Earnscliffe gets a $2.4-million facelift

[guest]

Earnscliffe is a Victorian house set on a commanding position on the rocky escarpment looking across the Ottawa River to the Gatineau Hills. Today, the view from Sir John A Macdonald’s house includes the rusting arches of the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge. Canada’s first prime minister bought the house and two-acre site in 1883 for $10,040. Before long, renovations and extensions were in full swing. “The house wants painting and papering too which I am greatly dreading,” Lady Agnes Macdonald wrote to her sister-in-law. She complained about her “very shabby chairs” and another time remarked that there weren’t enough rooms for her brother, Colonel Bernard, to live at Earnscliffe.

更多...