An uncommon home renovation
Massive home renovations can test even the best of relationships.
So it could be a bit of a democratic-relationship experiment to see who and what gets tested when a very long renovation gets under way soon in the home that belongs to all Canadians — Parliament Hill’s Centre Block.
Canadians who don’t work in the shadow of the Peace Tower may only be vaguely aware — or not aware at all — that the building that most symbolizes federal power in this country is in the midst of shutting down for at least 10 or as many as 20 years.
Members of Parliament and senators going home at the end of this week for the long holiday break will return to entirely new workplaces at the end of January. The Commons will shift its operations to what’s known as West Block on Parliament Hill; the Senate moves to a former train station down the road, just across from the Château Laurier hotel.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who bade a formal farewell to the building in the Commons on Wednesday, could be a senior citizen by the time Centre Block reopens. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who has served as Commons speaker, also spoke of Centre Block as “more than a building.”
Politicians can be overly quick to describe moments as historic, but it’s fair to say that this shutdown feels well and truly historic to denizens of Parliament Hill and political junkies. The corridors have been crowded with people doing their own goodbye tours, taking in all the history of the soon-to-be-shuttered building.
It’s been a chance for everyone to learn a little more about this institution that rose out of the ashes of the great Parliament Hill fire of 1916. It’s only recently, for instance, that I’ve learned more about the architect of the building, John Pearson, thanks to House of Commons curator Johanna Mizgala (who unabashedly describes her feelings about the architect as an “intellectual crush.”)
Pearson’s hand can also be seen in some fine architecture in Toronto — the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, Convocation Hall and the Sanford Fleming and Sigmund Samuel buildings — as well as some of the grander, older Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce branches around the city.
Much of Pearson’s artistry will be preserved or enhanced during the renovations, but the shutdown of Centre Block has prompted some reflection about renewal for the 21st century, too. In an important piece for Policy Options, editor-in-chief Jennifer Ditchburn asked why we haven’t been talking more about new ways of organizing the Commons while it’s under renovation. “Do we even want the House of Commons to be configured the same way when the MPs get back?” Ditchburn asked.
It is true there hasn’t been a whole lot of discussion about what will rise up in the place of the shuttered building, or what we will want it to symbolize when it reopens. How much of our politics will have fundamentally changed? These are days when institutions of government all over the world often feel fragile or under siege. In that context, Centre Block’s shutdown in Canada feels almost like a symbolic coincidence — putting our biggest political institution under a tarp until the dust settles.
And what about this separation of the Commons and Senate into separate buildings? Already growing increasingly distant with a new influx of “independent” Senate appointees these past few years, the red and green chambers will move farther apart physically as well. Will there come a day when MPs and senators barely know each other? Is that a good thing?
A couple of years ago, I did a series for the Star on rookie MPs in this Parliament and asked them the usual question about their best moments in the first year after the election. Without exception, they all had a story of walking into Centre Block and realizing the magnitude of what it was to earn a place in it.
Many years ago — 25 years, in fact — I got to witness one of those moments when someone who had been a friend became an elected MP in the 1993 election. Shaughnessy Cohen, a lawyer who had won the riding of Windsor—St. Clair for Jean Chrétien’s Liberals, asked me to tag along with her as she entered for the first time as a member of Parliament.
She got halfway up the Hall of Honour before she had to stop and collect her emotions. Tears seeping from her eyes, Cohen said she never wanted to take this privilege for granted. Five years later, as it tragically turned out, Cohen collapsed in the Commons chamber and died of a brain aneurysm that night in hospital. Those two moments remain large in my own memories of Centre Block, naturally.
Deaths of MPs in office often put politicians in a reflective mood, and while Centre Block isn’t dying, it is the scene of a big goodbye this week. While it is intriguing to speculate on how life will change while the big building is shut down, it’s potentially more fascinating to imagine what politics will look like in Canada when it reopens in a decade or two. Big renovations have a way of changing all kinds of relationships, even democratic ones.