Parliament remodelled, but bullet holes remain
Scars of attack in 2014 kept for historic value
OTTAWA • The massive effort to rehabilitate Parliament's Centre Block won't heal all of the century-old building's scars as the government has decided to preserve the bullet holes from the 2014 shooting.
The horrific Oct. 22, 2014, attack by Islamic State sympathizer Michael ZehafBibeau that left multiple bullet holes in the Hall of Honour may be a dark part of Canada's parliamentary memory, but the government has decided it is part of the building's “heritage fabric.”
During a small media tour of the major restoration work being done on the building that normally houses both the House of Commons and the Senate, a senior official said no changes would be made to the remaining traces of the shots exchanged between ZehafBibeau and RCMP officers.
“We don't plan on making any changes to that. It's been decided that's part of the heritage fabric of this building now. So we plan on no changes to that. And those decisions would really be taken by Parliament,” Rob Wright, the assistant deputy at Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), told pool reporter Lee Berthiaume.
Parliamentarians had been divided on the preservation of bullet holes in the aftermath of the attack, and some of them have already been repaired as items in the building were replaced when necessary.
There had also been debate as to if the bullet holes — and the shooting in general — should be mentioned during guided tours of the building. The library of Parliament, which directs the
tours, ultimately decided not to include it in guides' spiel because it nothing to do with the working of Parliament.
During the Wednesday tour, Wright also told reporters that workers had been surprised to discover that the building's foundation under the Senate wing was made of … rubble.
“We did an assessment of the grounds, but heritage restoration projects are all about dealing with unknowns … This section of the building, the foundation was a rubble foundation. Not a modern concrete foundation,” Wright said of the eastern portion of the building.
To ensure that the building stays standing for another 100 years, workers poured concrete all around and inside the old foundation and reinforced it with steel rods, creating what Wright referred to as a “concrete sandwich.”
The senior official also said that workers have re
IT'S BEEN DECIDED THAT'S PART OF THE HERITAGE FABRIC OF THIS BUILDING NOW.
moved about 5.5 million pounds (or roughly 2,500 metric tons) of asbestos-containing material while gutting the building.
All this work is part of a megaproject that will essentially see the historic building gutted and then restored to its former glory, all the while implementing some much needed modernizations and bringing its IT infrastructure into the 21st century.
“So the plan is for all of those high heritage areas — the reading room, the railway committee room — is really about restoration and preservation and bringing them back to the way that they look and feel, but improved in the sense that all of the modern elements will be integrated in behind,” Wright said.