The Globe and Mail

A heap of discarded brass light fittings lay near the front doors of the Jubilee Auditorium, a few metres from the quotation from Suetonius that has greeted every visitor during the past 48 years: "He found the city built of brick -- left it built of marble." That motto, installed in raised brass letters on travertine, was right in tune with the cult of progress raging in Alberta in the mid-fifties. Nobody seems to have noticed the oddity of affixing the phrase (initially written about Caesar Augustus) to a building that was mostly finished in brick and precast concrete. In any case, when it came time to renovate the twin buildings (one in Calgary, one in Edmonton) to celebrate Alberta's centenary, there was no question of doing an Augustus on them. The transformation was to be dramatic, but subtle.