The official residence of the prime minister at 24 Sussex Dr. in Ottawa has been shuttered for more than a decade because of its physical decline.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Chris Westdal is a retired Canadian diplomat.
On Canada Day, I am happy to applaud the decision of Prime Minister Mark Carney, announced last week, to bring an end to the sad saga of political impotence which has let our elected leader’s residence fall to rats. The plans to have our Royal Architectural Institute design a competition for Canadian firms, with an appointed jury chaired by architect Moshe Safdie, while the Rideau Hall Foundation leads a non-partisan fundraising drive all make good sense. A year from now, we’ll have not only a plan of action, but the beginning of the real thing, of first steps taken, ground broken and the project truly under way. Cups up!
In their work, I think the design firms and all concerned should be inspired above all by 24 Sussex Dr.’s truly extraordinary site and all the ancient significance it overlooks. By happy, unplanned chance, the bluff 24 Sussex commands is simply magnificent for the purposes of housing our national leader and reflecting our history, our identity and our country’s natural splendour.
That bluff overlooks the dramatic swelling of the mighty Ottawa River, a wide water highway running east to the St. Lawrence and then to the sea. The site is just downstream from what, before we tamed them, were towering cataracts whose plumes and mists could be seen for miles. It is also just where the Gatineau River pours in from the north (through a visible intricate estuary) and the Rideau arrives from the south (over an audible fall whose curtain of water gave the river its current name).
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All of this makes the site’s immediate vicinity geologically significant. The Rideau falls 35 feet. The Gatineau and the Rideau tributaries bring the Ottawa’s total watershed to a whopping 146,300 square-kilometres (an area larger than all of England, about the size of Portugal). By discharge, the Ottawa is Canada’s eighth-largest river. It dwarfs the likes of London’s Thames and the Seine in Paris.
The confluence our leader’s residence overlooks is also of obvious significance in the stories of all the people who’ve lived or passed nearby since time immemorial. It is interesting to imagine the first human beings reaching the site, and to wonder when they got there and whence and how, whether on foot or in watercraft. To be remembered as well is that people have met and talked and traded here ever since; Champlain camped here; the Rideau Canal – an engineering tour de force – was completed here; the lumber trade boomed here; Algonquin Chief William Commanda was made an officer of the Order of Canada here; and so on. The bluff overlooks millennia of human history. It is on the water that 24 Sussex Dr. planning should start and from thousands of years that it should draw its inspiration.
The site would excite the feeblest imagination. For me, the last time I paddled by, I envisioned a modest quay and dock at water’s edge, a gardened stairway, and perhaps a small funicular for freight and half a dozen passengers that runs up the bluff. Along the way, there could be belvederes and perhaps a few explanatory texts about the site’s geology and history. What was restored or built on top would be, in Frank Lloyd Wright’s phrase, “not on the hill, but of the hill.”
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And all that had me imagining what a great, memorable pleasure it would be for foreign dignitaries (and fortunate others) to arrive at the official residence of the Prime Minister of Canada by boat, perhaps in a great ceremonial canoe, perhaps in motored state craft. I imagined our leader able to take guests down to the river to swim, water ski or paddle, row or ride a boat or, in winter, snowshoe, skate or ski. All this would seem to me to be remarkably, quintessentially Canadian. I think it would do us proud.
Some day … perhaps, but first things first: the official residence comes far before the waterfront. From the very conception of this project, though, I would want all involved to understand and respect the site’s significance and to honour it with Canadian excellence.
The next step on this journey is for our government to communicate to Canadians why it matters. It’s not just because the rotted ruin that now sits atop that beautiful bluff is a national embarrassment. Much more importantly, it’s because that site, practically hallowed ground, calls for the very best – from start to finish – that we Canadians have to offer.