Ottawa Stadium / Stade d’Ottawa

Exterior of Ottawa Stadium, Aug-2003.

A view from the third-base line picnic area.

The park looks out over an industrial complex.

Chronological Tour: Stop 89

• Location: Coventry Road off Vanier Parkway, 0.5 km north of ON 417, Ottawa, Ont. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1993 as Ottawa Stadium
• Additional names: JetForm Park (1998), Lynx Stadium (2004), Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Park (2015)
• Home team: Ottawa Lynx, International League (1993-2007); Ottawa Rapidz (2008), Champions (2015-19), Can-Am League; Ottawa Titans (2022-present), Frontier League
• Capacity: 10,332

Rating: 3 baseballs

The ballpark is easily accessible and quite serviceable, and, like many Canadian facilities, quite affordable to visitors from south of the border as well, barring the occasional downturn in the U.S. dollar.

The Lynx affiliated with the Philadelphia Phillies for their last Triple-A season in 2007 and then moved to Allentown, Pa., for 2008. Miles Wolff of the independent Can-Am League had long expressed an interest in the market, and a group stepped forward to place what had been a road team in that loop in Ottawa for the 2008 season. Attempts to find a local buyer and keep the team going in 2009 were unsuccessful, but for 2015 the Can-Am League has re-entered Ottawa with a team called the Champions, again with Wolff at the helm. That club lasted for five seasons.

Over the years, the ballpark naming rights game has penetrated Canada’s capital city on occasion. The stadium was known as JetForm Park for a while. I’m not sure I want to know what a JetForm is, but it no longer matters, as that moniker was not used after 2003. The latest sponsor, Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, is a financial services outfit based in Ottawa; however, as of early 2023, the park had reverted to being simply Ottawa Stadium.