Kingswood And Kingsmere Lake

Picking up where I left off yesterday, this is the main cottage at Kingswood. Set on the hill overlooking Kingsmere Lake, it was first built in 1903 when William Lyon Mackenzie King started buying up land here, and then expanded in 1916 and 1924.

The cottage was open, so I headed inside. By 1924, the finished cottage had three small bedrooms, a breakfast room, a large living room, and a kitchen. The main entrance to the place goes into what in 1903 was the original kitchen, but today is a lobby. The kitchen is actually the extension to the left of the door. Below is one of the bedrooms, with artifacts from King's mother, who visited from time to time until her death in 1920, and stayed in this room. 

This is a view of the living room- note King's typewriter. On inclement days he would work from here, with ready access to the spacious verandahs outside.

I stepped outside to go down to the lake, and photographed across to the guest cottage.

And here's a view of the main cottage, with that verandah. I can imagine King sitting there on a breezy fall afternoon, watching the lake down the slope.

I went down to the lakeshore. One of the quirks of Gatineau Park includes private cottages within its bounds, and so some of those are on the opposite shore of Kingsmere Lake. The fall colours were in their glory.

King had a boat house built down here, and it's still here. It was used to store his canoe, and as a change house when he or his guests wanted to swim. 

When I was here in May with Tom and his wife, the fiddleheads in this spot were just starting to grow for the season. Now they were done for the year.

Kingsmere Lake is an absolute beauty, especially this time of year. You can see why it would have appealed to King.

Fall At The Mackenzie King Estate

I am returning today to my Gatineau Park series, taken on a Sunday visit last month as part of Fall Rhapsody. As I mentioned when I left off, one of my stops was the Mackenzie King Estate. Given to the people of Canada in his will by William Lyon Mackenzie King, one of our best prime ministers, the estate consists of 231 hectares. Starting in 1903, King accumulated it over time, buying up land along the shore of Kingsmere Lake, and building two homes, while purchasing another nearby to make a weekend retreat for himself. Two of those homes, Kingswood and Moorside, are open to the public, while the last, a 19th century farmhouse called the Farm, is today used as the official residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons. This is the main entrance, with photographs and information about King on panels.

There was a notice put up about bear sightings. Needless to say there were enough people around on this day that there was no bear to be seen.

I went down towards Kingswood. Here and there on the estate, quotes by King have been placed in sign form. This one reads 'I felt better the minute I was at Kingsmere. The air here is fine, the trees fresh, lovely.'

Here we have the pathway towards Kingswood.

Crossing onto the part of the estate designated as Kingswood, this sign is close by, another quote. 'Such happiness as I felt in being beneath my own roof, amid the trees.'

Kingswood takes its name from a combination of the nearby lake, Kingsmere (a name that preceded King's time here, but certainly would have appealed to him) and his childhood home in Kitchener- Woodside. This was where he first started building a weekend home for himself as a young politician and lawyer at the dawn of the 20th century. A garage, two cottages, and a boathouse are found here. This view takes in the garage as I approached. Note the dachshund (courage of a lion, body of a sausage) walking his human; there were a number of dogs around while I was here. 

Here we have the garage from the other side. When King would come up, he'd bring household staff with him, and their quarters ended up in the second level of the garage. In Ottawa, he lived at Laurier House, the home he inherited from the Lauriers after the death of Zoe Laurier, first as Liberal leader and then as Prime Minister, but the estate quickly became a favoured retreat for him.

The guest cottage lies beyond the garage. Its presence here dates to 1922- King had bought neighbouring land that had the cottage, and had the building moved here to accompany the regular guests he would have. 

Between the two buildings is this structure, a pergola, which is an outdoor garden structure. This one had hanging baskets.

Across from the guest cottage is the main cottage, which we'll get a closer look at tomorrow.

While the garage itself was closed, I was surprised to find that the cottages were open- I had expected, since my visit was after Thanksgiving, that the cottages would be closed for the season. I stepped into the guest cottage and took some shots of the interior rooms. King's general tastes were spartan but comfortable; for him, coming to the estate meant enjoying the outdoors.

Crazy Unicorns And Glowing Cubes

Today I have an odds and ends post. I was in the Sandy Hill area late one afternoon in September when I came across this house. It was the historical plaque out front that first caught my eye. Allan House was built in 1893 for businessman James Allan and has been designated a heritage property. It appears to continue to be a residence. Among those who have lived here is Cairine Wilson, the subject of the plaque. She was the first woman appointed to the Canadian Senate.

This sign was outside a pub in early October.

Later in the month it had a different remark.

This is the Thomas Flanagan Building, the central headquarters for the Ottawa Police Services, downtown on Elgin Street. It is named for a former police chief who served in that role from 1989-93. Policing runs in the family, though not all of them measure up to him. One son in particular, a former cop who I've heard works in customs down at the airport, seems to spend his free time writing letters to the editor for a local right wing rag of a newspaper four or five times a week, spouting his usual self righteous, sanctimonious, blowhard opinions. In the past, I've referred to that Flanagan as His Infernal Pompousness.

