From Rocket to Spaceship

OUR STORIES IN STONE PART 12 From Rocket to spaceship CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN With gloves on and stick at the ready, a statue of Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard occupies a corner of the park at the intersection of Rue Laurier and Boulevard St-Laurent. Lament for a lost era: Exploring Gatineau’s monumental history BY ROBERT SIBLEY sidering its origins, that’s appropriate. As Wright, around the 1830s — where I took the plaque explains, the sculpture was a bench to enjoy my first coffee of the t first sight, the spaceship looks as created more that 40 years ago when day and admire the boats at the marina though it’s been abandoned on mankind was imagining a future among below me and listen to the hum of com- the wrong planet. But after an the stars. In fact, this sculpture is a small- muter traffic crossing the Alexandra Ahour staring at the thing while I er version of Explorer I, which was com- Bridge. It was a lovely sun-shiny morn- eat my lunch on the patio of the Théâtre missioned for Expo ’67. ing. A fine day, I figured, for a tour of de l’Île, a small oasis in the middle of Still, there’s something melancholy some of Hull’s — sorry, Gatineau’s — Brewery Creek in Gatineau, I change my about it. Is it the sculpture? Or me? Both? “monumental” history. mind. In any case, the alien-looking artifact re- I began by paying my respects to a Or, maybe it was the other way flects my mood at the end of another day hockey legend. Maurice “The Rocket” around: the spaceship changes my exploring the capital region’s monu- Richard’s larger-than-life statue occupies mind. ments. a corner of the park at the intersection of Sculptor Victor Tolgesy’s Explorer II In the morning, I parked the car at Rue Laurier and Boulevard St-Laurent. I sits at the tip of the island. Its round and Jacques-Cartier Park and sauntered recalled Jean Chrétien’s remark when angular shapes — made of corten steel, across the lawn to Maison Charron — Richard died in 2000. The Rocket, the the same metal used to make warships the oldest house in Hull; built, it is former prime minister said, “defined and — evoke images of distance places. Con- thought, by the city’s founder, Philemon transcended the game of hockey.” Afterward, I crossed St-Laurent to the Museum of Civilization for my second cup of the day on the terrace café at the back of the museum, where I enjoyed the view of Parliament Hill across the river. Below me at the river’s edge was the Voyageur Pathway that would take me to Parc Moussette. When my caffeine requirement was sated, I headed down the sloping bank of the Riverside Plaza, pausing at sculptor Louis Archambault’s white-painted steel abstract “people.” My pause for Person- nages, erected in 1967, was glancing at best. The museum, however, deserved a longer look. Just before entering the tun- nel of greenery that lines the riverside pathway, I looked back to confirm a long- held conviction that architect Douglas Cardinal’s museum, with its walls of rip- pling stone, is the loveliest building of recent vintage in the area, certainly bet- ter than the new War Museum, which always makes me think of a half-sunk cap- sized ship. Cardinal’s museum qualifies as a mon- CHRIS MIKULA , THE OTTAWA CITIZEN ument itself. Its curving walls glow in the Victor Tolgesy’s Explorer II is made of corten steel, which is the same metal used morning sun. to make warships. But then everything seemed to shine and shimmer this morning. Through gaps in the maples, willows and poplars rants and boutiques. I strolled up Rue Fountain, is a 15-metre structure by artist that line the pathway, I could admire the Wright to Rue Montcalm. The up-and- Vincent Théberge composed of cylinders “monuments” on the other side of the down street with its small houses, out- that symbolize logs. When the water river — the Rideau Canal, the Parliament side stairwells and balconies decorated flows out of the top of the fountain and Buildings, the Supreme Court, the Na- with potted plants — “a world quite dif- down the “logs,” you get a symbolic invo- tional Archives. ferent from the nearby towers,” as Ed- cation of the timber rafts that once domi- But then, rounding a long curve in the ward Brado rightly observes in his Guide nated the Ottawa River. riverbank, I caught sight of the Trudeau- to Ottawa. Over a coffee and croissant at Across the street, I entered Parc des era Portage Complex on my right. The Café Jean-Sébastian on the corner of Rue Portageurs and walked along Voyageur grey towers are, to my mind, the ugliest