A major project to renovate and refresh Convocation Hall, secretly prepared, will desecrate the university's 1978 Memorial Casavant Organ by removing it permanently. In other words, the University of Alberta plans to obliterate a significant WWI War Memorial dedicated in 1925, rededicated in 1945 and again in 1978 along with 101 years of organ pipes breathing and sounding in Convocation Hall.
The solution to this problem is to prevail upon the President of the University of Alberta, Bill Flanagan, to pause closure of the hall on April 30th, less than one month after the news broke. We ask that he reverse the decision to permanently remove the Memorial Organ that graces Convocation Hall with beauty of architecture, sound and historic significance; to respect the generations of university students, faculty and officials who chose to remember the fallen with a monument which offers cultural value, solace, majesty, lament and joy through its 36 stops, 51 ranks and nearly 2500 pipes. We ask President Flanagan to consult, to compromise and to revise the revitalization plans with a decision to preserve the Memorial Organ.