A time capsule containing a piece of Calgary history was opened Monday and it was found hidden in plain sight.
50 years ago, TELUS Convention Centre Calgary The door was opened, and a year later, a time capsule was born.
It's part of a competition to find Calgary's Century Citizen.
The capsule was opened on Monday morning and various items emerged from inside, including a phone book, a spring toy, a Rubik's Cube and a mixtape.
The event probably never occurred, as the capsule has been forgotten.
“I’d walked past it for years and had no idea about it until I stumbled upon it about a year ago,” said Devin McLaughlin, the convention center’s strategy and analytics manager, who helped find the capsule.
He said it was originally placed inside a statue in an outdoor garden area. In the 1990s, it was moved to the center's Plus 15 floor.
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“We found objects inside, but no attempt was made to investigate the history of the statue or to understand what was placed inside. We simply resealed it after the statue was placed in its current location.”
Then the time capsule was placed Colonel James Walker, It was declared Citizen of the Century during Calgary's Centennial celebrations until it was rediscovered.
A statue of Colonel James Walker, with a time capsule found inside.
Global News
“Even when we were in our 40th anniversary, I had heard rumors that there might be a time capsule,” McLaughlin said. “Through research, from newspaper articles from the 70s, I found this race and a photo of the statue and the unveiling of the time capsule.”
McLaughlin said in the coming months they will try to locate some of the people associated with the capsule.
The items will be placed back into the time capsule and resealed before being opened again 50 years later.
“We wanted more information, more objects from the '70s, so we decided to not only put the original objects back, but also add new objects so that hopefully 50 years from now there will be more interesting artifacts and stories to tell,” he said.
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