Saint-Jacques, I admired the surround- Pathway, finding yet another invocation buildings in the Ottawa area. The full aw- ing streets and their false-front shops. of Hull’s past. John McEwen’s flame-cut fulness of these blank-face buildings They reminded me of small towns in steel sculpture, entitled Boat Sight, de- landed like a bag of cement when, just af- Normandy, as long as I avoided looking picts the bare ribs of an unfinished boat. ter passing sculptor Phyllis Kurtz Fine’s at the surrounding government build- The boat ribs provide a frame for the 1978 abstract steel tower, entitled Com- ings. spiky skyline of Ottawa across the grey mentary — I came out of the pathway at Afterward, I walked down to Rue river and the old industrial works on the the Portage Bridge. Montcalm and then left down to Boule- islands in the river. Even the ramshackle remains of the vard Alexandre-Taché to find the en- According to my handy NCC E.B. Eddy industrial complex along Rue trance to Parc des Portageurs. brochure, Boat Sight symbolizes the ar- Laurier between the Portage and the First, though, I stopped at the plaza in rival of “culture” in the primeval forest, Chaudière bridges was preferable. front of Les Terrasses de la Chaudière, while the silhouetted dogs curiously cir- At least it possesses historical interest, another government block not quite as cling the boat represent nature. I like this reminding us that this area along the riv- ugly as the Portage Complex. I found the abstract monument for the simple way it er was once the heart of the region’s lum- monument to Hull’s founding father, evokes the remembrance of those first ber industry. Philemon Wright. The American entre- European explorers on the Ottawa Riv- I recalled a line from a history book: preneur and his family were the original er, stirring the historical imagination to “Hull without the E.B. Eddy Company settlers of the area in 1800, founding visualize the travellers who came ashore would be like Shakespeare’s play of Wrightstown, which eventually became on these flat rocks to portage their boats Hamlet with Hamlet left out.” Hull in 1875, and establishing the area’s and canoes around the once-thunderous A detour up Rue Laval to Place Aubry lumber industry. The small obelisk with barrier of Chaudière Falls. — passing a statue of 17th-century a bronze relief portrait of Wright was un- Further upriver, I find certain anoth- French explorer Samuel de Champlain veiled in 1950 by Governor General er equally evocative monument to an- that I didn’t know existed — offered Alexander of Tunis on the 150th anniver- other traveler who sojourned on these some compensation for the sight of the sary of the American’s arrival in the area. shores, Father Jean de Brébeuf. The Je- Portage complex. Nearby on the plaza is another monu- suit priest, according to the plaque on I sauntered through the area with its ment to Hull’s lumbering history. The his statue in Parc Moussette, was “tor- narrow lanes lined with bars and restau- Fontaine des Bâtisseurs, or Builder’s tured by the Hurons” and “died mar- 2 tyred by the Iroquois.” It was a long time ago — March 16, 1649, to be precise — and I wonder whether the wording would be different if the statue was unveiled today, rather than in the politically incor- rect year of 1926 (a year after Brébeuf was beatified by Pope Pius XI). Brébeuf’s statue, arms dra- matically raised with a cruci- fix in one hand, stands atop a large stone cairn, just off Rue Brunet at the entrance to Parc Moussette. The Ottawa River and the muted roar of the Lit- tle Chaudière Rapids provide a fitting backdrop for the monument. From the shore I see the Champlain Bridge on my right, Vérendrye and Alexander Mackenzie stranded space ship. and, looking left, small rocky islands (strange how names learned in high While I eat my tuna sandwich and covered with gulls and, in the distance, school history so readily return). I visu- drain a bottle of Perrier, I study the the railway bridge. Across the river, a alize them paddling past, heading up- space ship. It definitely looks stranded, string of high-rises hide behind a veil of river, leaving civilization behind, light- slowly sinking (so it seems) in a knoll greenery. ing out for the territory, moving always of low-lying plants, a forgotten relic Sitting on the shore’s edge, the rush- closer to the unknown — until the from a time when men thrilled to the ing river at my feet, in the shade of a whoosh of a brightly coloured pair of thought of unknown places to explore.

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