A man and his obsession: Billy Georgette and the Victoria Rink

Billy Georgette's campaign to turn the Victoria Rink into a national monument has been so intense that it may* have cost him many friends.

The engaging, man-about-town, veteran jazz pianist at the House of Jazz has been so feisty in his attempts to revive the historic former rink that people occasionally roll their eyes once he starts (yes, myself included, occasionally).

Georgette, 75, grew up listening to Rocket Richard’s hockey feats on the radio and “chasing a puck on McDonald Park on wobbly ankles.” He made it into his fifth decade before discovering that he had been born to return the rink built in 1862, and transformed into an indoor parking garage in 1925, back to its former glory.

The campaign was conceived after a disastrous series of events in the early 90s. Georgette was fired from his piano bar gig at Hotel de la Montagne, his booking agency tanked, his girlfriend flew the coop and his father died.

The only gig he could score was at George Durst’s Cage au Sports on Guy. “I had to wear a funny hat with striped shorts with armbands and play honky-tonk piano for sports freaks,” he recounts.

The Habs won the Stanley Cup that year and an idle bar chat about who won the first cup launched Georgette into the rabbit hole of Montreal’s hockey history. He serendipitously found a 25 cent paperback at a used bookstore across the street which made reference to the Victoria Rink, which had since become a car lot with room for hundreds of cars.

The inauspicious red brick building on Drummond just north of Rene Levesque Blvd was once the site of an ice palace that hosted posh winter skating galas on an unrefrigerated sheet of ice. It was where the first organized indoor hockey game was played in 1875 and Georgette says the rink was the site of the first-ever electronically broadcast sports event, with teletype updates of Stanley Cup games versus Winnipeg emanating from the building in 1897. His sources for such trivia are somewhere in haphazardly filed newspaper clippings.

The size of the lot between Stanley and Drummond may have even helped dictate the dimensions of today’s standard rink, 200 by 85 feet. “There it is, this whole fantastic story. So how come nobody is interested?” Georgette asks.

Ottawa-based hockey historian Paul Kitchen expresses both affection and doubt about a possible restoration. Kitchen agrees that the Victoria Rink was, "very significant" not only as the site of the first organized indoor hockey game on March 3, 1875, but also because it was the in-spot for Montrealers, a place to see-and-be-seen at fancy masquerades and skating galas.

The rink was also where Gov. Gen. Lord Stanley – namesake of the Stanley Cup – got his first taste of the sport, watching a game at the winter carnival in 1889. Stanley was hooked. “He was so taken with the sport he followed it closely," says Kitchen who describes Georgette’s plan as something between “a pipe dream and a long shot.”

"I think it’s a very commendable objective but that rink sits on prime downtown property and I don’t know who’s going to put up the money to buy the land and put the arena or skating rink," he says. "It’d be very ambitious but if some philanthropist came along it would be a great thing.”

Geogette’s quest to restore the Victoria Rink started with former owner Lorne Webster.

“I’d go to his office and we’d have a great time. He was super interested in squash and my pitch didn’t really click with him.”

Georgette set about writing a musical about the rink – one he’s still working on – to raise consciousness about the historic site.

One time he spotted Pierre Trudeau leaving his office on Mansfield. When Trudeau hopped into a cab, Georgette jumped in it as well, buttonholing the ex-PM who promptly ejected him from the vehicle.

Another time Georgette bent the ear of Brian Mulroney, who was relieving himself in the next urinal at the Mas des Oliviers restaurant on Bishop. “He gave me his card but I never got past his secretary,” says Georgette.

Hockey loving current Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been more responsive to Georgette’s passionate pleas. The PM has sent him three letters of encouragement.

“He gave me his card and said to keep in touch,” says Georgette. “I can’t blame him for being non-committal though, there’s a lot involved in this.”

Few would be better placed to remodel the joint than Georgette’s architect son, Zebulon Perron who has become the much-celebrated new darling of the Montreal’s architectural community.

But Georgette hints that Zeb might find his father’s endless campaign a bit tiresome. “He thinks of it more as his old man’s thing.”

* CORRECTION Sept. 27, 2011: Because of an error during editing, the original story referred to Billy Georgette as having lost friends due to his tireless campaign to preserve the Victoria Rink. OpenFile regrets the error.