Making Parliament fit for a queen
Historic ottawa buildings getting major facelift
From the top of the wide marble stairs in the new Senate building, Queen Victoria has a good view of the red chamber’s new home.
Of all the portraits on the walls, her majesty’s has the most interesting story. It has been saved from fire four times, including once from an angry mob in Montreal.
Her last dance with danger came in 1916, when Parliament’s Centre Block caught fire. She had to be cut from her frame and rushed out of the building.
Early last year, when Parliament moved out of Centre Block for at least a decade of construction, the planners behind the project wanted her conveyed with more care and less haste.
The Parliament Buildings are full of priceless pieces of Canada’s history. Planners for the massive project needed to ensure that history was protected and followed MPS and senators when they moved to their new temporary homes.
The House of Commons has relocated just next door to a heavily- renovated West Block with a new house chamber. The Senate is about 800 metres down the street in Ottawa’s historic railway station.
Anyone who has ever moved a couch, only to find no amount of pivoting will get it around the corner, can sympathize with the task the Senate’s curator Tamara Dolan had when it came time to moving her majesty. The portrait, done early in Victoria’s lengthy reign by John Partridge in 1842, is over three metres tall and two metres wide.
But unlike many of us, Dolan said staff took detailed and complete measurements of every corner, turn and door to ensure the portrait would fit. Dolan said they even had a dry run.
“We basically created a frame that was the same size and then we walked it out of Centre Block,” she said. “Even if you have floor plans and a measuring tape, when you get into the space you realize that there is an exit sign or a door handle that gets in the way.”
Paintings were loaded into trucks and taken the short distance to the new
Senate building. Records of the efforts were kept so the process can be followed in reverse.
Victoria’s great- great granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth, sits opposite her at the top of the Senate stairs. The painting also captures the current Queen early in her reign in 1957, a reign that has now eclipsed that of Victoria to become the longest of any Canadian monarch.
Portraits of all of the kings of Canada that came between Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth have been put into storage for now. With limited space, the curators decided to keep just Canada’s first queen and our current one on the wall.
Senate speakers get a portrait on the walls when their turn in the big chair ends, but there was room for only the last 12 people who have held the position, with the rest moving into storage.
Later this spring, the government is expected to reveal a more detailed schedule for the massive Centre Block renovation project, but the early estimates indicate it will take a decade and cost billions. The overhaul of West Block cost $863 million.
The building has not had an overhaul on this scale since it was rebuilt following the great fire in 1916. That fire, which began in Parliament’s reading room, gutted the building leaving only the library unscathed.
The building was essentially rebuilt from scratch, but that was a century ago and it needs another overhaul. The electrical and plumbing are being brought up to modern standards, asbestos is being removed and the building is being protected against earthquakes. A massive new visitors’ centre is also being added to the grounds.
All of Centre Block’s walls were lined with art. There were the official prime ministerial portraits such as John Diefenbaker wearing a red academic gown, or Pierre Trudeau wearing a green coat off his shoulders, as well as Jean Chrétien in front of a bright yellow background.
There were also towering landscapes, such as the hauntingly beautiful Ghosts of Vimy Ridge showing the memorial and phantoms of the men who took part in the battle where Canada’s status as a country, and not just a British colony, was forged.
The building had sculptures as well, busts of former prime ministers and one called “La France” done by Auguste Rodin, who is better known for his famous work “the Thinker.” All of these have been moved either to the new building, to storage or, in some cases, museums.
The department has removed some large paintings, scenes from the First World War that have hung for decades in the Senate chamber, and taken them to the Canadian War Museum.
But moving the art off the walls was just the first step; now the team behind the project is looking at how to save the art that is the walls.
Large murals adorn many of Centre Block’s grand spaces such as the reading room, where murals celebrating newspapers and the printed word will have to be protected as the building is overhauled.
Outside the building there are gargoyles to be saved and inside grotesques, tiny faces carved into the stone that are found all over the walls, including the faces of two of the buildings original architects.