This cube stands outside the Rideau branch of the Ottawa Library. It is one of four such cubes, a collective art installation, along Rideau Street.

This storefront window is at the Rideau Centre mall, for a shop called Dream Weaver. It was the sign that caught my attention.

Here I have a view that won't possible for awhile before too long- the Peace Tower framed from within the main entrance at the East Block of Parliament Hill. Centre Block is due to be closed up for ongoing restoration work for some years when the fall session of Parliament comes to an end. The House of Commons will be moving into a space prepared in the West Block, while the Senate will occupy the Government Conference Centre. You can see scaffolding around part of the tower in this shot.

Two murals in the Glebe stand across the street from each other. This first one is a new one, painted on the wall of a jewel shop to replace one that had been there before.

The other one is on the side wall of a building that houses a small grocery shop and apartments upstairs, and is also new. Wild Read is the work of a collective group of street artists called Vertigo Graffiti. The group is from Columbia, having had already done large scale murals around the world, and the Columbian embassy arranged for them do this. It blends together the idea of biodiversity and the world of fantasy in reading, and is the first work of the group in Canada.

I finish with these three shots taken on an evening in October. I came up to Parliament Hill for a twilight view of the Ottawa River for my final post of 2018, and took some extras. I had a similar twilight shot of this statue earlier in the year. The grounds of Parliament Hill include a number of statues of political leaders. This one features Alexander Mackenzie, our second prime minister, dramatically backlit by the sky.

A nearby view of the river shows the Alexandra Bridge linking Ottawa to Gatineau on the other shore.

And this view across to Major's Hill Park includes the familiar landmarks of the National Gallery, Notre Dame, and the American embassy.

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Friend

The first day of each month happens to be a theme day for those of us who are members of City Daily Photo, and for the first of November, that theme is Friend. Take a look at how others are handling this theme here.

My primary take on the theme is taken from history, but at the suggestion of one of my readers, I thought I would start with this topiary that I recently featured, and am reusing one of the shots for today. MosaiCanada was a two year event held here, at Jacques Cartier Park on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River. It featured a series of topiary sculptures on a big scale. I spent a good part of October on a series with my visit, which you can start looking at right here if you'd like. One of the final topiaries was a fitting one for this theme. Hachiko The Loyal Dog is based on the true story of a Tokyo professor and his dog, who accompanied him to the train station each day when the professor would go off to work, and would wait there each day for his return. This continued for years after the professor had suddenly died. Today a statue of the dog is at that station.

My main take on this theme highlights the friendship of two of our founding Fathers of Confederation: our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald and the most eloquent speaker and writer in Parliament, Thomas D'Arcy McGee. They were among the politicians who worked together in the 1860s to forge the country that would become Canada, and theirs was a friendship that was very much a brotherhood. Both men were drinkers; in his book Blood And Daring, which tells the story of Canada during the American Civil War, John Boyko recounts an incident that speaks to the camaraderie of the two. One morning after a long night drinking, McGee was found sleeping it off under an editor's desk at the Ottawa Citizen. Macdonald admonished him by saying, "look here, McGee, this cabinet can't afford two drunkards, and I'm not quitting."

The Bytown Museum, a local history museum nestled by the Ottawa Locks of the Rideau Canal, has a section that examines the McGee assassination. McGee was shot in the back of the head coming home  to his boarding house from a session in the House of Commons one night in April 1868, and a Fenian sympathist was tried, convicted, and hung for it. Macdonald took the murder of his friend hard. I took these shots in August, on Colonel By Day. A portrait of McGee himself hangs here among the displays.

This bust is by Marshall Wood, done in 1874 in marble. It depicts Lady Agnes Macdonald, the wife of Sir John. The quote on the wall indicates her shock at the assassination, as well as the closeness she would have felt where her husband's friend was concerned.

A display case features various items related to the assassination- the original plaque that hung at the site of the crime, a book by McGee, funeral souvenirs, and something a bit odd- a casting of McGee's hand, done after his death. Death masks were common at the time in Victorian culture, but given the damage sustained in the shooting, it was not possible in this case. His hand was a suitable alternative, particularly given his eloquence as a writer.

One day in October, I went up to Parliament Hill. Statues of both Macdonald and McGee are among the set of monuments up there around the buildings. Macdonald's statue stands to the east side of Centre Block, with an allegorical figure at the base.

I finish with this photo of McGee's statue on the Hill, from a post earlier in the year, taken in the winter. When I took the above shots around Macdonald's statue, I came around to this area on the north side of Centre Block, hoping to get another shot or two of McGee from this spot. The work going on here at the Hill prevented that- this particular spot is presently just beyond public access. While one can go along the fenceline behind the statue, one can't get in front of it. So this wintery shot of the great man will do quite nicely. It is an appropriate spot for his monument- his statue stands facing the Library of Parliament, a fitting location for such a gifted writer and speaker.