10 months in, GG still waiting for Rideau Hall renos to end
Does Canada even need official residences for its leading dignitaries?
We’re today cornered with the question. Since taking office in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family have not occupied 24 Sussex Drive, home to drafts and mice and cobwebbed plans, for a single day. With (low) renovation estimates in the $10-million range, it is unclear whether a prime minister will ever lay his head on a pillow there again.
As for Rideau Hall, the office of Gov. Gen. Julie Payette confirmed this week she still has not moved in to the massive heritage mansion, 320-some-odd days after her swearing-in last October. The reason? Damn renos again. And there is no scheduled move-in date for Payette.
An email from Marie-Ève Létourneau, a senior communications adviser in the GG’s office, put it this way:
“Renovations are common, and work is still ongoing, in particular for the restoration of the Ballroom, the foundations and to remove asbestos.
“A strategy for Universal Accessibility for this historic residence is being prioritized by the NCC with the support of OSGG. Meanwhile, the Governor General is living at an alternative NCC residence. This arrangement is temporary and has no impact on the Governor General’s functions.”
They’ve declined to say where the “alternative NCC residence” could be but, with security concerns, the options are limited. The NCC’s other official residences in the area include 24 Sussex, Stornoway, where the leader of the Opposition lives, the PM’s summer place at Harrington Lake, and The Farm in Kingsmere (home to the Speaker of the House), leaving 7 Rideau Gate as the most likely alternative.
The building is the federal government’s guest house for visiting dignitaries. Built in the 1860s by an early industrialist, the stone structure, in excess of 8,000 square feet, is on an adjacent city street, not within Rideau Hall’s fenced 80 acres, where the 22-room Rideau Cottage is located, the temporary home for Trudeau and his family.
Does it even matter if the GG actually lives at Rideau Hall, where more than 100 employees work to support the viceregal’s function? Actually, yes.
Rideau Hall is not a dusty museum with some gardens attached and an invisible kitchen that serves up weenie things to the rich and pampered. It is an expression of everyone who has ever lived there, be they lords or astronauts.
I was reminded of this one evening in June 2014 after the annual Michener Awards for public-service journalism. Only a few minutes after handing out the awards in black-tie, there was Gov. Gen. David Johnston in jeans and running shoes doing the most “home” kind of thing in the rear lawn.
He was walking the new dog, Rosie, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, like it was part of his house chores. (There is, incidentally, a dog graveyard on the grounds with at least eight occupants.)
Esteemed historian Margaret MacMillan co-authored a book about Rideau Hall in 2004. She details the various touches (or entire wings) GGs and their spouses have added since 1868.
“Rideau Hall is at once a livedin house, a gallery of Canadian arts and crafts, and a museum of Canadian history, but it is also, as (GG Vincent) Massey put it, ‘an instrument for Canada.’ ”
She concludes the chapter like this: “If Rideau Hall were pulled down tomorrow, Canada would not fail — but it would be diminished,” she writes.
“It would lose an institution that has never stood for a single party, class, region, or interest group but solely for Canada.”
Maybe it’s just how these things evolve. In the early days, governors general were rich blue bloods who needed grand houses because that’s where Great White Men lived. And the house got bigger, more ceremonial, and the actual living quarters became proportionally smaller and more hidden. And, as Canada evolved and the GG didn’t particularly or generally “govern” anything important, it became more of a showcase of Canadiana, be it art, furniture, tapestry or gardens, while the GGs themselves were not blessed with peerage but accomplished in fields like academia, or journalism, or science. Thus upkeep becomes endless and expensive.
“When you live at Rideau Hall, you walk every day through different periods of Canadian history, dating from before Confederation right up to the present,” writes Adrienne Clarkson (GG 1999-2005) in the same book.
“There were times when it was very stiff and formal, in the worse sense of those words. It was a long time before the house and the gardens were truly opened up to Canadian citizens. Now it feels like a very friendly house, a place that has been lived in and loved.”
Lived in? Essential, surely.