Decision to can commemorative 1988 Olympic bricks in plaza redesign strikes a chord with some Calgarians
It’s more than a brick — that’s the message from Calgarians disappointed that roughly 33,000 bricks inscribed with names ahead of the 1988 Olympic Games won’t be incorporated into the Olympic Plaza transformation project.
It’s the memories, the nostalgia, the history and, so much more, according to hundreds of comments circulating online following Tuesday’s announcement, with people expressing the sentimental value behind these rectangular blocks of clay.
The memories come flooding back for Janis Isaman when she talks about her family’s connection to the plaza.
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“For me it’s sentimental — I have a deceased cousin with a brick, my grandma’s deceased, my great uncle’s deceased and to kind of see everybody’s name frozen in time really brings back when I was standing in the plaza,” she said. “I remember being a kid, the excitement of the Olympics, and getting to run with the torch.”
Isaman is one of many expressing disappointment in the decision not to preserve the bricks.
“When I think of those bricks, that is my now-deceased grandma who gave us that gift,” she said. “My mom says she’d be rolling over in her grave that she spent money on something that was promised to be a legacy and isn’t. There’s a sentimentality attached to that.
“Obviously, it’s a complicated situation and a lot of people are emotional about it.”
Art Buitenwerf shares similar feelings, saying its just another example of history being destroyed in Calgary.
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“I just think it’s a slap in the face. For a lot of people, it was a little bit of investment to the Olympics and hosting the Olympics was putting Calgary on the world map,” he said.
Buitenwerf says every brick has a story.
“When we were looking for our brick, former Mayor Ralph Klein and his wife Colleen, they’re looking around and we’d seen his brick about 20 minutes earlier and we said, ‘You’re over there, Ralph!'”
Kim Lennox says she recently found a video of her and her family looking for their bricks back in 1991.
“[I have] very fond memories of the Olympics, it was a big deal back then,” she said. “It’s nostalgic, it just makes you feel like things change and you grow up and not everything is the way it used to be.”
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As people reminisce, many are hoping the city will reconsider, and find a way to preserve the bricks without destroying them.
“I like knowing that they’re there. It’s not like we had an annual tradition of going to find them, but a photo isn’t going to be the same as the brick because when it’s time for — my child can never show his kids, he can never go see it,” Isaman said,
Throughout September, there will be events held for people to get a chance to see their brick, get a photo, and a name rubbing.
But for many, it’s not the same, saying it’s a part of the big picture of the city losing a part of its history.
“It was promoted as a legacy project, your name would be on the plaza forever,” Buitenwerf said. “I don’t know why forever is only 40 years.”
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Preservation of bricks ‘not feasible’: CMLC
Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) said Tuesday since the $70 million dollar project began, there were many inquiries about the plans for the future of the bricks.
It explained the bricks were never intended to be repurposed or integrated into the revitalized plaza, but the project team did look into removing and returning them to the buyers.
The age and condition of the bricks makes that proposition unfeasible, CMLC says, and would also come at a significant cost.
“We recognize that the bricks hold sentimental value for many Calgarians as fond memories of the 1988 Olympics, which is a significant chapter in our city’s story,” said Thom Mahler, The City of Calgary’s Director of Downtown Strategy in a statement earlier this week. “While the bricks will not be preserved, we and our partners at CMLC and Arts Commons hope that Calgarians will join us in commemorating the bricks before the plaza closes at the end of this year, and we look forward to a crafting a new chapter for this important gathering space in our downtown core.”
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Olympic Plaza will be closed starting in December until 2028 for construction of the plaza and the revitalization of Arts Commons.
