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Though Vancouver is one of North America's younger cities, it has a long history of progressive hockey arenas. Around 1915, as they were toiling in the Pacific Coast League, the Vancouver Millionaires played in the Denman Street Arena, the first building in Western Canada to have artificial ice.
In 1964 at the Western Hockey League's annual meeting in Seattle, Stafford Smythe, former President of the Toronto Maple Leafs, revealed that his Canucks were willing to erect an $8,000,000 Coliseum, seating 20,000, in downtown Vancouver as a member of a new six-team NHL division.
In 1967, Vancouver became the envy of other hockey towns when the Pacific Coliseum opened and the Vancouver Canucks of the Western Hockey League moved in. Instead of being designed in a rectangular shape, the new arena was circular, leaving every seat with a good view of the ice.
Vancouver's knowledgeable fans are louder than typical Canadian rooters but less boisterous than U.S. fans. The crowd is polite and well behaved.
The Canucks decided to construct a new building downtown. General Motors Place opened for the start of the 1995-1996 season.
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