The Unity Tower

The Rideau River, March 1st, 2011

There go the ice floes under the Minto Bridges and past the "Unity Tower." The river is visibly moving along once again after another day of blasting, the explosions audible as dull thuds from inside my house. (Strangely enough, during last year's earthquake in mid-summer, centered 60 km north of here, I heard a similar explosive noise.)

Regarding the "Unity Tower" (symbolic of the union of English- and French-speaking Canada) there's a story behind it (this version's in the Wikipedia, describing the architecture of 111, Sussex Drive):

In 1988 Ottawa mayor Jim Durrell initiated a controversial scheme to expand the building, quadrupling its original size. Architect Moshe Safdie was chosen for the redesign. Conflict soon broke out between Safdie and the city. Safdie demanded a higher fee and delayed the project for several months before the city acquiesced to his demand. Then a conflict broke out over a pair of eighteen story observation towers. City council voted to cut the towers to save the million dollars they cost. This infuriated Safdie who felt the towers were essential to the design. The panel that picked the design had singled out the tower as one of the highlights of the design. Eventually the city compromised and a bare scaffold was erected.

This story was going stale by the time when we moved to Ottawa in 1995, but the Quebec referendum of that year caused some more excitement, and in the heat of the moment someone boldly and illegally climbed the scaffold to hang a huge Canada flag at the top, from the symbolic "bridge" between the tower's two supports.