto sat and squelched.
I do hope that their Armanis are wash and wear.
The other story relates to those hotel rooms that overlook the stadium. It appears that one occupant was more interested in the woman with him in the room, rather than the game. Unfortunately, he assumed incorrectly that the glass was one way, and that the rest of the stadium was oblivious to what they were doing in there.
Doh!!
Anyway, Toronto has an interesting history. They either had really crappy fire departments, or were just unlucky. It seems that everything they built, burnt down. Even the fire stations.
They reached the point that the governing body for Toronto made a ruling that any new building in the city centre must be made of brick. Hope they don't have any earthquakes. Yikes.
Most fires were accidents, but there was one which was started intentionally. A group of Amrikans snuck up there and burnt down one of the original parliament houses. The site is now used for a lube-shop. Not to be outdone, a group of Canadians went down over the border and returned the favour. Unfortunately, the rains started just after the fire did, so it went out. All that happened was that the building needed whitewashing to cover the damage to the salmon-coloured building. Not long after, this building became known as The White House. "The Salmon House" doesn't really have the same gravitas, does it? "The Pink House"? Yeah Nah!
So, The Amrikans got The White House. The Canadians got an auto-lube. Fair deal, don't you think?
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