12.7.2012 – 12.7.2012  32 °C

We deliberately got happening early today because today we were headed into Ottawa to see the Canadian capital. We arrived just before 10am and were fortunate enough to check straight in to our hotel room.

We headed out of our hotel immediately after checking in and walked down the eight to ten blocks to the parliament area. Our first stop was to the market area just to the east of the parliament building. The market is one of those European style; plenty of fresh veges and fruit on display.. Mmm the smells from the fresh strawberries and raspberries… Even I think they smell great (this coming from someone who doesn’t eat them!)

Our next stop was at the tiny Rideau canal. The canal was built by the British military in the 1800s to ensure that there was a link between the Ottawa river and the St Lawrence Sea Way. The canal was never used militarily but has been used ever since for small river boats and pleasure craft. Just as we arrived at the canal the locks to the canal were being opened and three boats were trying to get up to the canal. The locks are still operated by hand as the canal is a heritage listed site.. I sure did feel sorry for the boys who had to winch the locks open and closed. Even being heritage listed you would think for OHS reasons small motors would be installed onto the winches??

The parliament building is right next to the canal and the buildings sure are impressive… Queen Victoria had the parliament buildings built and they are very reminiscent of Westminster in London. Right down to the clock tower and bell, which sounds hauntingly familiar to Big Ben!! We’re lucky, being summer time, parliament is in recess and the govt offer free tours thru the parliament building so we grabbed ourselves some tickets for early in the afternoon and headed further downtown to grab a bite to eat for lunch.

Straight after lunch (chicken BLT and toasted sandwiches) we lined up for our tour of the parliament building. The building was originally built in the mid 1800s but was destroyed by fire in 1916. The interior was therefore changed during the rebuild from a carved wooden interior into a carved stone interior. Today the walls are buttressed with gorgeous carved stone work and the roof is vaulted (again carved). Really quite a beautiful looking parliament building. The chambers themselves reminded me of the NSW state parliament chambers, with lots of old style cedar wood chairs are covered in green or red velvet. Really nice.

The tour itself was a little boring for us mainly because the parliamentary system is pretty similar to our own.. In fact, it’s something we commented on, if you aren’t from a commonwealth country you would have had trouble understanding the system… The tour was too rushed and had very little in the way of information about their parliamentary system. Probably the most interesting part of the building is the corners of each room (and the point at which a buttress reaches the roof). These are covered up with small human head carvings. Apparently they are self-portraits of all of the people who worked on the construction of the parliament after the fire!

The highlight of the tour was the library room. It is the only surviving room from the fire that guttered the remainder of the parliamentary building. It is really nice that one part of the old parliament remains today, so that we can still see how the building must have looked when it was carved timber. The only reason that the library survived the fire is that one of the librarians closed the huge steel doors to the library when the fire was detected. Without quick thinking and steel doors, the library too would have been lost.

The room is an old style library, circular with the librarians sitting in the middle, the edges of the room are stacked 4 stories high with books and manuscripts. The lower floor seemed to be filled with the Hansard and the upper levels with all sorts of other books, I guess pertaining to the governance of Canada. The floors are held up by huge carved columns of wood and again the vaulted ceiling is carved and inlaid. I was expecting to see more dark cedar style woods (similar to the chambers) but was surprised to see quite a light honey coloured wood, the wood is apparently a Canadian local wood—can’t recall the name though!

Our day ended with us wandering back down to the marketplace to pick up some veges and meat for dinner. We found a butcher (one of the few we’ve seen here in Nth America) and picked up some steak…. 2 pieces of steak and 23 dollars later we had some meat for tea!!! 23 dollars for two pieces of steak!!!!! I thought steak was a staple here in Canada??? Apparently not! 🙂

D did his usual wizardry out on the front porch for our dinner and our day ended with us all kicking back watching tv and surfing the web. Tomorrow we’re off to Montreal to check out the action in the second largest city here in Canada.. Better brush up on my French!

Song of the Day– Lovin Spoonful, Summer in the city