Jennifer Garrett, the director general of the project, said they’re being cautious about their next steps because they are now dealing with the harder conservation challenges.
“We are only taking things down when we have a very clear understanding of where they are going,” she said.
Planners have also started to inspect the ornate ceilings in both chambers, which include hand- painted details and gold leaf, to come up with a preservation plan.
Garrett said so far the demolition work has tackled the office spaces and left the grand spaces alone.
“The chambers or the Hall of Honour, we are not there yet,” Garrett said.
As a former railway station, the Senate offered plenty of grand spaces and wide hallways to accommodate the art.
West Block, where the
House of Commons is situated, didn’t offer the same. “This is where the first departments of the Government of Canada were housed. It was not intended to have grandiose spaces; they were functional office spaces,” House curator Johanna Mizgala said.
The narrow hallways and tight corners meant some of what left Centre Block couldn’t come to West Block; including the speaker’s chair.
Mizgala said they could move the chair out of Centre Block, but weren’t sure they could get it into West Block without disassembling it and they weren’t sure it could be put back together quickly.
“You can’t say to parliamentarians, ‘ I’m sorry the chair isn’t ready; you will have to wait.’”
Prior to the 1920s, speakers each had their own chair built for parliament when they took office and took it with them when they were done presiding over the house.
Many of the chairs eventually came back into the government’s hands, presumably, because an eight- foot tall throne can be difficult to incorporate into any decor.
The House of Commons has some of these chairs and one of them now sits in West Block. It is the same chair parliament was using when the House of Commons last relocated following the great fire.
Mizgala said it’s nice to pull on that history when Parliament is on the move again. “It was a nice touch that we were able to incorporate it into this interim space to signal that this is part of what we do.”
All of the prime ministers’ portraits from Centre Block were moved to the new building.
Space is tight, but the stern visages of everyone from Sir John A. Macdonald to Paul Martin hang on the walls or on temporary racks.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper has not yet sat for his portrait — not an uncommon situation Mizgala said, because former prime ministers often have full schedules. She said given how long the government is expected to sit in the temporary space, it is likely more faces will go up.
“Eventually we will commission other prime ministers’ portraits and we will add them to this space.”
Mizgala said in Centre Block, some of the portraits were up high on the wall and out of view, visitors can get much closer to some of them in the new space.
The House has also commissioned other work, a portrait of Andrew Scheer as speaker was unveiled in 2018 and the house commissioned a stone carving to recognize the 20th anniversary of Nunavut. That carving is on display now, but it can be brought back and installed in Centre Block when the building reopens, at least a decade from now.
Mizgala said bringing the art, the paintings of former prime ministers and even the desks from Centre Block is about protecting history.
Some of that history dates to before Confederation such as the portrait of Queen Victoria which in 1849 was housed in the then parliamentary buildings in Montreal.
In April of that year, a mob, deeply loyal to the British Crown and angry over a bill giving amnesty to people who took part in the Upper and Lower Canada rebellions, burnt down the building.
While the queen was saved, much of that early parliament’s library was destroyed.
Today, recreating parliament — even a temporary one — is a weighty matter.
“We had to be conscious of the fact this is an interim space, but still give it the presence and weight,” Mizgala said of the Commons’ new home in West Block. “This is an interim location for parliament, but it can’t feel temporary. What happens in that chamber, the legislation that happens here, is as real and as valid as the legislation that happens in Centre Block.”
WE BASICALLY CREATED A FRAME THAT WA S THE SAME SIZE AND THEN WE WA LKED IT OUT OF CENTRE BLOCK ... WHEN YOU GET INTO THE SPACE YOU REALIZE THAT THERE IS AN EXIT SIGN OR A DOOR HANDLE THAT GETS IN THE WA Y. — SENATE CURATOR TAMARA DOLAN ON MOVING VICTORIA PORTRAIT