Hillcrest Centre (Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre)
The arena that hosted 2010 Olympic curling now runs eight sheets of ice for a community that includes one of Canada's oldest LGBT curling leagues.
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This is a working recreation hub inside a genuine Olympic venue — still carrying First Nations, Inuit and Métis artwork from the 2010 Games, and engineered so waste heat from cooling the ice surface heats the rest of the building. The Percy Norman Aquatic Centre, with a 50m lap pool, connects via an indoor concourse.
What to look for
- Aboriginal artwork by First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists installed for the 2010 Vancouver Venues Aboriginal Arts Program — traditional and contemporary pieces throughout the building
- Eight sheets of curling ice, the same facility that hosted Olympic curling and Paralympic wheelchair curling with a crowd capacity of 6,000
- The indoor concourse leading to Percy Norman Aquatic Centre, which includes a 50m lap pool, leisure tank and outdoor aquatic area
Public community centre in Hillcrest Park; the aquatic centre and curling rinks operate on separate schedules, so check each facility before visiting.
Hillcrest Centre (Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre) is one of 13 sights worth the detour in Vancouver, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Vancouver pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Vancouver
- BC PlaceA stadium that broke the same world record twice — first with the largest air-supported roof ever built, then with the largest cable-supported retractable roof.
- Rogers ArenaBuilt for C$160 million and opened in 1995, this is the rink where Vancouver's hockey soul lives — and where the city briefly renamed it Canada Hockey Place for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
- Stanley ParkA thousand acres of old-growth forest on a downtown peninsula — bigger than Central Park, as old as Vancouver itself.
- Pacific ColiseumThe rink where Vancouver first played NHL hockey — and where 2010 Olympic skaters competed on the same ice.
- Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports CentreCanada's first national hockey team was born on this ice in 1963 — and the Vancouver Canucks still practice here.
- Richmond Olympic OvalThe rink where Olympic speed skaters raced in 2010 is now a public arena where you can climb a wall, row a tank, or lace up hockey skates — all under one roof.