City Daily Photo Theme Day: Kindness

The City Daily Photo theme for the beginning of November is Kindness, and you can see how others are interpreting this theme right here.

I am choosing three locations today. Campbell House lies in Centretown, and dates to 1883. It was the residence of Sir Alexander Campbell, a lawyer, politician, and Father of Confederation. Today it houses offices.

As you'd expect, there's a historical plaque commemorating Campbell.

But there's another historical plaque here, commemorating another resident decades later, Colonel Elizabeth Smellie, a military nurse who resided here. The very profession of nursing involves acts of kindness, and felt appropriate to the theme.

Moving on a few blocks north, a statue stands at one of the entrances to Parliament Hill. Henry Harper's final act in life was one of kindness, sacrifice, and bravery, trying to save the life of a young woman who fell through the ice on the Ottawa River. His life is commemorated with this statue, done in the Galahad style, with plaques in English and French. 

An inscription in the stone quotes Tennyson's The Holy Grail: "Galahad... cried, 'if I lose myself, I save myself.'"

A short walk away along the Sparks Street pedestrian mall is this entrance, with a bas relief plaque to the left. 56 Sparks Street was the address for the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, still operating today and founded in 1945.

Its founder was Lotta Hitschmanova, seen here on the bas relief. She was a refugee from Europe who came to Canada during the Second World War and who would dedicate the rest of her life to humanitarian service. I'll have more about her as I continue my series from the Canadian Museum of History.