The lands were ideally situated to accommodate a natural-ice rink as the Etobicoke Creek wound its way through the area. The Lester brothers were all hockey players who skated and played hockey regularly at the George Street Arena in Brampton. For many years the Lester family also used the creek for pleasure skating and playing ‘shinny’ hockey. They built a little dam on the west side of what is now Kennedy Road and where the Etobicoke Creek bends which allowed for a natural place to flood the area, thus creating a pond. The arena would later be built a few hundred feet west of the dam.
The family house stood above and south of the creek. The driveway entrance to what is now the Brampton Golf and Country Club was the driveway into the Lester farm. The entrance to the arena was north of the Lester driveway at the foot of the little hill.
Lester’s Arena was built using the main frame of an airplane hanger from CFB Trenton and much of a barn was incorporated into the structure. The Etobicoke Creek provided the water for the ice. The Lester farm house was located at the top of the hill. Photo courtesy of the Lester family.
Bill Lester says his father, Ellis, often tells a story about that little hill in the road immediately north of the family driveway. Today’s automobiles hardly notice the road rising up to the driveway of the Brampton Golf and Country Club, but back when Ellis Lester was a child there were more horse and buggies than automobiles passing the Lester farm and winter conditions made things very difficult. The original road had considerably more of an incline than what is there now. Modern road reconstruction has all but eliminated the steepness of the climb. This is evident by the drop from the edge of the road to the level of the creek.
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