Extreme Makeover

A chapter in Design of Cities, by urban planner, architect and author Edmund Bacon, is entitled “Glory of Exuberance.” In it, Bacon cites Canada’s Parliament buildings and their governmental environs as “one of the finest expressions of Victorian exuberance in the world.” The glory of the work he noted is marked not only by its mostly neo-Gothic style architecture but also by its magnificent artisanship, particularly the hand-hewn masonry emblematic of the work of the skilled Scottish masons who helped build so many of the grand edifices of early Canada. Over the decades these 19th- and early 20th-century buildings have weathered and aged, their sand lime mortar washing away in places and other aspects of their construction giving in to decay. Thus it was that in the mid 1990s a committed group of government architects and planners moved to ensure that those buildings would be restored and fully modernized, not only their walls and roofs repaired but their internal...