In late May 2019, the mayor of New Westminster, Jonathan Coté, donned wrestling tights and got “ready to rumble” as “Johnny X.” The event capped off “rumble month” and was meant to revive interest in professional wrestling in the Royal City where it had once been popular.1
The Queen’s Park Arenex was a vital part of the local live wrestling scene, which included the Garden Auditorium and later the Agrodome at the Pacific National Exhibition, the Coquitlam Sports Centre, as well as the Chilliwack Agricultural Hall. Saturday afternoon All Star Wrestling hosted by Ron Morrier of Burnaby’s CHAN television began broadcasting in 1962.2
Friday Night Wrestling
The Queen’s Park Arenex was opened in 1938 as a hard-surface sports facility because the Queen’s Park Arena, built in 1930 after the exhibition fire of 1929, had a winter-ice surface installed for public skating and hockey games. When the ice surface was removed in spring, the Arena was used by lacrosse teams such as the Adanacs and Salmonbellies.3 Designed like the Arena in an Art Deco style, the Arenex looked like it would last forever—but it collapsed under the weight of heavy snow in 2016.4 How professional wrestling came to the Arenex is a complex story. Documenting professional wrestling at the Arenex involved laboriously combing through the sports pages of the Columbian newspapers on microfilm in the New Westminster Public Library.
A 1914 photograph of the New Westminster YMCA wrestling team wearing singlets contained three sons from the Thomas John Trapp family (Donovan Joseph Trapp, Gregory Leonard Trapp, and Stanley Valentine Trapp). Columbia Street’s T. J. Trapp hardware store was a prominent local business; all three sons became pilots and would die in the First World War.5 High school wrestling was also well represented in New Westminster in the inter-war period, particularly at Trapp Technical High School.6 Bill Matthew staged wrestling matches in the 1930s at New Westminster’s Royal Canadian Legion Hall using wrestlers from Portland, Oregon’s Hamlin-Thye circuit, such as New Zealander Tom Alley who “attracted considerable attention from the fans.”7
The Arenex was initially used from 1938 to the mid-1940s to stage boxing matches. Through careful detective work, I determined the first Arenex wrestling matches took place in November 1944 between Billy Khonke and Cliff Parker, later a local wrestling promoter for Big Time Wrestling. The event began with a curtain raiser bout between Frankie Rea and Art Rea followed by Rocky Rae versus Roy Atlee. Jack Whelan organized the event for the social committee of the International
