Three women refused to wait for someone else to build Calgary’s downtown arts centre, so they built it. It’s the best origin story in the city.
Martha Cohen, Vera Swanson and Sandra LeBlanc founded the Calgary Region Arts Foundation in 1970. The building now called the Werklund Centre is where that decision ended up.
Why Calgary needed a performing arts centre
By 1969 the city had about 374,000 people and, according to the Werklund Centre’s own history, expected that number to double within a decade. Three companies needed better homes. Theatre Calgary was leaving its spot on 9th Avenue, Alberta Theatre Projects wanted safer premises, and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra was ready for a change.
The history says LeBlanc liked to host dinners where company leaders would “open some wine, sit around the kitchen table, and dream” about a Calgary with one home for all of them.
A kitchen table, some wine and a very large idea. That ordinary start is the best detail in the whole story.
According to the history, the opening ceremony put the three founders on stage alongside Premier Lougheed and his wife Jeanne. Within a few years the centre was drawing about 300,000 patrons a year, roughly half the city’s population at the time.
The $15 million challenge
In 1976, the same history says, Premier Peter Lougheed set a condition. If the committee raised $15 million on its own, the province would fund the rest of the construction.
Swanson’s reply, as the centre records it, was “I don’t think about that, because I believe we will raise the money.” That is a bold sentence to say out loud in the middle of an economic recession.
And they did it. The history says the committee raised it. The Canadian Encyclopedia puts construction at 1981 and the final cost at $102.4 million. The doors opened on September 14, 1985, a date the centre’s history confirms.
Set those numbers side by side and the dare looks even bigger. By the encyclopedia’s count, the $15 million was a modest slice of a building that cost more than $100 million in the end.
How one dollar and an old building shaped downtown
The City of Calgary donated the downtown land for one dollar, the centre’s history says, on a site near where the historic Empress Theatre once stood. That location made it possible to renovate the nearby Burns Building, which had been facing demolition. Mayor Ralph Klein, the history adds, wanted a vital theatre district in the downtown core.
The old buildings stayed. The Canadian Encyclopedia notes that the complex still incorporates the Burns Building, dated to about 1917, and the Calgary Public Building, dated to about 1931.
What the origin story means now
The current expansion follows the founders’ recipe of a big number and a public partner willing to meet it. The City of Calgary’s project page lists money from the Government of Alberta, the federal government, the City and the Werklund family, with the family’s $75 million gift announced in June 2024.
Everything on 8 Avenue SE began as a dare made by people who decided the city deserved the building. The centre’s history page tells the whole kitchen table story.
Keep reading: The Women Who Kept Lougheed House Alive After 1938, The Building That Rebuilt a Blues Hotel and Calgary Buildings Never Forget Their Old Names.
Related reading from us: Calgary’s Art Underground Has Its Own Map and Where to Dig Into Calgary’s Past, All Under Three Roofs.
Quick answers
Martha Cohen, Vera Swanson and Sandra LeBlanc founded the Calgary Region Arts Foundation in 1970. The building now called the Werklund Centre is where their decision ended up. The doors opened on September 14, 1985, according to the centre’s history.
In 1976 Premier Peter Lougheed set a condition. If the committee raised $15 million on its own, the province would fund the rest of the construction. The committee raised it. The Canadian Encyclopedia puts the final cost at $102.4 million.
The City of Calgary donated the downtown land for one dollar, the centre’s history says. The site is near where the historic Empress Theatre once stood. That made it possible to renovate the nearby Burns Building, which had been facing demolition.
