A 103-year-old heritage wooden grandstand — one of the oldest surviving agricultural grandstands in Saskatchewan. Built in the 1920s for the town’s agricultural fair, it has been lovingly renovated and recently received a Building Heritage Conservation Award.
In 2004, the grandstand was dedicated to Arleene Johnson-Noga, an Ogema native who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1945 to 1948. Known as “Johnnie” and the “Iron Lady,” she was considered the league’s best third base player and set a fielding record of .928 having played all 112 league games. She served as a technical advisor on the major motion picture A League of Their Own, working alongside Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and director Penny Marshall.
Johnson-Noga was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame, the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame, the Regina Sports Hall of Fame, and in 2025, the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. The grandstand that bears her name is a living piece of both Ogema’s and Canada’s sporting heritage.
Photos: Bsellis14 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63775035; Unknown – [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77893456
