Make No Small Plans: The University of Calgary at Forty

"Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir humanity's blood and probably themselves will not be realised. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical plan once recorded will never die. But long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and daughters are going to do things that will stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon, beauty. Think big." -- This vision of urban planning by the noted American architect, Daniel Burnham of Chicago, at the turn of the twentieth century, could well describe the vision of the city of Calgary's founders, who in 1912 commissioned Thomas Mawson, a British architect and visionary urban planner to develop a master plan for development. Where Burnham had conjured up a Chicago that was a "Paris on the Prairie", Mawson envisioned a "Vienna on the Bow", a City Beautiful that included a private university. Sadly, the Mawson Plan for Calgary soon foundered in the depression that preceded World War I. Nonetheless, the dream of a university was sustained throughout three decades of stagnation, depression, and war, until in 1947 the Leduc oil discovery flooded the province with revenues from its abundant natural resources. Tile visionary spirit of Mawson burned bright once more, and the dream for a university for Calgary began to be realised; first, in the modest outbuildings on the SAIT campus, and then in two inauspicious buildings on the west end of the city. That humble beginning in the prairie dustbowl of 1960 was transformed into the North Hill campus, a small city unto itself serving close to thirty thousand students. The story of those who built it is told here.Rasporich, Anthony W. is the author of 'Make No Small Plans: The University of Calgary at Forty', published 2007 under ISBN 9780889533158 and ISBN 0889533156.