'An elaborate sequence of projects' in restoration of Parliament Hill's historic Centre Block
The rehabilitation of Centre Block represents the largest project in the history of Public Services and Procurement Canada.
Aedan Helmer, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Dec 21, 2020 • Last Updated 14 hours ago • 8 minute read
Anyone who’s ever rolled up their sleeves up and dug into a home renovation project — or anyone who’s tuned in to one of countless home improvement-themed reality shows — would know to expect some surprises along the way.
Yet when the massive-scale renovation, restoration and preservation work began in earnest on Parliament Hill’s historic Centre Block, excavators were caught off-guard when they peeled back the first layers to find that Canada’s most historic and significant edifice had been built atop a rubble foundation.
“It was a complete surprise,” said Rob Wright, assistant deputy minister, Science and Parliamentary Infrastructure, as he led a guided media tour of the hallowed halls last week.
“That was completely unknown, and that’s one of the challenges with Centre Block — it didn’t come with plans. It was built very quickly during the First World War … and heritage restoration is about managing unknowns, that’s really what it’s about.
“That was the first, and biggest, of the relatively few unknowns we’ve run into,” Wright said. “We’ll run into more, but it also demonstrates there are strategies to deal with these unknowns along the way.”
The old rubble foundation, large chunks of rock fixed with mortar, has been shored up with a new cement foundation poured on the interior and exterior, and then connected with large steel rods.
“Essentially making a cement sandwich around that rubble foundation,” Wright said, “so this is stable and strong for the next century and beyond.”
Public Services and Procurement Canada, through its Heritage Conservation Services and the Parliamentary Precinct Directorate, worked with Carleton University’s vaunted CIMS lab (Carleton Immersive Media Studio) to construct a digital model of Centre Block with metric data captured from terrestrial laser scanning and photogrammetry.
The model, Wright said, forms the basis for an “elaborate sequence of projects.”
The government’s recent restorations — West Block, the Government Conference Centre, the Bank of Montreal building, the Wellington Building — were like “training for the heritage Olympics,” Wright said.
The first new building to be constructed on Parliament Hill in more than 100 years, the new Visitor Welcome Centre will link the three core parliamentary precinct buildings — West Block, Centre Block and East Block — with the first phase already completed.
The design is intended to blend modern and heritage elements with the natural surroundings, with a public plaza at the front entrance to the fully accessible four-level underground complex with modernized security and screening areas.
The project came with an approved budget of $130 million.
In its entirety, the rehabilitation of Centre Block represents the largest project in the history of Public Services and Procurement Canada, which is still working with Parliament to finalize the scope, schedule and cost.
According to the department, PSPC has to date spent $119.6 million of the initial $655 million allotted for Centre Block, which mainly covers excavation, demolition and abatement work, and is expected to take about two years to complete.
Demolition and abatement commenced in 2019 and is about 40 per cent complete, and excavation began this year and is about 15 per cent complete, according to spokeswoman Michèle LaRose.
Masonry work will begin early in 2021 and will take five to six years.
“We are going to be able to conserve all those precious elements. When Parliamentarians come back, when Canadians come back to see Centre Block, they’re going to recognize it,” Wright said. “But it’s going to operate as a modern facility — carbon-neutral, universally accessible, better acoustics, speech privacy with a digital backbone. It will have the best of both worlds.”
The Vaux Wall and stairs that form the grand entrance to Centre Block — and have served as the backdrop for countless demonstrations — presented an early challenge to restoration planners.
Designed by famed American architect Calvert Vaux — best-known for his contributions to the urban landscape design of New York City’s Central Park — the grandiose stairs and sandstone wall were carefully dismantled, each piece meticulously numbered and catalogued, then transported to a government storage facility in Gatineau. Everything will eventually be put back in place, piece by piece.
The new Visitors Welcome Centre will provide a simplified, “intuitive” entry point, Wright said, while having “minimal impact” on the Vaux Wall and stairs, the Great Lawn and on the views of the Parliament Buildings.
More than 5,000 truckloads of earth have already been removed from the site, Wright said, with many more to go.
Excavation of the grounds turned up several heritage items that were not contained in their models, including an Indigenous arrowhead, which Wright said will be preserved and transferred to the Algonquin Nation.
Phil White is the fifth artist to hold the distinguished position of Dominion Sculptor (a job title unique to Canada), and accompanying the tour as a guide, he’s seeing for the first time at eye-level the master craftsmanship of his predecessors.
