Bring out the bulldozer for 24 Sussex

The stones hold history, but building a new home would be a lesson learned

At one point, I was wholeheartedly on Team Preserve 24 Sussex. History matters, and leaves its imprint: The feet that shuffled there, the food and drink spilled, whatever, a building isn’t just (often) where history happens but also is history.

We all know this innately. That’s why it was genuinely shameful to repair the bullet damage in corridors of Parliament from the Oct. 22 attack.

Another Château Laurier redesign proposal was unveiled Thursday; the evidence that history and design matters is evident by just how much Ottawans care about this building. (I, for one, don’t have strong views on the matter, other than an occasional urge to defend the designers out of pure contrarianism, and I’m endlessly delighted by the idea that one could mistake the Château, at a distance, for Parliament. I often wonder if those with their cameras out along the canal are making that error.)

But back to 24 Sussex. If these traits matter, then the original pieces of the prime ministerial residence, creaks and all, have some innate value. But, I’m getting less and less sure of that with each new document reporters pry from government hands. The latest: chunks of the thing could fall on someone, so thankfully Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family don’t live there.

No matter what life has been breathed into those stones, to keep them from wounding someone, the whole thing might have to first be knocked down. At some point, the cost-benefit analysis points indisputably towards the bulldozer. It’s incredibly amusing, as the Citizen’s Tom Spears pointed out this week, that the repair crew in the 1950s didn’t fix the problems they found with the masonry ... they just covered them up.

All of which is to say, the foolishness that got us to the point where 24 Sussex probably needs to be demolished is part of Canada’s history; a new home for the prime minister would be a lasting monument to the boneheadedness of former prime ministers who didn’t want to look like they were spending tax money on their house. (That fear was eminently justifiable, in which case the opposition parties deserve to shoulder some blame.)

Now, it’s always preferable if history can be preserved. Yet another local example, Carleton University has scooped up Dominion-Chalmers United Church, which will be morphed into a concert venue, as its congregation plummeted from some 2,000 to less than 100 between the 1960s and 2016. But the building, and its history and its music, will endure and it, thankfully, won’t be turned into a condo tower.

History is inherently good, and a public one at that. That’s why we treasure books. And yet ... reality intrudes. Just because a building has had life breathed into it doesn’t mean it can be resuscitated.

Would that it could. Bring on the sledgehammers.