Varsity Stadium: A location steeped in history

What do the late John Lennon, The Toronto Argonauts and Olympian Usain Bolt have in common? They all performed at Varsity Stadium.

The location has been a home for sports since 1898, but the stadium itself was built in 1911. Currently, it is home to the University of Toronto’s Varsity Blues.

“It’s been a civic stadium and really the longest continuously used civic stadium that we have in Toronto,” says Bruce Kidd, a professor at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at U of T.

Kidd, who ran track at the stadium and is a former Olympian, says it is a big part of the city’s history. A number of sporting events have taken place at the stadium’s location, including 35 Grey Cups, track and field races and some soccer matches for the 1976 Summer Olympics.

“My father brought me down here to watch the Argos at U of T play football in the 1950s and I then came down here to run as a high school student with the University of Toronto track team and basically I’ve never left U of T,” says Kidd. “That experience led me to go on and run in the Olympics.”

The venue has also hosted a number of concerts including a 12-hour music event called 1969 Rock ‘n Roll Revival. Performers who rocked out on stage included The Doors and Plastic Ono Band which consisted of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Eric Clapton, with Klaus Voormann.

In 2002, when Kidd was the Dean of Faculty, he faced the tough decision of having to tear the stadium down because of its poor condition.

“Essentially the University could no longer afford to maintain it properly and it declined,” explained Kidd. “[It] Crumbled to the point where the fire marshal declared it unsafe and so we were faced with a very option of closing the stadium or doing something different with it.”

Initially they removed the seats and used it simply as a playing field, but after a lot of back and forth they decided to rebuild and save the decades of history Torontonians have experienced at the stadium.

“I’ve spent my life here and this has been – I don’t wanna tear up – but this has been a compass point in my life ever since I was less than 10 years old,” says Kidd.