Calgary is preparing to say goodbye to the Saddledome.

We think Calgary deserves another period.

Instead of demolishing one of Canada’s most recognizable arenas after Scotia Place opens, we are asking the City of Calgary and its partners to temporarily delay demolition and seriously explore transforming the Saddledome into Canada’s national home for women’s sport, health, culture, and opportunity.

And yes, we should paint it pink and white.

And yes, we should call the campaign Build the Maxi-Pad.

Look at the building. The branding opportunity has been sitting there since 1983.

Historians agree there has never been a better opportunity for municipal branding.

(Citation: historians, probably. The Onion has not yet returned our calls.)

This Campaign Joins an Existing Effort
Calgarians have already organized petitions and advocacy efforts to preserve the Saddledome and its Olympic legacy. This petition supports and builds upon the work of the following petitions:

• Save our Saddledome
• Save our Saddledome (2)
• Save the Dome
• Build the Hattledome 

We invite these organizers, heritage advocates, women’s-sport organizations, Indigenous partners, community groups, technical experts, public officials, investors, and sponsors to help develop one coordinated preservation effort.

Existing advocates have made the case for why the Saddledome should survive.

Build the Maxi-Pad offers one bold possibility for what it could become.

The Joke Gets Your Attention. The Opportunity Should Keep It.
Women’s sports are growing, but women’s teams, athletes, and community organizations continue to compete for access to suitable facilities, sponsorship, media coverage, and long-term investment.

Calgary has already shown that the audience is here.

On April 1, 2026, 16,150 fans attended a Professional Women’s Hockey League Takeover Tour game at the Saddledome. The reported attendance ranked fifth among Takeover Tour games at that point and first among Canadian host markets that season. Read the daily hive article.

That was not a quiet little trial balloon.

That was Calgary showing up to support Women's sports like never before.

A women’s sporting event drawing more than 16,000 people should not be treated as a novelty. It should be treated as market research with a scoreboard.

Scotia Place Can Be the New Home of the Flames. The Saddledome Can Become Something New.
Scotia Place is under construction and is scheduled to open in fall 2027, according to the City of Calgary.

This petition is not asking Calgary to abandon its new event centre or turn back the clock.

We are asking Calgary not to demolish a nationally recognizable civic asset before fully testing whether it can serve a different purpose.

The two venues do not need to compete for the same identity:

• Scotia Place can become Calgary’s primary NHL and major entertainment arena.
• The Saddledome can become a national destination for women’s professional, amateur, collegiate, adaptive, and community sports.
• Together, the two venues could make Calgary’s Culture and Entertainment District more active, distinctive, and nationally significant.

This is not nostalgia instead of progress. It is nostalgia put back to work.

The Vision: Canada’s National Home for Women’s Sport
Imagine a renovated pink-and-white Saddledome hosting:

• Professional Women’s Hockey League games and potential future team activity
• National and international women’s hockey tournaments
• Women’s basketball, volleyball, curling, combat sports, and emerging leagues
• Adaptive and para sport
• Girls’ development camps and community programming
• Women’s health and wellness events
• Entrepreneurship and leadership conferences
• Skilled-trades, technology, and science events for women and girls
• Concerts, festivals, and cultural programming led by women
• A Canadian women’s sports hall, archive, museum, or broadcast studio
• Charity partnerships supporting women, girls, and families
• Affordable practice, tournament, and event space for community organizations
• This would not be an arena that occasionally hosts a women’s event.

It would be an arena designed to make women’s events the main event.

Yes, There Would Be Period Jokes
We are proposing a nationally significant women’s venue, not a humour-free zone.

Potential signs and campaign messages practically write themselves:

• Calgary Deserves Another Period
• Now Entering the Fourth Period
• A Building This Tough Should Not Be Defined by One Rough Period
• Heavy Flow Expected at Tonight’s Sold-Out Event
• Supporting Women’s Sport Every Week of the Month
• Do Not End the Game After Three
• No More Spotty Support for Women’s Sport

There are obvious partnership opportunities for health, wellness, athletic apparel, financial services, technology, travel, and consumer brands.

Somewhere, a pain-relief company’s marketing department just sat bolt upright.

The humour should be bold, self-aware, and PG-13. Women, athletes, and women’s health are not the punchline.

The joke is that Calgary has an arena shaped like a maxi-pad and may demolish it just as women’s sport is proving how much room it needs to grow.

Why “Build the Maxi-Pad”?
The name is intentionally provocative. It gives a building-preservation effort something feasibility studies rarely receive: immediate public attention.

“Build the Maxi-Pad” is the campaign name and creative concept. It is not a declaration that permanent naming rights have already been decided.

Any permanent venue name would require proper consultation, commercial negotiation, and legal review. Potential long-term identities could include:

• The Maxi-Pad
• The Calgary Maxi-Pad
• The Flow Bowl
• The MenstruDome
• Canada’s National Centre for Women’s Sport
• A sponsored name selected through a founding partnership

Whatever appears on the building, Calgarians will probably give it their own nickname before the first period is over.

What We Are Asking For
We call on the City of Calgary, Calgary City Council, Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation, the Saddledome Foundation, the governments of Alberta and Canada, sporting organizations, community partners, and prospective sponsors to:

1. Temporarily delay demolition of the Saddledome.
2. Commission a transparent, independent feasibility study into retaining or adaptively reusing the building as a national women’s-sport and community venue.
3. Create a Saddledome Adaptive Reuse Working Group that includes:
   • Existing preservation advocates
   • Indigenous partners
   • Women’s-sport organizations
   • Athletes and community representatives
   • Heritage and accessibility experts
   • Architects, engineers, and venue operators
   • Public-sector partners
   • Investors and prospective sponsors
   • Invite formal proposals and partnerships from leagues, teams, nonprofit organizations, governments, investors, operators, and corporate sponsors.
4. Evaluate multiple preservation options, including:
   • Renovating and retaining the complete arena
   • Preserving the exterior and iconic roof while rebuilding portions of the facility
   • Operating a smaller-capacity, lower-cost event configuration
   • Creating a nonprofit or public-private operating partnership
   • Using sponsorship, naming rights, grants, private investment, and earned revenue to limit taxpayer exposure
5. Publish the expected demolition costs alongside the preservation alternatives, allowing Calgarians to compare the real choices before an irreversible decision is made.
6. Give Calgarians a meaningful opportunity to participate before demolition proceeds.

We are not asking taxpayers to sign a blank cheque.

We are asking decision-makers not to swing a wrecking ball before checking whether someone else is prepared to pick up the puck.

Preserve the Shape. Change the Purpose.
The Saddledome is unusual, imperfect, instantly recognizable, and undeniably Calgary.

Those may not be flaws.

They may be the foundation of its next life.

Calgary has an opportunity to do something no other Canadian city has done at this scale: create a permanent, visible, nationally recognized home for women’s sport, health, culture, and opportunity.

A pink-and-white Saddledome would be difficult to overlook.

So has women’s sport been.

Let’s change both.

Delay the demolition. Bring everybody to the table. Test the business case. Build the partnerships. Paint it pink.

Save the Saddledome. Build the Maxi-Pad. Calgary Deserves Another Period.

*yes this was written by a man assisted by AI, but my wife's idea doesn't just have to be a joke, let's give the dome another life in support of women's sports!