Parliament Hill

Parliament Hill (), colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Its Gothic revival suite of buildings is the home of the Parliament of Canada and has architectural elements of national symbolic importance. Parliament Hill attracts approximately 3 million visitors each year. Law enforcement on Parliament Hill and in the parliamentary precinct is the responsibility of the Parliamentary Protective Service (PPS).
Originally the site of a military base in the 18th and early 19th centuries, development of the area into a governmental precinct began in 1859, after Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada. Following a number of extensions to the parliament and departmental buildings and a fire in 1916 that destroyed the Centre Block, Parliament Hill took on its present form with the completion of the Peace Tower in 1927. Since 2002, an extensive $1 billion renovation and rehabilitation project has been underway throughout all of the precinct's buildings; work is not expected to be complete until after 2028.
History.
Early.
Parliament Hill is a limestone outcrop with a gently sloping top that was originally covered in primeval forest of beech and hemlock. For hundreds of years, the hill served as a landmark on the Ottawa River for First Nations and, later, European traders, adventurers, and industrialists, to mark their journey to the interior of the continent. After Ottawa, then called Bytown, was founded, the builders of the Rideau Canal used the hill as a location for a military base (and hospital), naming it Barrack Hill. A large fortress was planned for the site following the War of 1812 and the Upper Canada rebellion, but the threat of an American invasion subsided, and the project was scrapped.
Selection as a parliamentary precinct.
In 1858, Queen Victoria selected Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada, and Barrack Hill was chosen as the site for the new parliament buildings, given its prominence over both the town and the river, as well as the fact that it was already owned by the Crown. On 7 May, the Department of Public Works issued a call for design proposals for the new parliament buildings to be erected on Barrack Hill, which was answered with 298 submitted drawings. The entries were narrowed down to three, but the panel of judges could not decide on who came first or second. Governor General Sir Edmund Walker Head was approached to break the stalemate, and the winners were announced on August 29, 1859.
The Centre Block, departmental buildings, and a new residence for the governor general were each awarded separately, the team of Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, under the pseudonym of "Semper Paratus", winning the prize for the first category with their Victorian High Gothic scheme of a formal, symmetrical front facing a quadrangle, and a more rustic, picturesque back facing the escarpment overlooking the Ottawa River. The team of Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver, under the pseudonym of "Stat nomen in umbra", won the prize for the second category, which included the East and West Blocks. These proposals were selected for their sophisticated use of Gothic architecture, which was thought to remind people of parliamentary democracy's history, would contradict the republican Neoclassicism of the United States' capital, and would be suited to the rugged surroundings while also being stately. $300,000 was allocated for the main building, and $120,000 for each of the departmental buildings.
Development into a national heart.
Ground was broken on December 20, 1859, and the first stones laid on April 16 of the following year, and Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), laid the cornerstone of the Centre Block on September 1. The construction of Parliament Hill became the largest project undertaken in North America to that date. However, workers hit bedrock earlier than expected, necessitating blasting in order to complete the foundations, which had also been altered by the architects in order to sit deeper than originally planned. By early 1861, Public Works reported that $1,424,882.55 had been spent on the venture, leading to the site being closed in September and the unfinished structures covered in tarpaulins until 1863, when construction resumed following a commission of inquiry.
Two years later, the unfinished site hosted a celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday, further cementing the area's position as the central place for national outpouring. The site was still incomplete when three of the British North American colonies (now the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick) entered Confederation in 1867, with Ottawa remaining the capital of the new country. Within four years Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and the North-West Territories (now Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) were added and, along with the associated bureaucracy, the first three required representation be added in parliament. Thus, the offices of parliament spread to buildings beyond Parliament Hill even at that early date.
The British military gave a nine-pound naval cannon to the British army garrison stationed in Ottawa in 1854. It was purchased by the Canadian government in 1869 and fired on Parliament Hill for many years as the "Noonday Gun".
By 1876, the structures of Parliament Hill were finished, along with the surrounding fence and gates. However, the grounds had yet to be properly designed; Governor General the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava sent chief architect Thomas Scott to New York City to meet with Calvert Vaux and view Central Park. Vaux completed a layout for the landscape of Parliament Hill, including the present day driveways, terraces, and main lawn, while Scott created the more informal grounds to the sides of and behind the buildings. In 1901 they were the site of both mourning for, and celebration of, Queen Victoria, when the Queen's death was mourned in official ceremonies in January of that year, and when, in late September, Victoria's grandson, Prince George, Duke of Cornwall (later King George V), dedicated the large statue that stands on the hill in the late queen's honour.
Fire, rebuilding, and beyond.
On February 3, 1916, a fire destroyed the Centre Block. Despite the ongoing war, the original cornerstone was re-laid by Governor General Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, on September 1, 1916; exactly fifty-six years after his brother, the future King Edward VII, had first set it. Eleven years later, the rebuilt Centre Block was completed and dedicated as the "Peace Tower", in commemoration of the Canadians who had lost their lives during the First World War.
