Bernie Arbour was a prominent Hamilton police sergeant, as well as the director of Hamilton youth baseball from 1948 until 1967, when he sadly passed away at the age of 46 from cancer. Since his death, we remember him through the 1970 construction of the Bernie Arbour Memorial Stadium. The Stadium is home to the Hamilton Cardinals, the second oldest sports team in Hamilton, next to the Hamilton Tiger Cats.
Filming The Handmaid’s Tale
Filmed in November 2017 and recorded by the Hamilton Spectator, an episode of the Handmaid’s Tale used the Bernie Arbour Memorial Stadium as part of their set. Soon, preparations began for the filming of season two of the hit TV show. Seeing the field transform for the show got Hamilton residents exceptionally excited. A TV crew building gallows on your local baseball field is not something you see everyday! The director wanted the set to have an abandoned look to display the loss caused by a war. Unfortunately, as a result, the process of making the field look abandoned completely destroyed the existing turf! Due to the distress caused to the field, the City of Hamilton need to re-sod the entire field.
Greenhorizons Re-Sods the Stadium
Because of the size of this extensive job, Greenhorizons Sod Farms was contacted and quickly decided to take on the project. On May 17, the Bernie Arbour Stadium began its second transformation. We had multiple trucks delivering full loads of our farm fresh sod to the field all day on the 17th and the 18th. It was quite the process. We had workers laying sod, making sure the sod was in the correct place, seaming, watering as well as rolling. You know what they say; many hands make light work!
After a lot of hard work during those two days, Bernie Arbour Memorial Stadium has been returned to its former glory and will soon be used for competitive baseball once again! Thank you to our excellent site supervisor and the hard work of all our workers on the field. We were able to finish the project on May 18th, and what an amazing result! Yet another field we can look back on and be proud of.
