Tuesday, October 4, 2006 — A Matter of Pride

83 - "The Queen Front and Center" as seen in the Library of ParlOn the Nation­al News, a tour through the com­plet­ed ren­o­va­tions of the Library of Par­lia­ment, in Ottawa. This is no ordi­nary library. Com­plet­ed only nine years after Con­fed­er­a­tion (the for­ma­tion of Cana­da as a nation-state), it is a mag­nif­i­cent High Vic­to­ri­an Goth­ic fan­ta­sy, a cir­cu­lar cone of fly­ing but­tress­es and mul­ti-coloured stone that ris­es atop the cliffs along the Ottawa riv­er. The inte­ri­or is very beau­ti­ful, employ­ing a cir­cu­lar, radi­ant plan. Light streams into it from the sky, in the man­ner of a cathe­dral. In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Cana­da still retained its tra­di­tion of fine crafts­man­ship in wood, and the work that was done in this library is the equal of any­thing in the world. On the news item, one Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, who was a jour­ney­man car­pen­ter in his youth, said “this stuff is porn for any carpenter”.

When the orig­i­nal Par­lia­ment Build­ings burned to the ground, in 1916, the library was pro­tect­ed by mas­sive steel doors, and sur­vived unscathed. The col­lec­tion, though it includes rar­i­ties like an Audubon folio worth $14,000,000, is pri­mar­i­ly a work­ing library. The bulk of the col­lec­tion is works of his­to­ry, law, or eco­nom­ics. Mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion are meant to research leg­is­la­tion there, and, in fact, when­ev­er I’ve been there, I’ve seen MPs at work. It is only steps away from the floor of Par­lia­ment itself, and its beau­ty and calm make it a nat­ur­al place to flee when the ran­cour of the par­lia­men­tary scrum gets unnerving.

The chief con­trac­tor who won the bid to con­duct the ren­o­va­tions is the great-grand­son of the orig­i­nal archi­tect. He spoke with great pride about the work, as did, in fact all the sub­con­trac­tors and arti­sans work­ing on the recon­struc­tion. I like to see pride like that.

Mean­while, here in Toron­to, this week­end saw the thir­ti­eth aniver­sary of the com­ple­tion of the CN Tow­er. It com­mem­o­rates the tow­er’s open­ing date to the pub­lic, rather than the ear­li­er day that almost every Toron­ton­ian then alive remem­bers — the day the mast was attached by Olga, the giant Siko­rsky heli­copter, pilot­ed by Lar­ry Prave­cek. On that day, the city was trans­fixed. The ele­vat­ed free­way that runs past the tow­er spon­ta­neous­ly became a park­ing lot, as every trav­eller stopped to get out of their car and watch the spec­ta­cle. One of the tough breed of high con­struc­tion work­ers climbed to the very tip and set off a smoke bomb.

06-10-04 BLOG A Matter of Pride pic 2

Con­struc­tion work­er Yvon Rainville: “I was drink­ing my cof­fee as usu­al – black, with two sug­ars – since it was just an ordi­nary work­ing day for me. But Boris Spre­mo, the leg­endary pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the Toron­to Star, had come to the tow­er…– just over six months after con­struc­tion start­ed. It wouldn’t be fin­ished for anoth­er three years. He asked if I mind­ed hav­ing my pho­to­graph tak­en. I didn’t, so he did.. I was there for nine months, as a rod­man – installing the met­al rods that run through the build­ing like a skele­ton. Lat­er, we got dan­ger pay if we worked above 1,000 feet…. There was a real spir­it of cama­raderie on the CN Tow­er. We were a big extend­ed fam­i­ly, all 1,537 of us: the iron men looked out for the car­pen­ters, the car­pen­ters looked out for the stone­ma­sons. A con­struc­tion site couldn’t oper­ate if there wasn’t that feel­ing among the workers.”

