By Canadian Press

‘We’ve done the impossible’: Calgarians get back personalized 1988 Olympic bricks

Jan 3, 2025 | 12:02 PM

CALGARY — Some people say it with flowers. Some with an engagement ring.

For Keith Beggs, it was a brick surrounded by mortar and placed at Calgary’s Olympic Plaza that showed his true intent for the woman who would become his wife.

“She was saying, ‘Are we serious or not?’ So I said, ‘I know, I’ll buy a brick,'” Beggs recalled Friday as he and his wife, Barb, picked up the brick inscribed with their names.

Looking back, he said, there’s only one reason he bought the brick.

“So she’d marry me.”

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As part of a fundraiser ahead of the 1988 Olympics, people could purchase and personalize a brick to line the ground of the plaza on the east end of downtown for $19.88. Over the decades, some of the bricks became so eroded, the writing was barely visible, while many others were cracked and gouged.

The Beggs’ brick was one of some 33,000 slated for destruction, as the aging plaza and adjacent performing arts complex undergo a $660-million overhaul. The city had said the bricks would be too fragile to salvage.

But in an 11th-hour turnaround last month, after getting an earful from people dismayed their beloved keepsakes would be trashed, the city said it would at least try to return some.

Hundreds of people lined up Friday inside the Agriculture Building on the Calgary Stampede Grounds at tables marked alphabetically with dozens of bricks laid out neatly behind.

People had a week in December to register online to have the city try and retrieve their bricks.

Kyle Ripley, director of parks and open spaces at the City of Calgary, said there were about 8,000 requests and about 70 per cent, or roughly 5,600 bricks, were recovered.

We’ve done the impossible,” Ripley said.

“We have these bricks that were put in place almost 40 years ago. Five of their six sides were mortared and they were set to be secure and in place for in perpetuity.

“It had horses and humans and motorcycles and you name it that went on to that plaza for events. We had one area of the plaza where we tried to remove them, and the mortar was literally stronger than the bricks and the bricks were turning essentially to dust as we were trying to remove them.”

Peter Soroka, 34, is a couple years younger than the brick he picked up Friday. It bears the names of his parents, Gary and Donna.

He said they each moved to Calgary in the ’80s and met at The Keg Steakhouse on Electric Avenue, once a bustling nightlife district close to downtown.

“They got their brick inscription and then my dad passed away five years ago now, so I wanted to get it for my mom,” Soroka said.

He’s relieved it was salvageable.

“I went down earlier in the week and asked the guys if I could come down and try and dig it out myself, and they weren’t too keen on that,” he said.

“All the bricks in my section were pretty broken up, so I didn’t have high hopes it would actually get recovered. It looks great, so I’m pretty excited.”

A design for the $70-million plaza overhaul is to be revealed early this year and is expected to incorporate elements of the city’s Olympic legacy.

Ripley said the bricks were never going to remain at the plaza forever.

“Olympic Plaza was really to be a temporary fixture as part of the Olympics … a place for Calgarians to celebrate and where we could award the medals,” he said.

“It’s lasted now 36 or 37 years and will continue to live in its new form.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 3, 2025.

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press