We actually left Friday evening, since the main point was to take a tour of Parliament. I had been told that Centre Block was shutting down at the end of this fall for 10 years(!), but apparently it is next year, so there is still time to catch the tour. I don't know for sure if we would have changed our plans had I known there was still a full year left. In any event, you have to get to the information booth quite early to see any tour at all (probably 10 am is already too late) and in order to be able to get the pick of the tours, you have to get there by 8 am. Here is the line at 9:15 or so, stretching around the block.
I went over with my son even before that, and in fact we were 5th in line.
I had been told that the changing of the guard would happen at 9:30, so I got tickets for a 10:30 tour. However, the website was wrong, and the last changing of the guard was a few days before, so that was disappointing.
The tour was quite nice, however, and it was a bit interesting that the tour was almost entirely made up of Canadians. We were one of the fortunate groups able to get onto the floor of the House of Commons and the Senate Chamber, as well as the Library. We took quite a few photos, but I'll just post a few, mostly those taken by my daughter.
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| House of Commons |
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| Senate Chambers |
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| Library of Parliament |
Then we walked over to the National Gallery.
The main collections had been shuffled a bit. I don't recall seeing this painting (vaguely reminiscent of Lawren Harris but painted by Yvonne Housser) or the Letendre either, though I might just be more attuned to her work due to the AGO exhibit.
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| Yvonne Housser, Rossport, Lake Superior, 1929 |
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| Rita Letendre, Tension on Black, 1963 |
This time around I got a better photo of Cobalt (also by Housser), and I can't resist ending with a proper Lawren Harris painting.
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| Yvonne Housser, Cobalt, 1931 |
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| Lawren Harris, Afternoon Sun, North Shore, Lake Superior, 1924 |
We spent close to 2 hours checking out the main collection. In the end, we skipped the photography exhibits, but I think we saw everything else. However, my phone battery completely died, and I was getting a bit tired of the early European paintings, so we really breezed through those rooms.**
Then we walked back to the hotel. While we were all fairly tired and weary from all the walking and, in several cases, from the early morning rising, I agreed to take my daughter to the Museum of Natural History, which was down the street. We spent probably 2 and a half hours there. The main draw for me was a new exhibit on the Arctic, but the dinosaurs were also interesting. I actually posted dinosaur pictures from the previous visit, but I will post a whale skeleton photo (which came out better than the photos from our ROM visit) and the slabs of ice (part of the Arctic exhibit).
We then had to decide whether to check out the Northern Lights exhibit where they were projecting lights onto the Centre Block of Parliament. If the hotel hadn't been so close, I'm sure I would have decided to skip it, but in the end we walked down. It is quite unusual in the sense that instead of just shooting off fireworks, they actually project a bit of a history lesson onto the walls. I was able to capture the whole sequence, but unfortunately, the sound didn't get captured (and the video files are too large to upload anyway). I'll just post a few of the more interesting bits we got as photos.
That was more than enough for one day!
We all crashed, then the next day walked over the bridge to Jacques-Cartier Park in Gatineau. I had heard good things about it, though I was a little upset that the park didn't open until 10. Even 9:30 would have worked a lot better (and given us some time to buy snacks for the train). Nonetheless, it was pretty cool, even though we had to get through quickly. Basically, there are all these sculptures made of various shapes, celebrating Canada, and then they are covered with different varieties of plants.
In the end, we made it to the train station with about 20 minutes to spare, before they started boarding. The ride back did feel pretty long, but eventually we made it back to Toronto. I have to admit that I don't feel particularly rested to start the work week, but I can perhaps catch up next weekend when we don't have a lot planned (fortunately), and I do have Monday off.
* Between canoeing the Humber and catching 3 different outdoor Shakespeare productions, I think I took pretty good advantage of the summer. I did miss out on She Stoops to Conquer out in Scarborough (one of these days I definitely need to check out the Scarborough Bluffs) and we didn't make it to Niagara Falls (probably next summer) or the Islands (largely because it was shut down half the summer, so again probably next summer). I'm not really sure I want to rent a cottage as the slower lifestyle doesn't appeal to me (and you pretty much have to drive several hours north). This summer, we spent 2.5 days in North Carolina at a similar pace, and that was really sufficient.
** I had been interested in the new catalogue that covered the reinstallation of the main galleries for Canada 150, but when I actually looked at it at the end of our visit, I was quite disappointed. Not only were the paintings completely scrambled chronologically, they had no labels, so for every single painting, you would have to go to the list of plates on the last page, which I thought was absurd. I could probably have lived with that, however, but it turned out 70% or more of the paintings were reproduced over a 2-page spread with a break in the middle of the painting. I can't bear it when images are reproduced this way, as you inevitably lose some important part of the painting (which naturally enough is usually right in the center of the painting). I actually thought it was an incredibly shoddy job and certainly a huge missed opportunity. Needless to say, I won't be ordering one of these books.
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