Coffee Talk audio -

Before the merry month of May gets away I thought I would mention something I realized while skimming through some old Cofeetalks. 

It was eight years ago this month that the province’s largest sports and entertainment facility, Saskatchewan Place, was re-named Credit Union Centre.  In the early 2000’s, attaching corporate names to venues for an appropriate amount of cash was becoming the norm.  There is nothing wrong with that and, back in 2004, I applauded the group of credit unions that banded together to financially support the facility until 2014.  I do recall that people had a bit of trouble with the word Centre.  It made the venue sound like a credit union head office or the Union Centre and people were wondering why it wasn’t called Credit Union Place instead.  This became even more of a challenge a short time afterwards when the Centennial Auditorium became TCU Place. There were a few instances of people not looking closely enough at their event tickets and driving to the wrong “place”, so to speak.  The word place means a building or locality used for a special purpose. The primary definition for the word centre is the point equally distant or at the average distance from the outside points of a figure or body.  That’s not quite as accurate, or exciting, as place.  For my money, I would have called Saskatchewan Place, “Credit Union Place” and the Centennial Auditorium “TCU Centre” because it is in the centre of the city.  But, that was back in the mid-2000’s and enough time has passed so that everyone knows what’s what and where’s where.

That’s Coffetalk. I’m Vic Dubois.