Rebuilding Ottawa: political metaphor or party planning?
Canada’s capital gets makeover with Canada 150 looming
Many times over the past year, I have been tempted to apologize to tourists visiting Canada’s capital.
The downtown area around Parliament Hill is a mess of construction and closed streets. A giant sinkhole that opened at the corner of Rideau and Sussex just before Canada Day seemed a fitting symbol for 2016: the year of getting around dangerously in Ottawa. Within one block or so of that sinkhole (now fixed), several massive renovation projects were under way in the past year, and many of them promise to linger into Canada’s 150th birthday year, 2017, or even beyond. They include:
Excavation of streets and construction of transit stops to make way for light-rail transit, all along the routes just in front of Parliament Hill.
Major transformation projects at the West Block and the Government Conference Centre, to create temporary new homes for the House of Commons and the Senate.
A total redesign of the National Arts Centre, due to hold its grand unveiling in July.
A large-scale makeover at the National War Memorial, which kept it shrouded in scaffolding for most of the year, though it reopened in time for Remembrance Day.
Continuing expansion and reinforcements along the streets in front of the U.S. Embassy.
Little wonder, then, that many citizens got up in arms earlier this year when the Chateau Laurier unveiled plans to put a big, new addition on the back of the historic old hotel. It wasn’t just the odd design — a modern, glass-walled box fitted incongruously to the castlelike current structure. It was also the prospect of even more construction in a city centre already creaking under the weight of scaffolding and construction cranes.
Nonetheless, tourists keep coming to Ottawa, perhaps unaware that they had booked a trip to a destination that the real-estate folks might call a bit of a fixer-upper — at least for now. When I did feel that temptation to apologize to out-of-town visitors over the past year, I wanted to tell them: “You’re here a year early.”
While much of the renovation is necessary — overdue maintenance on crumbling edifices, for instance — there’s no question that the city is also trying to put on its best face for the 150th anniversary.
A building behind the Prime Minister’s Office has been newly wrapped in material with a bold Canada 150 logo on it, a reminder that the city is getting cleaned up for an expected party. In the same way that many homeowners will be in a mad, tidy-up frenzy this week before the holidays, Ottawa seems to have spent the past year getting ready for expected visitors.
There’s even an “Ottawa2017” program with a stated goal to make the city the epicentre of anniversary celebrations.
“Transformative legacy projects will change the Capital’s urban landscape,” the program declares on its website, complete with a countdown to the New Year. “The end result: a special year of national pride for all — and significant positive impacts for Ottawa’s tourism sector and the city as whole.”
This being Ottawa, there’s a political way to view all this disruption. If it’s true that art can imitate life, maybe this is a case of architecture imitating politics.
Many of the projects being unveiled next year got their start in the past decade, as buildings around Parliament Hill were closed and emptied for the renovations. The rows of hollowed-out structures fit with the temper of the time during the Conservative years and Stephen Harper’s bid for smaller government in Ottawa.
And even though it was Harper’s government that gave the green light to these projects, they are coming to fruition with Liberals in power — avowed fans of government and big institutions. The Liberals’ promised bid to liven up the Senate and Commons with “generational change” matches a literal, physical move by the chambers into shiny, new surroundings at the end of next year. Buildings shut down through much of the Harper years — the conference centre or the West Block — will be reopened under Trudeau’s watch.
And yes, I’m not avoiding the obvious, perhaps too easy, political metaphor of the sinkhole. There’s something eerily appropriate about an “Ottawa sinkhole” becoming the big local-news story in a year when a federal government, promising massive infrastructure spending across the country, went into a higher-than-expected budget deficit.
So by all means, do plan a trip to Ottawa this year, if only to see how all these dollars (some of them yours) have been spent in the capital. After a year of jackhammering, street closures and construction tie-ups, the residents may need to blow off some steam with a big party. sdelacourt@bell.net