The Sir John A. Macdonald building, opposite Parliament Hill, will be getting a modern makeover and a historical artifact discovered behind one of its walls will be getting a new home.
An artist’s rendering of the renovations was unveiled on Oct. 10, with renovations scheduled to be completed in 2015.
The former Bank of Montreal building, renamed last year for Canada’s first prime minister, will become part of the parliamentary precinct and be used as a social and ceremonial meeting space for politicians on Parliament Hill, says Public Works Minister Diane Finley.
“These renderings show us a building that’s going to be absolutely stunning, one that will truly benefit our parliamentary precinct and our beautiful city,” said Finley,
The images show an annex that will be added to the building’s façade on Wellington Street, as well as a new entrance. The building’s former banking hall will be transformed into the “Confederation Room,” previously located in the West Block of the Parliament Buildings. Jonathan Hughes, vice-president of public buildings at Norr Ltd., the company in charge of the renovations, says that it can be difficult to work in a heritage building.
“It’s a challenge . . . determining how much to rehabilitate,” says Hughes, adding that the original door of the building, while it will no longer be the main entrance, will be for VIPs to enter.
Along with the challenge of integrating the old with the new, there is the added possibility of finding hidden gems in old buildings, says Hughes.
That’s exactly what happened last May. While knocking down drywall, construction crews found a 544-kilogram sandstone carving of the Bank of Montreal crest, which at one time appears to have been covered in gold leaf.
The announcement was made in addition with the artist renderings of the building, that the late 19th-century carving would be moved to the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
“It’s neat for a lot of reasons,” says Jean-Francois Lozier, a curator at the museum. “It allows us to illustrate the financial history of the country. We don’t have a lot of objects to showcase the economic history of Canada.”
While much of the interest in the carving relates to its historical value, some of its features are stirring up some contemporary controversies.
“As you may have noticed in the centre we have the coat of arms of the Bank of Montreal which was just lifted from the coat of arms of the City of Montreal,” says Lozier. “It dates to a time before copyright.”
Visual plagiarism, however, isn’t the only thing that’s questionable about the carving. Standing on either side of the crest, which features the thistle of Scotland, the shamrock of Ireland, an English rose and a beaver to represent French Canada, are two Aboriginal men – figures, which, in Lozier’s words, appear as “stereotypical cigar store Indians.”
“These are not in keeping at all with our understanding of Aboriginals’ historical role,” says Lozier. “The message that a piece of art and many of its kind communicated was that Aboriginal peoples had been in the background of Canadian nation building.”
Lozier believes that the carving can be used as an educational tool that brings to light how Aboriginals were portrayed in the early days of Canada’s history.
“For us,” he says, “it’s a teachable moment where we can point to depictions of Aboriginal peoples that we recognize to be stereotypical, to have a colonizing and a marginalizing effect on a population that is still with us today that historically has played and still plays today an important role in Canadian society.”
Lozier says he looks forward to studying the piece and adds that it was a lucky break for the museum that it was found.
“It’s not a great artistic masterpiece that one might find in the National Gallery (of Canada),” says Lozier. “But it’s a great historical artifact that certainly deserves to be in the national collection.”