Stade des Caisses Desjardins in Thetford Mines. Photo: Marc Viquez

*This article was originally published on the Stadium Journey website. You can read the original article here.

By Marc Viquez

Stadium Journey.com

There are sports teams that move out of a city and a stadium, but can a whole stadium move out of the city?

In some cases, this has happened and one of them is Stade des Caisses Desjardins in Thetford Mines, Quebec, that was once part of Autostade in Montreal, perhaps one of the most infamous stadiums in Canadian Football League history.

Thetford Mines is located 141 miles northwest of Montreal and is known mostly as the asbestos capital of Canada but for some time it was home to minor league baseball in both the Provincial and Eastern Leagues from 1953 to 1975 that played out of Stade Bellevue.

However, within a few years, the old wooden stadium would be razed and a Canadian Football League in Montreal would be disassembled with parts sent to town to form a new baseball stadium that would be the home to softball and amateur baseball.

Autostade opened in 1966 and consisted of 19 identical prefabricated seating stands, which are based on prestressed columns and beams. The grandstand featured large wide gaps that separated fans and perhaps allowed chilly winds to wisp through the facility during late fall contests. Here is what Liz Smith had to say about it from, May 22, 1967, edition of Sports Illustrated.

“For land-based sport Expo has an unusual new stadium called the Autostade (a name easily understood in French and English, which neatly suits the requirement that all Expo signs be bilingual). This imposing facility cost General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, American Motors and Volvo $3.3 million. No posts or obstructions mar the view from its 25,000 regular seats, and their number can be augmented to seat still another 10,000 fans. The Autostade will offer some great firsts in the next six months.”

The Alouettes would become the main tenants in 1968 after relocating from Percival Molson Stadium, but due to its distance from downtown Montreal and the frigid winds off of the nearby St. Lawrence River, crowds were fleeting at the mod looking facility. The club would average around 18,000 fans per game during its eight-season tenure.

The 33,000 seats sloped towards the field level promising great views anywhere in the stadium. Unfortunately, its oval design seemed better suited for Australian Rules Football than for the Canadian version. Two-thirds of the seating at the stadium was behind the goal line, along with it being only accessible by car.

Its biggest moment might have been the 1969 Grey Cup where an all-time record of 33,172 watched the country’s biggest football game. The game was played under truculent conditions due to ongoing concerns over the FLQ separatist terrorist bombing activities in Quebec. Police officers in full riot gear secured the stadium and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau participated in the ceremonial opening kickoff without incident.

During the Als seven seasons at the stadium attendance would range from an average of 12,169 per game in 1969 to close to 25,000 a game during the team’s 1970 Grey Cup championship campaign in what Glen Cole of the Canadian Press referred to as “one of the worst football stadiums in North America.”

Attendance was bleak enough that team owner Sam Berger decided to relocate the Larks back to their original home in 1972. The plan soon proved disappointing with attendance dropping by 60,000; the team would return back to Autostade the following season.

“The worst place I ever played in all my years of football. It was always windy, usually colder than most places in the fall and just plain ugly,” said late Ottawa Rough Rider and CFL Hall of Famer Moe Racine in his memoir “Never My Dream.”

In 1975, nearly half of the seats at the stadium were discounted in hopes of increasing attendance; it was the third time in three years that prices were lowered and attendance increased by 26%. The next year the Als would play the first professional event at the brand new Olympic Stadium in front of a record crowd of 68,505 and many including Montreal Gazette journalist Earl McRae would not miss vapid facility.

“…the miserable, mournful stadium on a desolate section along the St. Lawrence. Rats scurried brazenly throughout the structure, mousetraps were scattered by the hundreds to catch them, lousy food was served by concessions, and rainwater poured through the ceiling of team offices..”

Interestingly, Autostade was almost home to the National League expansion Montreal Expos in 1969. The plan was for the stadium to serve as a temporary venue for the club before a $35 million, a 55,000-seat domed stadium would open in time for the 1971 season.

The plan was also to expand the seating from 25,000 to 40,000 and cover it with a domed roof. Initial costs were at first estimated to be $5 million but quickly swelled to $7 million, a pricey sum for a temporary ballpark that also included a paved track around the field.

There would soon be serious doubts if the city could find a suitable home for the Expos, much to the delight of Dallas-Ft. Worth, Milwaukee, and Buffalo who all had suitable venues just waiting to host major league baseball.

