Paula Simons
Legislature can endure with care given now
Century-old legislature deserves its facelift.
On a sunny September afternoon, I’m standing on the roof of the Alberta legislature. To the west, you can see right up the river valley, past the University of Alberta, all the way to West Edmonton Mall. To the east, you can see high over the tips of the Muttart Conservatory pyramids and to the pipes and stacks of Refinery Row.
It’s a view not many people get to see. This is no public viewing gallery. There are no guardrails. As I stand here, I wonder how many outraged cabinet ministers over the years have fantasized about shoving me off this very ledge.
I’m not up here to meet my doom, though. Today, my guide is Lyle Butchart, the man responsible for managing not just the legislature itself, but all the public buildings of the legislature precinct.
The beautiful sandstone cathedral-cum-castle on which we’re perched has just celebrated its 100th birthday, complete with a $3.7-million makeover. The grande dame of Alberta democracy has been freshly painted, her marble and terrazzo floors ground down and repolished to a high gloss, her venerable bathrooms kitted with 21st-century plumbing, her carillon digitally updated.
But the work isn’t done. Butchart says the legislature’s iconic dome was originally supposed to be topped with copper, like those of the Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia legislatures. But for some reason, builders opted to clad Alberta’s major and minor domes in terra cotta tiles instead, coloured to match the sandstone below, giving the building its distinctive homogeneous colouring. Now, after 100 years, the tiles, as I can see, are aging and warped. Now contractors are about the embark on the most ambitious and expensive centennial reno yet — replacing those tiles. Total projected budget for the project? Between $8 million and $10 million.
“It’s a big undertaking,” says Butchart. “The exterior terra cotta tiles are exposed to the elements themselves. They go through multiple freeze-thaw cycles throughout the winter. The historic materials have now degraded to the point where they’re not doing what they have to do.”
Which is to say, they’re not keeping the water out. Rain and snowmelt drip into the legislature’s beautiful, if publicly inaccessible, Palm Room and corrode the metal cross frames that hold up the dome itself.
Butchart takes me climbing up the inside of the ornate cupola that tops the dome — think of it as a cherry on the ice cream scoop — we see makeshift moisture barriers, made of plastic sheeting and duct tape, rigged up to catch the drips.
“There is no insulation,” says Butchart. “There is no waterproofing.”
The tiles aren’t the only thing that need replacement.
The Greek columns, with their ornately carved capitals, which encircle the cupola, are in rough shape. Four of the eight pillars are cracked and broken, held together with metal bands.
“To the casual observer, from a distance, it may seem that we don’t have a problem,” Butchart says. “This is not the kind of thing that people down by the fountain look up and see.”
Fixing the holes where the rain gets in won’t be easy. Contractors Gracom Masonry will need to shrink-wrap the entire cupola to protect it from the elements. On the outside, workers will remove and replace the tiles and columns. Inside, where we won’t see them, they’ll remove the interior supporting book tiles, and spray the curved ceiling with foam insulation and shotcrete spray-on concrete. The work will start in October, and take about a year to complete.
“There may be a cost reduction in fuel and heating, but that’s not really the purpose of the project,” Butchart says.
“The fact that we’re maintaining the asset value brings us to the point where, after 100 years, the building is actually in pretty good condition. We want to preserve it now, not just for us, but for the next 100 years, so people can celebrate its bicentennial.”
A cynic might say that $10 million is a lot to spend on the roof of an office building for a bunch of politicians. But Alberta’s legislature doesn’t belong to MLAs, or political parties. It belongs to us. When former premier Peter Lougheed was lying in state earlier this week, it forcefully reminded us the legislature isn’t just a provincial heritage site and a part of Edmonton’s architectural heritage — it is a symbol of democracy, of our best hopes for the aspirations of this province and its people.
We owe it — to the Albertans who came before us and those who’ll come after — to tend it with care.
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