Woke leaders are eroding our identity, brick by brick.

The 1988 Winter Olympic Games were a magical time and left an indelible mark on Calgary. There was Eddie the Eagle, the Jamaican bobsled team, Hidi and Howdy, hot air balloons, fireworks, David Foster’s inspiring “Winter Games” theme, and of course, the world’s largest Olympic torch (the Calgary Tower) and the iconic Saddledome. Calgarians were so eager to be a part of the excitement that over 33,000 of them paid $19.88 each to ‘sponsor a brick’. Their names were inscribed on each and they were to be immortalized in Olympic Plaza, where the athletes gathered nightly for medal ceremonies. Unfortunately, 36 years later, these bricks are now set to be destroyed.

These building blocks represent sentimental value to thousands of people in our city and are a part of Calgary’s identity; something our woke Mayor seems dead-set on eroding.

Many Calgarians are excited to see the new expansion to Arts Commons come to fruition, however, ironically, with this addition comes the elimination of a key piece of Calgary's identity. Though Calgarians have been told that it’s too expensive to save the bricks, some citizens feel so strongly about preserving them that they’ve gone to Olympic Plaza to remove theirs independently.

Though City Administration might say, “it’s just a brick”, it’s certainly more than that. There is a general feeling among the population that our identity is being erased, or that we shouldn’t be proud of our history. Mayor Gondek has made no bones about her plans to detach Calgary from the oil and gas roots it was built on. What happened to being “the Heart of the New West” or “Part of the Energy”? What was wrong with that?

This erasure of our identity extends past the municipal level. In 2015 the Prime Minister of this country declared that Canada is “the world’s first post-national state” and that “there is no core identity, no mainstream.” Then, just last year, he altered the Canadian passport by removing proud symbols of our history - including the Fathers of Confederation, the Vimy Ridge Memorial, and Terry Fox - and replaced them with mundane images like a squirrel eating a nut and a boy jumping into a lake. This, while statues continue to be pulled down and hundreds of historic churches are burned. Truly, what will we be left with if we allow woke leaders to continue to dishonour and erase our history? At this rate, Orwell’s famous character Winston Smith could have a full-time job at the City of Calgary or in the PMO.

None of these erasures happened all at once, rather, they occurred over time – brick by brick.

Let’s find a way to hold onto our identity and our history.

If you would like to see the bricks from Olympic Plaza (or the names on them) preserved in tribute to this historic meeting place and to what the 1988 Games meant to this city and this country, please sign Petition e-5193:

https://stephaniekusiemp.ca/savethebricks/