The choice was then made for the Expos to convert Jarry Park into a temporary major league ballpark and would use it for the next nine seasons. The dimensions and location close to downtown made it the most logical choice for the baseball club. By 1977, both football and baseball were drawing massive crowds to Olympic Stadium and pretty soon Autostade would cease to exist.

Around the same time, minor league baseball in Thetford Mines was coming to an end after two seasons. The old wooden ballpark was home to the Thetford Mines Miners from 1953-1956 in the Provincial League but had been absent for almost two decades until the Pittsburgh Pirates placed an Eastern League franchise in the city in 1974.

Four future MLB players played in town in 1974.

The placement was only temporary but the club captured the league championship and featured future All-Stars Willie Randolph and Tony Armas. Randolph who had played in sunny Charleston, South Carolina, the year before was shocked by conditions in Thetford Mines as he recalled in Yankee Magazine in 2016.

“I was playing in Thetford Mines, which is a small province in Quebec, Canada. It was kind of a makeshift situation because the team wasn’t planning to play there, but they were forced to. It was really cold, and the ballpark we were playing in didn’t even have clubhouses. We had to get dressed at a hockey rink and walk over to the ballpark.

Randolph added that the field was so bad that the team manager Tim Murtaugh–who said in the book Beating the Bushes that “an empty lot was cleared, a canvas backdrop was tossed up and someone hollered, “Play ball”– would not allow his players out on the field. He would recant in 1989 to the Los Angeles Times

“It was so bad they had to condemn it. There had been a lot of rain, and they had these big steamrollers on the field. Well, in short, center field, one of the steamrollers sank down about 10 feet, leaving a big crater.

The Bucs drew a season crowd of 22,516 for an average of 322 fans and would leave town at the end of the year. The Milwaukee Brewers replaced them but attracted a dismal 16,000 fans for the final season. Soon, the old ballpark was razed and just an empty field remained in its place.

The city needing a new ballpark went the unconventional route–they bought themselves pieces of a football stadium and reassembled into what would be used as a 5,000-seat baseball stadium that included three sections and a press box from what was once Autostade.

In February of 1978, the City of Thetford Mines handed a memorandum to the Minister of Urban Affairs to purchase five sections of Autostade to replace the old stadium park and revive the land that was absent of bleacher seating. Five months later, the sections were purchased and construction began in August of 1979. A total cost of $350,000 was made to acquire, transfer, and reconstruct the bleachers to its new home.

The look of Autostade remains dominant. Photo Courtesy of Michel Rivard/Flickr

The park would be home to softball for the next 33 years, hosting the 1982 Senior Men’s Canadian Fastpitch Championships that attracted large attendance figures. Then in 2010, Francois Lécuyer, a local businessman, brought baseball to the stadium with the Thetford Blue Sox, a semi-professional team in the Ligue de Baseball Senior Élite du Québec.

In preparation for baseball, the fences were brought back, locker rooms constructed, and headquarters built underneath the stands to accommodate the team. The Sox have captured six league championships since 2012 and attract between 500-1,000 fans per game.

Professional baseball did return in 2014 for one game when the city hosted the Quebec Capitales of the Can-Am League for an exhibition game and on Canada Day, 5,000 spectators filled the stands. Baseball seems to be thriving once again during the summer months in Thetford Mines, but one has to scratch their heads and wonder why the stadium’s existence seems to be somewhat of an enigma to most people.

It appears to many that the remnants of Autostade make up Stade des Caisses Desjardins but perhaps there is a reason for it. There was little fanfare in Montreal when the CFL stadium was torn down; the stadium was in service for a decade and was quickly put out of mind once Olympic Stadium opened.

Also, the ballpark was never ever to be converted into a temporary baseball facility for the Expos. This could have thrust the venue’s attention to major league cities and with copious video footage and former players testimonies, might have left a little more resonance on the public’s attention in Montreal.

Three Sections, Photo Courtesy of Michel Rivard/Flickr

Sure it looked decorative for visitors during Expo ‘67, but there was not too much time for anyone to reminisce or become teary-eyed about the place, especially when the Alouettes averaged over 54,000 fans per game during the first two seasons at Olympic Stadium.

Today, Stade des Caisses Desjardins is the home of amateur baseball during the summer months in Thetford Mines and when fans take in a Blue Sox game, they are sitting in stands that once were created to watch professional football in Montreal more than 50-years-ago.

Who knew the legacy of Autostade is still alive and well in Quebec.

A stadium reborn in Thetford Mines