Green Island, and the swans

I walked onto Green Island last week, under the semi-circular walls of the Foreign Affairs building at 111 Sussex Drive (formerly City Hall) where a covered walk-way at river level allows a short cut to the Minto Bridges. I was expecting to see sandbags on the steps to the side doors to guard against water seeping into the ministry, but it seems the risk of spring floods this year hasn't been great enough to warrant placing them there.

The path took me past the Unity Tower. Directly under the tower there's a plaque, dated 1993:

Over the years, people from every land and continent have chosen to make Ottawa their home. The Unity Tower looks over Ontario and Quebec, and its symbolism extends to all of Canada. May it stand as an abiding reminder of the richness in diversity that is both our inheritance and our continuing gift to those whom come after us.

Another plaque on the grassy bank beside the tower refers to another kind of inheritance and to what I think is a sad story:

28 June 1967. These swans from the River Thames near Abingdon, Berkshire, the gift to the city of Ottawa of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, commemorate the centennial of the Confederation of Canada.

Off course the Royal Swans don't stay in one place as the Unity Tower does, even though they have their wings clipped and cannot fly away. "These swans" are no longer to be seen anywhere around Green Island; their descendants swim up and down the river between Cummings Bridge and Carleton University during the summer months, these days, and in winter—i.e. for two-thirds of the year!—despite repeated protests to the Ottawa Royal Swan Coalition by the Ottawa Humane Society, they're housed in less than ideal conditions at a facility on Leitrim Road until their new winter quarters can be made available at the Nepean Equestrian Park on Moodie Drive. During the bird flu scare of 2006 the birds were kept at Leitrim Road (aka Swantanamo Bay) all year round.

Last year, they were granted the relative freedom of the river from the end of May till October.

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.