Mount Allison University's rampage of destruction continues, with the planned demolition of the Memorial Library, an attractive and humanely proportioned Tudoresque hall opened in 1927 and dedicated to the university's war dead, which together with its Fifties modernist add-on, formed the university's student centre until about three years ago. Since the Nineties Mt A has knocked down a heap of stately houses around its perimeter, its funky old rink, and the character-filled residence Palmer House. This next demolition, though, cuts very close to the heart of the university's relationship with its alumni, and not just because literally everyone who attended Mt A over the course of eighty years has memories of that building. The alumni raised $20 million of the $30 million that will be spent on the new Arts Centre to be built on the site. Estimating it would take $5 million to renovate the old library and incorporate it into the new structure, administrators opted for demoliton, and any objections have been met disingenuously with the line, "Well, then find us the $5 million." Ingrates. I say keep the building in mothballs until the $5 million have come in, and just build the new building beside it. The value of continuity is not lost on most other communities. There is little point in appealing to alumni if they can no longer see where they went to school. Douglas
Go and sign the petition to preserve and pass on this heritage building.
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