Posted Jun 20, 2008, 8:34 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Nepean
Posts: 1,952
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I do like some of Greber's ideas. Opening up several vistas and the addition of boulevards and plazas would have made for a much more regal Capital City.
A friend of mine recently went to Washington, DC for work and while there, took a city bus tour. She took a short one of only three hours. She returned in awe of the scale of the grandeur of their Capital. The number and importance of the monuments and the buildings impressed her to no end.
Later that month, her parents were in from Barcelona so she took them on the downtown bus tour of Ottawa. Apparently it lasted just over half an hour and was filled with inane chatter about the guide’s family and friends. “I have a friend who works at the Mint. He makes a lot of money there.”
After the War Museum, Supreme Court, Memorial Arch (over Lyon), Parliament Buildings, brief reference to the Sparks Street Mall, War Memorial, Rideau Canal, NAC, Chateau Laurier, U.S. Embassy, pointing at the Civilization Museum, Peace Keeper’s Monument, Art Gallery, Basilica, Mint, home of the British High Commissioner, Old City Hall, NRC, French Embassy, 24 Sussex, the Governor General’s Residence, and maybe a loop around Rockcliff, what is there really to see downtown if you are on a bus tour? Maybe your bus would stop at Rideau Falls so you could stretch your legs.
This city really has lost its ego over the years. The lumbermen built a huge wooden arch out of 10s of thousands of board feet of lumber for the King’s visit: The first electric merry-go-round was in Rockcliff Park. In 1899 when Laurier appointed the first Ottawa Improvement Commission and since then there have been many attempts to get good ideas implemented. Greber’s ideas were grandiose and would have created a spectacular ‘World Class’ Capital City. (Oh how I hate that term, ‘World Class’! So over-used; so meaningless.)
It has long been recognized that Ottawa SHOULD be more of a show-piece, including by Mayor Jim Durral who said that Ottawa should build a huge monument. That it didn’t matter what it was for, but it should be big and expensive.
OK, I thought Durral’s idea was a bit too expensive, but he had a point. How do we get back to the mentality of those ancient lumbermen and build a monumental arch just because the King is coming to see the Chaudiere Falls. (The arch was built with no nails so as not to mar the wood; which was reclaimed after the King left.)
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