Rideau Hall
Rideau Hall is the official residence of the governor general of Canada, the representative of the monarch of Canada. Located in Ottawa, the capital of the country, on a estate at 1 Sussex Drive, the main building consists of approximately 175 rooms across, and 27 outbuildings around the grounds. Rideau Hall's site lies just outside the centre of Ottawa. It is one of two official vice-regal residences maintained by the federal Crown, the other being the Citadelle of Quebec. It is also used as the official residence of the monarch of Canada, when he is in Canada.
Most of Rideau Hall is used for state affairs, only of its area being dedicated to private living quarters, while additional areas serve as the offices of the Canadian Heraldic Authority and the principal workplace of the governor general and their staff; either the term Rideau Hall, as a metonym, or the formal idiom Government House is employed to refer to this bureaucratic branch. Officially received at the palace are foreign heads of state, both incoming and outgoing ambassadors and high commissioners to Canada, and Canadian Crown ministers for audiences with either the viceroy or the sovereign, should the latter be in residence. Rideau Hall is likewise the location of many Canadian award presentations and investitures, where prime ministers and other members of the federal Cabinet are sworn in, and where federal writs of election are "dropped", among other ceremonial and constitutional functions.
Rideau Hall and the surrounding grounds were designated as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1977. The house is open to the public for guided tours throughout the year; approximately 200,000 visitors tour Rideau Hall annually. Since 1934, the Federal District Commission has managed the grounds.
Name
The name Rideau Hall was chosen by Thomas McKay for his villa, drawing inspiration from the Rideau Canal which he had helped construct, though the house was also known colloquially as McKay's Castle. Once the house became the official residence of the governor general, it was termed formally as Government House. However, Rideau Hall stuck as the informal name, and the existence of two names for the building led to some issue: in 1889 the viceregal consort, the Lady Stanley of Preston, was rebuked by Queen Victoria for calling the house Rideau Hall; it was to be Government House, as in all other Empire capitals. Today, however, Rideau Hall is the commonly accepted term for the house, with Government House remaining only in use for very formal or legal affairs; for example, royal proclamations will finish with the phrase: "At Our Government House, in Our City of Ottawa "History
McKay villa
The site of Rideau Hall and the original structure were chosen and built by stonemason Thomas McKay, who immigrated from Perth, Scotland, to Montreal, Lower Canada, in 1817 and later became the main contractor involved in the construction of the Rideau Canal. Following the completion of the canal, McKay built mills at Rideau Falls, making him the founder of New Edinburgh, now a neighbourhood of Ottawa. With his newly acquired wealth, McKay purchased the site overlooking both the Ottawa and Rideau Rivers and built a stone villa, where he and his family lived until 1855 and which became the root of the present day Rideau Hall. Locals referred to the structure as McKay's Castle.Even before the building became a viceregal residence, the hall received noted visitors, including three governors general of the Province of Canada: the Lord Sydenham, the Earl of Elgin, and Sir Edmund Head. It was said that the watercolours of Barrack Hill painted by the latter governor's wife, Lady Head, while she was visiting Rideau Hall, had influenced Queen Victoria to choose Bytown as the national capital. Also, on 2 September 1860, the day after he laid the cornerstone of the parliament buildings, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, drove through the grounds of Rideau Hall as part of his tour of the region.
Viceregal home
After Bytown was chosen as the capital of the Province of Canada, a design competition was launched in 1859 for a new parliamentary campus. The Centre Block, departmental buildings, and a residence for the governor general were each awarded separately. The winning scheme for Government House was a Second Empire design by Toronto architects Cumberland & Storm. However, it was never built, owing to cost overruns on the construction of the parliament buildings.In 1864, Rideau Hall was leased by the Crown from the McKay family for $4,000 per year and was intended to serve only as a temporary home for the viceroy until a proper government house could be constructed. The next year, Frederick Preston Rubidge oversaw the refinishing of the original villa and designed additions to accommodate the new functions. It was enlarged to three or four times the original size, mostly by way of a new 49-room wing, and, once complete, the first Governor General of Canada, the Viscount Monck, took residence. These additions were opposed by George Brown, who claimed that "the governor general's residence is a miserable little house, and the grounds those of an ambitious country squire." Prime Minister John A. Macdonald agreed, complaining that more had been spent on patching up Rideau Hall than could have been used to construct a new royal palace. Nonetheless, the gatehouse was enhanced by Rubidge and the entire property purchased outright in 1868 for the sum of $82,000.