Thereafter, The Hill hosted a number of significant events in Canadian history, including the first visit of the reigning Canadian sovereign—King George VI, with his consort, Queen Elizabeth—to his parliament, on May 19, 1939. VE Day was marked with a huge celebration on May 8, 1945, the first raising of the country's new national flag took place on February 15, 1965, the centennial of Confederation was celebrated on July 1, 1967, and the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II was marked on October 18, 1977. The Queen revisited Parliament Hill on April 17, 1982, for the issuing of a royal proclamation of the enactment of the Constitution Act that year.
In April 1989, a Greyhound Lines bus with 11 passengers on board travelling to New York City from Montreal was hijacked by an armed man and driven onto the lawn in front of the Centre Block. A standoff with police ensued and lasted eight hours; though three shots were fired, there were no injuries.
Crowds marked the beginning of the third millennium with a large ceremony on the quadrangle and the "largest single vigil" ever seen in the nation's capital took place in 2001, when on September 14, 2001, 100,000 people gathered on the main lawn to honour the victims of the September 11 attacks on the United States that year. The following year, Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee was marked on October 13 The Queen's Diamond Jubilee was commemorated by a special tinted window in the Centre Block on February 6 2012 (Accession Day).
On October 22, 2014, several shooting incidents occurred around Parliament Hill. A gunman, after fatally shooting a Canadian Army soldier mounting the ceremonial guard at the National War Memorial, moved to the Centre Block of the parliament buildings. There, the shooter engaged in a firefight with Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons Kevin Vickers and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which ended when he was killed by RCMP Constable Curtis Barrett.
The gunman also injured one House of Commons constable, who was shot in the foot.
Starting in 2002, the Parliamentary Precinct has been undergoing renovations. The renovations are aimed at bringing the Parliament buildings to modern safety standards and addressing the deteriorated state of the current buildings. The Senate of Canada Building was renovated in 2019 in preparation for the Senate moving, and the West Block was completed in November 2018 before the House of Commons moved in. The Wellington Building was completed in 2016, and the Sir John A. Macdonald Building was completed in 2015. The Centre Block and East Block are undergoing renovations, an architectural competition is being held for designs pertaining to the city block south of Wellington Street, and a new building, the Visitors Welcome Centre, is being built.
Grounds and name.
The area, maintained by the National Capital Commission, is named by the Parliament of Canada Act as "Parliament Hill" and defined as resting between the Ottawa River on the north, the Rideau Canal on the east, Wellington Street on the south, and a service road (Kent Street) near the Supreme Court on the west. The south front of the property is demarcated by a Victorian High Gothic wrought iron fence, named the Wellington Wall and in the centre of which, on axis with the Peace Tower to the north, sits the formal entrance to Parliament Hill: the Queen's Gates, forged by Ives & Co. of Montreal.
The main outdoor area of The Hill is the quadrangle, formed by the arrangement of the parliament and departmental buildings on the site, and laid out in a formal garden fashion. This expanse is the site of major celebrations, demonstrations, and traditional shows, such as the changing of the guard, or the annual Canada Day celebrations. To the sides of the buildings, the grounds are set in the English garden style, dotted with statues, memorials, and, at the northwest corner, a Carpenter Gothic structure called the Summer Gazebo, a 1995 reconstruction of an earlier gazebo, Summer House, built for the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1877 by Thomas Seton Scott and demolished in 1956. Beyond the edges of these landscaped areas, the escarpment remains in its natural state.
Though Parliament Hill remains the heart of the parliamentary precinct, expansion beyond the bounded area described above began in 1884, with the construction of the Langevin Block across Wellington Street. After land to the east, across the canal, was purchased by private interests (to build the Château Laurier hotel), growth of the parliamentary infrastructure moved westward along Wellington, with the erection in the 1930s of the Confederation and Justice Buildings on the north side, and then further construction to the south. By the 1970s, the Crown began purchasing other structures or leasing space deeper within the downtown, civic area of Ottawa. In 1973, the Crown expropriated the entire block between Wellington and Sparks Streets with the intent of constructing a south block for Parliament Hill. However, the government dropped this proposal and instead, constructed more office space in Hull, Quebec, such as the Terrasses de la Chaudière and Place du Portage. In 2021, this idea was revisited, with the Ministry of Public Services announcing a building contest for the block.
In 1976, the Parliament Buildings and the grounds of Parliament Hill were each designated as National Historic Sites of Canada, given their importance as the physical embodiment of the Canadian government and as the focal point of national celebrations.
The Parliament of Canada Act renders it illegal for anyone to name any other area or establishment within the National Capital Region as "Parliament Hill", as well as forbidding the production of merchandise with that name on it. Any violation of this law is punishable on summary conviction.
Parliament Buildings.
The Parliament Buildings are three edifices arranged around three sides of Parliament Hill's central lawn, the use and administration of the spaces within each building overseen by the speakers of each chamber of the legislature. The Centre Block has the Senate and Commons chambers, and is fronted by the Peace Tower on the south facade, with the Library of Parliament at the building's rear. The East and West Blocks each contain ministers' and senators' offices, as well as meeting rooms and other administrative spaces. The buildings' unifying architecture style is Gothic Revival.
Statues and monuments.
Most of the statues on Parliament Hill are arranged behind the three parliamentary buildings, with one outside of the main fence.
A number of other monuments are distributed across the hill, marking historical moments or acting as memorials for larger groups of people.