Like the guards that practise inside it, the Cartier Square Drill Hall stands at attention between the Queen Elizabeth Drive and city hall. Moving cars speed past on one side, but the hall seems stopped in time, mid motion. It sits on edge, waiting. Waiting to train more men and women. Waiting for them to come home.
The hall was completed in 1879 and survives as Canada’s oldest standing drill hall. For more than 130 years, the hall has served as a centre for military mobilization and training for soldiers in the Ottawa-Carleton area. It also functions as an armoury.
The hall serves as a common thread in Ottawa’s military history. It’s a connection between generations of soldiers and peacekeepers. Time goes by, wars change, but the hall is unmoved. Young, old, dead, living – all walked the hall at one point.
A lone tank sits permanently on the front lawn as a reminder of the wars this hall has seen.
It has watched men and women train before being deployed in the Boer War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and the current conflict in Afghanistan. It has also deployed soldiers to various peacekeeping operations in places such as Cyprus, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia.
Thomas Seaton Scott, who served as Canada’s first chief architect after Confederation, designed the hall. He built it to house both the Governor General’s Foot Guards and the Cameron Highlanders (originally named the 43rd Ottawa and Carleton Battalion of Rifles.) More than a hundred years later it still does; both units are an active part of Canada’s primary reserves and provide additional trained soldiers for the regular army.
Along with soldiers and commanders, the hall has also watched history waltz through its large wooden doors. In 1914 Sir Sam Hughes (the minister of militia and defense at the time) delivered Canada’s declaration of war in the officer’s mess.
Over the years, the building has undergone repair. But much of the original frame and aesthetic still remain. It’s clean and sturdy. Not a single red brick seems out of place.
The drill hall is also the starting point for the Ceremonial Guard in summer. They march from the hall to Parliament Hill every day.