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Last year, 295,000 people enjoyed the grounds and activities at Rideau Hall, residence of the Governor General, the Queen’s representative in Canada.
An estimated 100,000 people came on tours, while 195,00 people passed through the Sussex Drive, Thomas and MacKay streets gates, according to Annabelle Cloutier, director of communications for Rideau Hall. Cloutier says that number has risen steadily in recent years.
Today, when you pass through the MacKay Street gate, you will see and hear the laughter of picnicking families enjoying the play structure; in front of you are people strolling through the Canadian Heritage Gardens and, on your right, white-clad cricketers enjoying a weekly cricket match, as they have since before Confederation.
Canadian history buffs will want a photo of the inukshuk, the totem pole and the ever-popular Changing of the Guard ceremony (referred to in Rideau Hall literature as the Relief of Sentries).
People who want a self-guided tour can stop by the visitor centre and follow the route through the interpretative panels on the paths.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston and his wife, Sharon, annually host a Family Fun Day in January and a hugely popular Halloween party.
Year-round joggers run alongside cross-country skiers, while summer activities now include a children’s reading tent and well-attended free movie nights.
“There’s so much to do!” they rightly boast on their website.
That was not the situation 30 years ago this week, when the National Capital Commission issued a terse news release: “After consultation with various government departments, the National Capital Commission announced today that public access to the grounds of Government House will be curtailed effective May 6, 1986.”
Rideau Hall became the official residence of governors general with Confederation in 1867.
The grounds were fully opened to the public by Gov. Gen. Georges Vanier in the late 1950s, with access further increased by Roland Michener in the late 1960s.
Jeanne Sauve, who sworn in as the 23rd Governor General on May 14, 1984, had made it known she intended to end public access to the grounds. At her reception in London, a friend told Sauve how much neighbourhood children loved the grounds. She was reported to have said that would certainly not continue in the future.
Two days after the NCC news release, David Morris, enraged by the closure decision, made a caricature of the Selfish Giant story by Oscar Wilde, superimposing Sauve peering over her closed gates. He postered New Edinburgh and surrounding Lindenlea on May 8, 1986. Community anger was growing throughout the ‘Burgh. There were constant calls for some sort of protest to express our fury at having been told it was a security measure, when we all believed that Jeanne Sauve wanted to keep the public out of what she viewed as her own 79 acre-estate.
I said I would organize a one-time symbolic protest. Five of us volunteered to give up our Mothers’ Day May 11, 1986, and walked to the CANLOAN War Memorial on Sussex and Stanley without any idea of how many people might join us.
We watched, in amazement, as more than 300 locals, many of them senior public servants who had never taken part in a march in their lives, turned up, with signs and with kids. Three hundred disgruntled people and, surprisingly, the media as well. Suddenly, there were phone calls from media outlets in Sudbury, in Richmond, B.C. , and various centres along the East Coast.
No one, it seemed, bought the official line that the decision was not the Governor General’s. Jeanne Sauve had not been a popular Speaker of the House of Commons and the media were anxious for material about the protest. By May 12, Jean-Robert Gauthier, MP for Ottawa-Vanier, saw that the issue was not going away. His letter to the NCC questioning the closure left him frustrated. He wrote a second letter to Robert Simmonds, commissioner for the RCMP and a third to the minister of Public Works, the Hon. Roch La Salle, in which he “deplore(d) the fact that this surprise decision was arbitrarily imposed on us and that we have not been given the explanations we need to understand the decision.”
He continued, “The sole justification advanced so far has been the safety of Her Excellency the Governor General. I do not understand how in Canada in 1986 we can be so incapable of protecting our vicereine and at the same time leaving open this splendid green space.”
On May 13, Gauthier said in the House of Commons that, “Rideau Hall, a symbolic institution dear to the hearts of Canadian men and women, has seen so many people walk through its gates to admire this splendid residence or simply for the pleasures of walking on the Governor General’s lawn,” reminding the members of Parliament that Rideau Hall was “this lovely expanse of green that belongs to Canadians.”
Iain Barrie, spokesman for the NCC, remained dismissive, calling our group “a neighborhood protest of people who have lost a privilege.”
His disdainful assessment was wrong.
