Commentary
In Ian Fleming’s 007 novel “For Your Eyes Only,” James Bond visits Ottawa where he has a meeting booked with the RCMP commissioner, and so he reports to the Department of Justice alongside the Parliament Buildings. This is how Fleming described the building and, by extension, Ottawa generally: “Like most Canadian public buildings, the Department of Justice is a massive block of grey masonry built to look stodgily important and to withstand the long and hard winters.”
Fleming’s description isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s a bit harsh. Built in the 1930s, the Justice Building is a fine piece of official architecture along Wellington Street. Like the Confederation Building nearby, it was designed in the Château style of our early-20th-century railway hotels and stations and other government buildings. Think of the Château Laurier at the other end of Wellington Street, along with the Banff Springs Hotel and the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. Official Ottawa also long favoured neo-Gothic and Tudor Gothic styles like the Connaught Building, the Royal Canadian Mint, and of course the Parliament Buildings—all “stodgily important” and built to withstand the weather, yet nevertheless beautiful….