Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Adventures in the capital
Considering the place is just a morning’s drive away (when I was in the Yukon, I thought nothing of a six-hour jaunt to Dawson City from Whitehorse), it’s rather unforgiveable that in my decade and a half in Ontario, I’ve spent less than a week total in our nation’s capital. Especially when you consider that I’m fascinated by museums and art galleries, love all things historical, etc., etc., etc., you’d think I would have made the small effort.
But until a couple of weekends ago, the only time I did anything more than drive through was on our honeymoon back in May of 1997. We chose Ottawa because it was the weekend of the Tulip Festival, but as you’ll recall, the spring of ‘97 was cold and miserable just like this year, and although we wandered throughout the centre of town, we found just a single brave tulip. Some festival. We saw a couple of museums, and a memorable concert by the Men of the Deeps at the National Arts Centre, but all in all, Ottawa didn’t exactly leave a positive impression. Thus, I suppose, my neglect of it over the ensuing 14 years.
This year, though, I had a special reason to visit. My very favourite niece (she will quickly remind me that she’s my only niece), my brother’s daughter Beth, is taking her master’s degree in artifact conservation at Queen’s in Kingston, and is doing a summer internship at the grandly-named Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) in Ottawa. CCI, despite its name, has nothing to with the environment, with conservation in the ecological context, but rather serves the nation’s museums and historical sites in helping to restore and preserve a bewildering array of cultural artifacts. Some of its labs are dedicated to fine art conservation - to removing centuries of smoke and smog from an oil painting, for example - but others, the ones Beth spends most of her time in, are focussed on the magic of unravelling the mysteries of objects buried for decades, even centuries, beneath the ground or ice.
My wife and I had barely pulled into Ottawa when Beth was giving us a very special CCI tour, and she showed us a glove that had been recovered from a 400-year-old grave on an Arctic island. She was in the midst of painstakingly removing all the dirt and other sediment from the glove, ever so gradually revealing how and where it was made. When she graduates, niece Beth hopes to get a job with one of the big museums on the west coast, working with cedar, the material which B.C. first nations used in everything from shirts to cookware, from housing to the majestic spritual symbols we call totem poles. I can’t imagine a more fascinating career, but it would require endless patience, something I’ve never been blessed with.
At any rate, the next morning, Beth took us to the Museum of Civilization (fortuitously right across the street from our hotel) where predictably (considering our guide) we spent almost all of our allotted time in the west coast first nations galleries. All of a sudden, it was time to walk across the Ottawa River for our Rideau Canal boat tour. Personally, I’d rather have seen a bunch more of the Museum of Civilization, but that’s just me. Next time, I guess. The next morning, before heading home (and vowing to spend a whole lot more time here in future), we got a brief glimpse of the National Gallery, where they have quite a few pieces on display by Uxbridge’s greatest claim to painting fame, David Milne.
Between the Rideau and the Gallery, though, we made a pilgrimage to the prime reason for Ottawa’s existence: Parliament Hill. Saturday afternoon, we wandered around the perimeter, gazing at the statues of our greatest prime ministers, along with a queen or two and some of the Fathers of Confederation , like the martyred Thomas D’Arcy McGee and Toronto newsman George Brown, who never got to be PM. We gazed at the amazing views of the river, and watched a bit of the Changing of the Guard.
That night, we saw an amazing sound and light show called Mosaika, actually projected onto the facade of the Centre Block of Parliament, including the Peace Tower. The half-hour piece is jaw-dropping in its visual effects, and equally impressive in its storytelling. If Uxbridge’s Oscar-winning Christopher Chapman was working these days, he would have created something like Mosaika. The four or five thousand people sitting on the lawn gave it a huge ovation. It’s free. It alone is worth a trip to Ottawa.
The highlight of the weekend for me, though, was the tour through the halls of the Centre Block. We peeked into the Commons and the Senate, and the National Library, and got a close look at all the paintings and the architectural detail. The only trouble, of course, was that being summer, no one was there. You had to imagine all the action, from last spring or 140 years ago. Good thing I have a good imagination. But I’ll be back. To see more of the museums, and best of all, to watch our Bev in action.
