World's Oldest Basketball Court In St. Stephen, NB On Track To Be Major Sports Centre & Museum By 2028 

St. Stephen, NB: In a major achievement for Charlotte County history and Canadian basketball heritage, renowned architecture and design firm, CambridgeSeven, is set to transform the World's Oldest Basketball Court, located in St. Stephen into 'Canada's National Basketball Experience Museum.' Tom Liston of Canada First Basketball Inc, the nonprofit group behind the revitalization the World's Oldest Basketball Court, says CambridgeSeven's interest in taking on the St. Stephen project says a lot about its potential.

"Obviously, we're paying them, but they can choose their projects, and thankfully, they just did a $25 million US reno in Springfield, Mass." says Liston. "That's the Naismith World Hall of Fame, and it's absolutely beautiful. And what they're really good at is making a lot of interactive displays where it's people that would come see it, but they would keep coming back because there's multiple interactive displays that change over time, and they do a really great job to make the experience such that you'd want to come back."

David Ganong says Canada First Basketball Inc has already raised over 1.1 million of their 10 million plan to restore and transform the court into a World Class experiential attraction, featuring interactive displays, Hall of Fame memorabilia, event spaces and a rooftop patio overlooking the St. Croix River. He estimates the entire project will be complete in five year's time, if not sooner.

"Tom and I are both optimists the way in which we run our lives, too. So I think officially, they're talking about 2028 to have it open, and there's an awful lot of engineering," says Ganong. "First off, we haven't torn this building apart because we need experts to tear it apart so we don't ruin what we've already got here, right? It needs to need a lot of renovation. We got another building that has to be built. So I think I would like to hope that we could push the envelope and get it open by 2027."

It's hard to believe that the discovery of world's oldest existing basketball court and St. Stephen's place in basketball history was in many ways accidental after a 2010 fire revealed that the 1893 basketball court of the former YMCA on King Street was still intact. Research revealed that the court was two months older than what was then thought to be the world's oldest existing basketball court in Paris, France.

"They were able to uncover through a lot of research that Lyman Archibald, who we named the Archie golf tournament after, was one of the first students of Dr. James Naismith, who invented the game in 1891," says Liston. "If you look at the first basketball game played in Springfield, Massachusetts, Lyman Archibald's on that team, he was one of the students, but he was also the first member of the team. And in 1893, the YMCA in St. Stephen recruited him as their athletic director, and he brought the game that was invented in Springfield to here and the first international game was played on this very court and he created so all the students from Naismith really started to take basketball over the world. So Paris, France and Montreal and Toronto and Kansas, and they took the game and started to bring it to all YMCAs around the world. And it so happens that the first early game was played here first international game, and this was the court that it was played on."

Liston and Ganong believe the revitalization of the court into a sports mecca will be a major boost to tourism not only for St. Stephen but for all of Southwest New Brunswick.

Watch CHCO's Vicki Hogarth's full half-hour interview with Liston and Ganong. It will appear on an all-new episode of Southwest Magazine this week.

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-Vicki Hogarth, CHCO-TV, Local Journalism Initiative