— Published January 7, 2025

A facelift for Calgary's Olympic Plaza

Canada

Memories, memories… The Calgary Olympic Plaza is preparing for a facelift. The iconic venue for the 1988 Winter Olympics, which served as the backdrop for the medal ceremonies, will be modernized and transformed in the coming months into an arts-focused gathering space. But its bricks will not disappear with the work. More than 5.000 of them, engraved with the names of citizens who contributed financially to the event, were able to be extracted and distributed to those concerned. "We were able to recover about 70% of these bricks, explains Kyle Ripley, the city's parks manager, to Calgary Sun. Horses, humans, motorcycles and many other things have passed through this square over the past forty years, these bricks have suffered a lot of wear. Some were not even readable, others were broken." At the time, the 30.000 bricks used on the Square had been sold to $19 each. Each buyer could decide what message to put there.