Artist rendition of Listowel Memorial Arena Roof Collapse on Saturday February 28, 1959 at 9:27am.

Two dozen peewee players and coaches were buried in the rubble and only two climbed out of the debris unharmed. Most were rescued but eight people were killed, including seven youth players and Listowel recreation director Kenneth McLeod. Players - Jimmy Hastings, Kenneth Hymers, Ricky Kaufman, Jackie Rheubottom, Bryan Seehaver, Barry Smith and Keith Wight..... RIP - Never Forget.

A mass funeral was held for the victims, with about 1,500 people filling two churches.

Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe offered to pay for the funerals of all the deceased.
NHL players and officials stepped up to help the people of Listowel.

Hall of Famer Fred ‘Cyclone’ Taylor, who grew up in Listowel, initiated a drive to boost the disaster fund. Each of the six NHL clubs that existed at the time donated $500. Hall of Famer George Hay and NHLer Jack McIntyre also organized fundraisers.

Today (2024), the Listowel Memorial Arena Park '59 on the same site as the tragedy, is in final stages of being approved.
You can DONATE to this project at https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/fundraising/eae9da01-2371-4922-834e-c5cb6c88a658

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The Listowel Memorial Arena was built in 1953 with bowstring glue laminated timber trusses spaced 20' apart and spanning 110'. that formed a rounded / curved bowstring truss roof. The walls were made of concrete blocks, 8" thick, and approximately 20' high, with the wall thickness doubled at all truss supports to form pilasters, 16" by 40" in plan. The main load-carrying members in this structure were - roof joists, trusses, walls, pilasters, foundation walls and footings. 14 trusses were to have been originally supplied in design, but that only 11 were installed. No consulting engineer or architect were engaged in design. A local contractor was hired as a "supervisor" for the construction at a fixed fee. The Listowel Arena was not built under the National Building Code.

The winter of 1958/59 resulted in a total snow fall which was approximately 36% above normal in the Listowel area at the end of February. On February 25, the total fresh snow fall had reached close to 70" and the depth of snow on the ground was 24". Areas to the south and north, and particularly to the west, of Listowel had recorded even greater total snow falls.

Snow had accumulated more on the north side of Listowel Arena, some of which was removed on January 7th, but none was removed after. Since the load on the roof along the north eave was 55-80 p.s.f., it must be concluded that there was very little snow along the south side and the upper parts of the roof because some of the snow naturally had blown off the roof

It thus appears that, at the time of the collapse, there was a strip of heavy snow along the north side of the roof which would exert a strong unbalanced force on the bowstring trusses, a force to which this type of truss is particularly susceptible, since ii tends to produce high compressive and tensile stresses in the web members and considerable bending in addition to the axial forces in the top and bottom chords.

After the collapse, the importance ,of measuring the actual weight of snow at the site was fortunately realized by a professor from the University of Waterloo. He rushed to the scene at 2.30 p.m. and took two samples of snow from the standing part of the roof just before a crew of men were about to shovel the snow off as a precautionary measure.

A snow sample taken from a location 30' from the west wall and l0' from the north wall on the roof indicated a weight of the snow layer of 55 p.s.f. At this spot, the snow was 2' deep with 2" of ice at the bottom. A second sample of snow, which had remained undisturbed during the collapse, was taken from the north-east corner of the building on a piece of fallen roof. This sample indicated a load of 75 p.s.f., the snow being 28" deep with 21/2" oI ice. Later, on March 3, a member of the investigating team from the National Research Council also took a sample of snow in the north-east corner indicating a weight of snow cover between 70-80 p.s.f.

A later investigation into the workmanship and materials which go into glued laminated trusses play as important part in the performance of the trusses as the design itself. In view of this fact, the Division of Building Research of the National Research Council, with the approval of the Attorney-General's Department of the Province of Ontario, requested the Forest Products Laboratories of Canada to assist in the investigation
of the collapse of the Listowel Arena. There were indications that the collapse may have been caused by failure of the glued laminated bowstring trusses, and that the gluing of the laminated members may have been faulty.

As a result of the tragic collapse of the Listowel Memorial Arena and the thorough investigation which was made by several agencies of government and by independent consultants the following points deserve special mention, as changes were made for Administration for some authority to approve or disapprove the plans and specifications for any proposed structure in this category. Design standards would be necessary to have a standard by which to judge the design and to make this decision. This standard would be the building byJaw of the municipality concerned. Any municipality which had not prepared a building code of its own and which did not wish to prepare one could adopt the National Building Code of Canada as its building byJaw.

Provision must be made to ensure that the structure is built according to the plans and specifications. Supervision by the person who prepared the design is an eminently satisfactory arrangement. In cases where this is not done, some other properly qualified engineer or architect should be in charge of this very important phase of the project. One of the most significant functions of the supervisor is to ensure that the material supplied is in accordance with the requirements of the specifications.

Standard building codes were implemented for all arenas in Canada after this tragedy.