Tag Archives: Frances Nunziata

Save Weston Lions Arena: Community Push for Heritage Status

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People enjoying Weston Lions Arena on Family Day, February 16, 2026.

On November 12, 2025, Toronto Council voted on a motion to demolish Toronto’s unique Weston Lions Arena and build a new facility without an ice rink. This came as a shock to many in the community.

A January 20, 2026 report from the senior Manager of Heritage Planning recommended adding the Weston Lions Arena to Toronto’s Heritage Register. At today’s meeting of the Etobicoke York Community Council, all five councillors voted in favour of adding Weston Lions Arena to the Register. Interestingly, Councillor Frances Nunziata, who has been the driving force behind the demolition of the arena and the turfing of the Weston Minor Hockey League, voted with the majority claiming she had wanted heritage status all along.

No fewer than 34 people wrote email submissions and five four spoke to the Community Council online or in person in favour of the Heritage Register addition. What was supposed to be a public relations exercise for Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment has turned into a public relations disaster for them. Many in and outside the Weston community expressed their opposition to November’s Toronto Council vote to demolish the arena.

What happens next?

The Heritage Register designation will be voted on during a meeting of all Toronto councillors on March 26 and 27. If successful, the designation will protect the arena for two years.

If Councillor Nunziata has any political savvy, she and MLSE should back off on demolition plans and Weston Lions Arena should be allowed to continue providing services to the Weston community and the several hockey organizations currently using it – with better funding for maintenance and upkeep. MLSE should have known their history better – the company’s founder, Conn Smythe donated the sand under the Weston ice in exchange for allowing one of the Maple Leafs’ farm teams to use the arena. If MLSE wants to build a new facility, there are no doubt other sites in the area where they can do so without destroying a precious community heritage building.

Read more about Weston Lions Arena here and in this New York Times article.

Update:

Looking at the meeting on YouTube, it’s clear what’s going on. Councillor Amber Morely through a point of order, stopped one of the speakers from advocating for a continued use of the ice surface. She later stated that the community is more diverse now and that other members of the community should have an opportunity to use the space. Along the same lines, Councillor Nunziata claimed she wanted heritage status for the arena all along but wants the building to be ‘open to the public’. Bizarrely she scolded the Weston Historical Society for having the Plank Road Building designated as a building of historical importance but doing nothing with the building since that time. (The building is privately owned).

Amber Morely: “We can do better to better serve the local communities.”

Translation: Hockey is not a diverse enough sport and we will pit one community against another in order to support the removal of the ice surface in Weston.

It seems that the designation is smoke and mirrors and will not protect the arena. The direction is now clarified. Weston Lions Arena may be worthy of preservation but its historic ice surface is of no value to future communities.

Read more here.

Weston Lions Arena under threat.

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The entrance to the historic arena.

Weston Lions Arena was financed and built by Weston Lions in 1949 and has provided an indoor ice rink (and from 1959 an open air pool) for generations of Westonians. Now, without any meaningful consultation, local Councillor Frances Nunziata has in effect engineered a corporate takeover of the facility by the charitable arm of Maple Leaf Sports Enterprises, a giant real estate and sports franchise company. MLSE wants to turn the site into what they call an ‘MLSE Launchpad’. The arena along with its unique features (including a sand base under the ice and a barrel roof made of douglas fir beams) will be demolished and a multiple sports facility will be built. The problem is that one of the sports won’t be hockey. This apparently will be a ‘leasing arrangement’.

MLSE owns many (financially) successful teams such as the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Toronto Argonauts. It’s biggest shareholder is Rogers – yes, the cable and telecommunications giant. Why would a for-profit company be interested in redeveloping Weston Lions Arena?

The answer is money. Corporations love to show off their good corporate citizenship by donating to communities. It’s a tax write-off and in theory, good public relations. Access to the MLSE Launchpad will be free and provide an outlet for youth where they can burn off some steam and learn some skills. New sports talent can be discovered and developed in such facilities. All well and good but MLSE and Councillor Nunziata are coy about the future of the ice at Weston. The Weston Minor Hockey League will be left without a place to play. Nunziata says that she will find ice for the league’s next season – and then presumably they’re on their own to find a new home. This is the same councillor responsible for the wildly unsuccessful Weston Hub the demise of the Weston Farmers Market and the infamous bike lane to nowhere, used by nobody that causes traffic jams along Scarlett Road.

There are more questions than answers with this proposal. Is this a done deal? Who decides what the new facility will look like and who will run it? When does the community have a say? What are the alternatives to placing this community asset into private hands? Why not develop another site?

This is a case of the city falling over itself to receive a pittance of corporate charity without a community-wide consultation. What are the details of this arrangement? MLSE is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. This is a behind closed doors elimination of a hard-won community asset. If MLSE and Rogers aren’t prepared to keep an ice surface going, what does that say about their respect for the people and history of Weston?

Why does our historic arena have to be destroyed?

Read more here.