“This is really a rare privilege to be able to see this work up close,” White said, before taking a pause to admire a particular detail of the stonework. “I’ve never seen it up close. I always look at it from the ground up. This is actually my first time seeing this up close, so I’m amazed to see what’s here.”
The spectacular space serves as Centre Block’s formal entrance and was “key to the vision” of British-born Canadian architect John Pearson.
“You really get a sense of what we call Canadian Gothic, a blend of neo-Gothic and Beaux-Arts style,” White said, climbing the scaffolding from the base of the central column to examine the ornate sculptures representing each of the country’s provinces and territories, its peoples, cultures and industries, its landscapes and cities, with flora and fauna of each region, and symbols of Canada’s heritage etched into the stone.
Two blank spaces remain in the Rotunda for the Indigenous sculpture program, said White, who will oversee the restoration of the sculptures created in the late 1960s by Eleanor Milne, the third Dominion Sculptor, who held the title from 1962 to 1993.
Stone carvings in the Centre Block.“This is really a rare privilege to be able to see this work up close,” White said, before taking a pause to admire a particular detail of the stonework. “I’ve never seen it up close. I always look at it from the ground up. This is actually my first time seeing this up close, so I’m amazed to see what’s here.”
The spectacular space serves as Centre Block’s formal entrance and was “key to the vision” of British-born Canadian architect John Pearson.
“You really get a sense of what we call Canadian Gothic, a blend of neo-Gothic and Beaux-Arts style,” White said, climbing the scaffolding from the base of the central column to examine the ornate sculptures representing each of the country’s provinces and territories, its peoples, cultures and industries, its landscapes and cities, with flora and fauna of each region, and symbols of Canada’s heritage etched into the stone.
Two blank spaces remain in the Rotunda for the Indigenous sculpture program, said White, who will oversee the restoration of the sculptures created in the late 1960s by Eleanor Milne, the third Dominion Sculptor, who held the title from 1962 to 1993.
“All this work was done at night from scaffolding, but it was done while the House was sitting,” White said. “So they would come in at night, wait for the House to rise and leave, and then they would go about their work with hammers and chisels.”
It would have been challenging under any circumstance, White said, working with slabs of Tyndall stone from Manitoba, with its mix of limestone and dolomite — rocks with opposing characteristics that would have made for a tricky medium for sculptors.
“It took about 10 years to complete,” White said.
There are some 22,000 heritage elements still in place in Centre Block, with about half to be restored onsite and half carefully removed and conserved offsite. The intricately painted linen ceiling in the House of Commons chamber — featuring heraldic symbols from the Canadian, provincial and territorial coats of arms — will be carefully removed and restored offsite.
The eight Great War canvasses adorning the Senate Chamber have been removed for safe storage, while others like the hand-stencilled ceiling will remain intact as the restoration work is completed onsite.
Much of that work will come during a later phase of restoration, Wright said, with crews currently working their way from the sixth floor down and from the basement up, eventually meeting on the main floors, with its vast foyers, the Rotunda, the Hall of Honour, Library of Parliament and Commons and Senate chambers.
“We’re down to the bones on these floors,” Wright said as he surveyed the sixth-floor parliamentary offices, each stripped to the bare brick.
Abatement efforts have already removed 2.5 million kilograms of asbestos-containing material, and that work is about 40 per cent complete, Wright said.
A compass rose sits at the base of the Rotunda’s central column, illustrating Pearson’s notion of Centre Block as the “ship of state,” said White, with the central column as its orientation point.
The column, constructed in 1917, bears an inscription dedicated to soldiers fighting the First World War.
“The original intention of the column was to represent Britain supporting her empire. But the column was constructed just at the time Canada was going into the battle of Vimy Ridge,” White said. “And Canada, in the eyes of many people, including Britain, became a nation.
The central column came to represent Canada and its government supporting the provinces and territories, said White.
“Centre Block is a living building,” Wright said. “From its very beginning, it was left as a bit of a blank slate that has been filled with the story of Canada over time.”
Wright said the government currently has “no intention” of repairing the bullet holes still visible in the Hall of Honour and Rotunda, scars left from the shooting incident of Oct. 22, 2014.
Numerous blocks, each one tagged, are seen at the construction site. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
There are more than 200 blocks that remained intentionally blank, Wright said, “so they could be carved with the theme of evolving Canadian culture and history in mind.”
Most of the blank areas have remained untouched simply because they’ve been inaccessible in the vast vaulted ceilings, but are now within arm’s reach through a labyrinth of scaffolding.
“It’s the story of Canada, all through the building,” White said. “And it’s literally being written in stone.”
ahelmer@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/helmera
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