ABSTRACT

On the evening of 23 February 1951 it was reported that ‘a useful and living memorial’ came to life as the doors of the War Memorial Gym were first opened to a throng of several thousand students eager to attend the inaugural basketball game between UBC and Eastern Washington University. At the ensuing sock hop, the newly varnished floor was so springy that a folklore developed that layers of horse hair had been inserted beneath the wooden surface for flexibility. This was UBC’s ‘million dollar gym’, the ‘palace of sweat’ – Canada’s largest and most modern gymnasium, and recipient of the national Massey Silver Medal Design award (see Figure 2.1).1 It was encouraging, said the jury, to see an established university strike into new paths.2 Lauded for its simple dignity and imaginative quality, the UBC gym was voted the best of all recreational buildings erected in Canada since the end of the war.3 The Alumni Chronicle claimed that it was ‘probably the finest building the University has yet built on campus’ and ‘one of the finest college gyms on the continent’.4