They may stand as a testament to a rich history, but Canada's professional football stadiums are getting old.
The combined age of the eight stadiums in the Canadian Football League is more than 300 years. In contrast, the total age of Canada's six National Hockey League arenas is 99 years.
For football fans, the old facilities may evoke wonderful memories of past glories - but they can also mean knot-tying waits for washrooms, bum-numbing benches and a dearth of facilities for fans with disabilities, parking or luxury suites for big-spending corporate clients.
The newest stadiums, Rogers Centre in Toronto and Vancouver's B.C. Place, were built in the 1980s but have reputations for being too cavernous for typical Canadian football crowds.
Limited by thin profits and faced with potentially giant construction costs, only one Canadian franchise, Winnipeg, has designs on a new sports-entertainment complex.
Yet experts and officials are optimistic about the future of Canada's football stadia, believing they don't have to splash out hundreds of millions of dollars on new construction.
Instead, call Debbie Travis.
Renos - and lots of them - are in the works at nearly all CFL stadiums.
"Really efficient, effective renovations to a stadium and an enhancement of their overall marketing, in-stadium programs ... would be far more beneficial than putting up a new place," says Norman O'Reilly, director of the school of sports administration at Sudbury, Ont.'s Laurentian University.
"The stadium experience - and the entertainment experience - make a huge difference."
"From an economic perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to build a new stadium, because you're not going to be able to generate the revenues from it that would be able to justify a public subsidization of the facility," says Daniel Mason, a University of Alberta professor who studies how cities leverage sports facilities.
Typical football stadiums - unless domed - are particularly challenged, because they do not see year-round activity and are infrequently used as venues for commercial events such as home shows, which could be used to justify public investment.
So instead of breaking the bank on new buildings, CFL stadiums are getting makeovers, with many more are planned in coming years.
For example, Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium has added large concession areas and will contribute millions to the construction of a new multi-purpose recreation centre and fieldhouse.
Montreal is going to add 5,000 seats with a deck on the south side of Percival Molson Stadium - a 92-year-old college stadium - and add enclosed suites on the north side. Total cost is about $40 million.
Mason says renos makes sense, adding some of the stadiums can use the nostalgia value of the old buildings to their advantage.
"Rather than ... tear this down and build some new state-of-the-art facility, (it's advisable) to basically renovate it, but in a way that speaks to the history of the team and the history of the facility," Mason suggests.
Regina's Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field is a case in point.
"That's the way we're trying to go," says Saskatchewan Roughriders president Jim Hopson. "If I owned this team, I wouldn't be able to make a strong case to build a new stadium because we're really a 10-event, 11-event stadium.
"So I think our best shot in a place like Regina, and I think a lot of the other markets, is a stadium like Fenway that is intimate, that is appealing."
In the last two-and-a-half years, more than $3 million has been spent improving the stadium, including a new video board, sound system, turf, concessions, club seating, box suites, locker-room facilities and press box.
Underscoring the franchise's history, giant images of Rider legends George Reed and Ron Lancaster have been added to the west entrance of the stadium.
Teams across the league are employing a host of strategies that strive to keep fans passing through their old turnstiles.
Hamilton's Ivor Wynne Stadium - which first opened for the British Empire Games in 1930 - was considered an embarrassment to the league nearly four decades later.
But the facility has since undergone numerous changes, including an extensive series of improvements in the 1990s that introduced new corporate boxes, upgraded player facilities and revamped sound system.
Though still considered a historical landmark, Ivor Wynne's spectators can now enjoy the largest outdoor video board in Canada and one of the largest in North America. The TigerVision board was added in 2004.
"It's as good an environment to watch a sports event as anywhere in the world," says team president Scott Mitchell.
But the old park has its issues, he concedes, and that may mean more changes yet.
"Fans don't always want to hear this ... (but) there are a lot of limitations," Mitchell says. "It's going to be a topic that's going to have to come up sooner than later as to what the future of this stadium is."
Montreal has made the league's oldest stadium into the league's toughest ticket. With fewer than 25,000 seats, fans flock to the downtown stadium, which completed $13.3 million in improvements in 2003 with new turf, renovations to grandstands, player locker-rooms and showers, and additional concessions and washrooms.
The CFL's newest and biggest stadiums - Rogers Centre, B.C. Place and Commonwealth - have closed off sections of their stadiums to tighten the availability of tickets and thus create greater demand.
All three have also made notable improvements to their game-day presentation, whether it's a game-day remodelling of the stadium in Argonauts double-blue, putting a "tailgate" barbecue in Commonwealth's end zone, or a pre-game street party a la Vancouver.
In the case of B.C. Place, the Lions remain happy under their dome. The stadium made headlines earlier this year when a tear in the Teflon roof saw the air-supported structure deflated.
Though there's speculation surrounding the future of the provincially owned stadium, Lions president Bob Ackles doesn't believe the province will sell it to someone who would want to knock it down.
Interestingly, the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, a dead ringer for B.C. Place that was built the same year, is slated for demolition.
"It is in very good condition structurally," Ackles says.
"What it needs are a few upgrades and concessions, which they have been working on.
"It will need a new roof soon and I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the deal when the government decides what's going to happen."
Fans of the stadium also rave about the atmosphere, which can be deafening when filled with 30,000 spectators.
Winnipeg has also made significant upgrades to its 54-year-old stadium, but is now looking at something entirely new, with a proposed $145-million development.
The brainchild of media tycoon and Bomber fan David Asper, it would see a $120-million stadium and a $25-million commercial development on the site of the current facility.
Asper is executive vice-president of CanWest Global Communications, which owns several Canadian newspapers.
The stadium would hold up to 40,000 permanent seats (the current stadium holds 29,500 people) and be partially covered.
"It's very important -this thing has got to move into the next century," Asper says.
"Pro sports franchises have to provide sponsors better inventory; they have to look for additional revenue streams and ... become media industries in and of themselves, and the new facility will allow us to do that."
Bomber president Lyle Bauer believes it's a good move for the club, adding that while Canad Inns Stadium has served its purpose, it is, in many respects, now functionally obsolete. Among the current problems, he says, are cramped seating, inadequate handicapped facilities and old washrooms and concessions.
However, building a new stadium does not necessarily deliver long-term results, notes Laurentian's O'Reilly.
"It's almost down to a law," says O'Reilly, pointing to a concept called the stadium novelty effect.
"A stadium will bring you increased attendance for five years, the most in the first year and then gradually dropping over the five years, and will return to the attendance levels you had in your old stadium."