Canada Life Place

The arena stands at a busy intersection in London, Ontario, where the traffic lights turn red and green over a street lined with parked cars. Budweiser Gardens was its name for a dozen years before the lease was renewed and the signage changed to Canada Life Place. The brick exterior gives way to glass walls that wrap around the entrance, and the roofline is broken by a row of dormer windows set into the slate. Inside, the ice stretches out beneath a hanging scoreboard that reads "MAKE NOISE" in green letters. Banners hang from the rafters, marking seasons and championships, alongside flags for Canada and the United States.

The London Knights make their home here, and their presence is visible in the rows of seats and the banners that line the upper tier. The arena also hosts concerts and other events, shifting the seating from hockey configuration to centre stage or theatrical layouts depending on the audience. The surface is a standard rink, kept cold and smooth for the players who skate across it.

A statue of two runners stands nearby in a park, a quiet contrast to the noise that fills the arena on match days. The building has been part of the city since it opened in the early 2000s, long enough for the teams to settle in and for the community to grow accustomed to the sound of skates cutting ice.