The CN tow­er was not built as a mon­u­ment, but as a pri­vate project for the CN Rail­ways telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions divi­sion, and paid for itself in fif­teen years. At 181 sto­ries, or 553.3 m (1,815 ft), it still remains, sur­pris­ing­ly, the world’s tallest. The builders had worked on the assump­tion that it would only hold the title for a decade, at most. Nobody seri­ous­ly sug­gest­ed it would remain tallest for three decades. But the advent of reli­able satel­lite ser­vice even­tu­al­ly made the need for clear-line-of-sight com­mu­ni­ca­tions unnec­es­sary. Tow­ers of this type are no longer like­ly to be built. How­ev­er, sev­er­al taller struc­tures for oth­er pur­pos­es are cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion. It will not hold the title much longer.

It is not sim­ply a pil­lar of con­crete. It’s actu­al­ly hol­low. Some­one could drop a rub­ber ball from quite near the top, and watch it bounce ten thou­sand times, or what­ev­er. The revolv­ing restau­rant and obser­va­tion decks are reached by high-speed ele­va­tors that take only a minute to ascend. They are on the out­side of the struc­ture, and glass-walled, so the expe­ri­ence is exhil­a­rat­ing. The glass floor of the obser­va­tion deck con­sists of lam­i­nat­ed ther­mal glass panes that are 64 mm thick, and which are sup­posed, accord­ing to the builders, to be able hold the weight of four­teen adult male hip­popo­to­mi (who thinks of these things as con­tin­gen­cies?). Some peo­ple expe­ri­ence ver­ti­go by walk­ing out on the glass floor and look­ing down at the ground below. It’s a must-not-see for ago­ra­phobes and acro­phobes. The stair­case is not nor­mal­ly open to the pub­lic, since it would require a per­ma­nent res­cue team to retrieve strand­ed climbers. But it is climbed by thou­sands of peo­ple every year for char­i­ty events. It has also been climbed by pogo stick, and once by some­one drag­ging a piano. I have nev­er been tempt­ed to climb it, with a piano or without.

Build­ing such a struc­ture in mid-1970s required major inno­va­tions in both design and con­struc­tion tech­niques, as it pre­sent­ed entire­ly new engi­neer­ing prob­lems. It is more of a machine than a struc­ture. It con­tains, for exam­ple, gigan­tic pen­du­lums (pen­du­lae?) which damp­en the res­o­nance of high winds, and its elec­tron­ics must be pro­tect­ed from the thou­sands of light­ning strikes it has received. The pre-stressed con­crete had to be built up in a con­tin­u­ous pour, using a slip­form that changed in shape grad­u­al­ly, as it moved upward at the rate of six metres per day. Many of the con­struc­tion tech­niques had nev­er been attempt­ed, or, in some cas­es, not even been conceived.

All that, of course, took place at a time when pride rode high in the city, the over­com­ing of obsta­cles was con­sid­ered a sign of nat­ur­al men­tal health, and the Con­ser­v­a­tive men­tal­i­ty of help­less­ness, greed, mean spir­i­tu­al squalor, and defeat had not yet sub­vert­ed our society.

06-10-04 BLOG A Matter of Pride pic 3Inter­views with the men who built that tow­er ― they were all pret­ty young then, and most are still around ― reveal a pride in good work, a self-respect, and a pub­lic spir­it that is today alto­geth­er unfash­ion­able. Not just the engi­neers and archi­tects and oth­er big shots. The men who poured the con­crete and stretched the steel, and the man who danced on the tip on that tri­umphant day. Pride. And even those who worked in more mun­dane jobs. Faizal Haq arrived from Pak­istan, as a teenag­er, and got a job as a cashier. He is still there, now Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer. Pride.

Now, look at the slimy lit­tle mag­gots who run things in our times. Look at all the Bush Con­ser­v­a­tives in the U.S.A. and the tamer, pip­squeak Harp­er Con­ser­v­a­tives in Cana­da. Look at the pinch-nosed bean-coun­ters and neo-con­ser­v­a­tive zealots. Look at the gay-haters and the bible-thumpers and the Patri­ot Act Com­mis­ars. Look at all those who pan­ic us with fear-mon­ger­ing and assault the dig­ni­ty of the free, indi­vid­ual human being. They can cre­ate noth­ing. They will not build any libraries or solve any tech­ni­cal prob­lems. They can only bul­ly and destroy. What is it that they hate most of all? What all bul­lies hate and fear: Pride.

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