History
Construction was completed in 1914 on what was then known as McGill Graduates stadium, which was located on the slope of Mount Royal, at the corner of University and Pine (avenue Des Pins). The stadium sat dormant through World War I with the cessation of football from 1914 to 1918. On July 5, 1917, Captain Percival Molson, a McGill University alumnus and sports star who had been instrumental in getting the stadium plan approved, was killed in action in France. His will left $75,000 to the university to help pay most of the total costs for the completion of the stadium. Other individual donors whose generosity built and renovated the stadium were William C. Macdonald and John W. McConnell. Designed by Percy Erskine Nobbs, the stadium was officially renamed in honour of Molson in 1919.
The Montreal Alouettes have played most of their home games at Percival Molson Memorial Stadium, located on the campus of McGill University, since November 1997. Until 2007, they played their last home regular season game at the Olympic Stadium. Any playoff games are played at the Olympic Stadium. Percival Molson stadium is also home of the Selwyn House Gryphons and the McGill Redmen football and rugby teams. It was the home of the CFL Montreal Alouettes from 1947 to 1967. The only Grey Cup game to have been played at Molson Stadium was in 1931. Nevertheless it was the first time the Grey Cup had been contested outside of Ontario. It also served as a venue for field hockey during the 1976 Summer Olympics. It seated 20,202 and has been sold out for Alouettes games since August 12, 1999.
The Alouettes' decision to return to the venue was problematic because the team was being sponsored by the Labatt Brewing Company and the stadium shared the name of its major competitor, Molson, though not named for it. Eventually, the team chose to change sponsors, and have since been sponsored by Molson. In 2004, The Alouettes installed a FieldTurf surface at Molson Stadium which is still in use.
Read more about this topic: Percival Molson Memorial Stadium
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.”
—Imre Lakatos (1922–1974)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)