Thereafter, the house became the social centre of Ottawa—even Canada—hosting foreign visitors, investitures, swearing-in ceremonies, balls, dinners, garden parties, children's parties, and theatrical productions in the ballroom, in which members of the household and viceregal family would participate. Probably the largest event held in the ballroom was a fancy dress ball hosted by the Dufferins on the evening of 23 February 1876, which approximately 1,500 guests attended.
Still, despite the popularity of the events that took place in the building, negative first impressions of Rideau Hall itself were a theme until the early part of the 20th century. Upon arrival there in 1872, the Countess of Dufferin said in her journal: "We have been so very enthusiastic about everything hitherto that the first sight of Rideau Hall did lower our spirits just a little!" In 1893, Lady Stanley, wife of Governor General the Lord Stanley of Preston, said "you will find the furniture in the rooms very old-fashioned & not very pretty The red drawing room had no furniture except chairs & tables The walls are absolutely bare The room which has always been the wife of the G.G.'s sitting room is very empty There are no lamps in the house at all. No cushions, no table cloths, in fact none of the small things that make a room pretty & comfortable." Echoing these earlier comments, the Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair said upon her departure from Ottawa that Rideau Hall was a "shabby old Government House put away amongst its clump of bushes "
Various improvements were undertaken over the decades, seeing the first gas chandeliers and a telegraph wire put in, as well as the construction of the ballroom in the same year. By the time Rideau Hall was to live up to its role as a royal home, when its first royal residents—John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, and his wife, Princess Louise—moved in at the beginning of 1878, many upgrades had been completed. Lorne stated of the hall: "Here we are settling down in this big and comfortable House, which I tell Louise is much superior to Kensington, for the walls are thick, the rooms are lathed and plastered and there is an abundant supply of heat and light." The princess was not long in Rideau Hall before Fenians posed themselves as a threat to her life and she was ushered back to the UK for both rest and protection. When she returned in 1880, with the Queen greatly concerned for her daughter's safety, it was felt necessary to post extra guards around the grounds of the hall.
Thereafter, members of the royal family would stay periodically at Rideau Hall, if not as governor general then as guests of
the Crown, so that the palace played host to Prince Leopold in 1880; Prince George in 1882, 1901, and 1908; Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and Princess Louise, Duchess of Connaught, in 1890 and as the viceregal couple from 1906 to 1912; Princess Louise in 1900; Princess Patricia with her parents from 1906 to 1912; Prince Albert in 1910 and 1913; Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1919, 1923, 1924, and 1927; Prince George in 1926 and 1927; and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, in 1929.
A member of the royal family, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, lost his life on the grounds of Rideau Hall. Theo Aronson, in his 1981 biography of Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, simply stated that the Duke "was found dead on the floor of his room at Rideau Hall on the morning of 26 April 1943. He had died, apparently, from hypothermia." The diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, King George VI's private secretary, published in 2006, recorded that both the regiment and Athlone had rejected him as incompetent, and he fell out of a window when drunk and perished of hypothermia overnight.
Second World War
When King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth, arrived at Rideau Hall on 19 May 1939, during their first royal tour of Canada, official royal tour historian Gustave Lanctot stated: "When Their Majesties walked into their Canadian residence, the Statute of Westminster had assumed full reality: the King of Canada had come home." The King, while there, became the first monarch of Canada to personally receive the credentials of an ambassador, that being Daniel Calhoun Roper as the representative of the United States. It was thought for a time, after the outbreak of the Second World War, that the King, Queen, and their two daughters—Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret—would move permanently to Canada for the duration of the conflict in Europe; though, Hatley Castle, in Colwood, British Columbia, was purchased by the King in Right of Canada for this purpose, instead of using Rideau Hall. However, it was decided that the royal family leaving the United Kingdom at a time of war would be a major blow to morale and they remained in Britain.During the war, the palace became the home in exile of a number of royals displaced by the invasions of their respective countries back in Europe. Among the royal guests were Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha of Norway; Grand Duchess Charlotte and Prince Felix of Luxembourg; King Peter II of Yugoslavia; King George II of Greece; Empress Zita of Austria and her daughters; as well as Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, her daughter, Princess Juliana, and granddaughters, Princesses Beatrix, Irene, and Margriet. Though the resident governor general's wife, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, could do little to add her personal touch to Rideau Hall, due to rationing and scarce supplies, she put many of the other royal ladies to work making clothing for those who had lost their homes in the Blitz. It was then in 1940 that the governor general's office in the East Block of Parliament Hill was closed and moved to Rideau Hall. In December 1941, Winston Churchill arrived at the hall, where he presided over British Cabinet meetings via telephone from his bed.