That one-time protest of May 11, by the so-called elitist crowd from the ‘Burgh, mushroomed into cross-country anger. Volunteers came forward to help with future protests, with letter-writing, fundraising and meetings with NCC officials. We named ourselves Canadian Unlock the Gates Group (CUGG – “See you, GG”) and we moved into action.
A well-known Ottawa printer, who lived in Nepean, called and asked how he could help. Would he consider giving us some bumper stickers and buttons at a discount? He said we could have the entire $750 order free of charge.
Rideau Hall on May 12, 1986.
A public meeting at Crichton Street public school on May 21 saw an overflow crowd vent their anger on Barrie, who continued to repeat the official line – it was not the Governor General’s decision, it was solely a security matter.
Our goal, from the beginning, was to discredit the security pretext and show it for the smokescreen we believed it was.
A small, little-known but well-used gate on MacKay Street, provided us with much of the ammunition in this fight to regain access to a heritage site. The gate, accessed by a small stone stoop, always remained unlocked despite the presence of a $3 padlock, for show, long after the May 6 announcement.
Cricketers and their supporters gathered in the historic Rideau Hall pavilion each weekend, as they had done for many years. Entrance to the field house and cricket pitch was determined, not by the RCMP, as one would have thought in a “security” shutdown, but by Rideau Hall Cricket Association and its executive. On Sunday May 25, two weeks after the initial protest, CUGG organized a Rideau Hall Cricket Watchers event so that we could all enter that gate and mix with the friends and families of the players (I thought we should be allowed access to the refreshments, but perhaps that was pushing our luck).
Peter Mirsky, a neighborhood lawyer and avid Cricket Watching Protester, said he came to the game “because it was the only time we’ll be able to get into the grounds and enjoy them.”
Toward the end of May, as a result of these tongue-in-cheek protests and the outcry which was gaining momentum, the NCC had to issue a partial reconsideration of the original ban. People were to be allowed inside the grounds, for the purpose of watching a cricket game on weekends. Control of the gate would rest with the RCMP.
Perhaps the Cricket Association had not yet delivered that key to the RCMP, by the time of our Sunday demonstration, as embarrassed officers present had to make a number of phone calls to the association, which had hurriedly locked the secret gate.
CUGG staged another fake cricket watchers event on Sunday, June 10. The “red-faced officials at Government House and the National Capital Commission can’t explain why ‘fake’ cricket fans were allowed on Rideau Hall grounds Sunday,” read the Ottawa Citizen story.
Many people wore our buttons, with the Jeanne Sauve caricature holding a cricket bat and “Unlock the Gates” logo.
On Sunday, June 22, we were planning to hold another cricket-watchers party from 1 to 3 pm. We were told that we could stand in a circle on the chalk line that had been drawn around the pitch. The summer pageant of Changing the Guard had begun earlier that week. Sentries, led by a piper, would march to the front gate to relieve the sentries who had been on duty for an hour. A crowd of children would march to the gate, in step with the soldiers.
Suddenly I heard the piper, but no one could join them on their march down the ceremonial driveway. A public ceremony that no-one could watch. It was too ridiculous. I had regularly marched with the piper and sentries for many years and was determined to watch it this time as well. A largish woman grabbed me by the arm and said I was not going anywhere. I told her, emphatically, I was going to watch the changing of the guard as I’d always done. She then identified herself as RCMP and arrested me, throwing me into the car nearby, as the CBC filmed it all, for national news. I was held for a brief time until they finally agreed there were no grounds to lay charges.
As we were scheduled to fly to Israel the next morning, I agreed to sign an undertaking not to enter the grounds for a month. When they drove me home to produce some identification, the female RCMP officer whispered to me as we went into my house: “Actually I support your protest, Mrs. Applebaum.” It was almost gratifying. I did need to explain the day’s events to my mother, in Toronto, who watched her daughter being led away on the evening news.
People outside Rideau Hall demonstrate the proposed closure of the grounds, outside its gates on June 14, 1986. Bruno Schlumberger/Ottawa Citizen
During my absence, many people kept up the once-weekly protest throughout the summer. Wendy Shatner, Jane Heintzman and Rosemary Shepherd organized events, met with officials and answered the growing mountain of correspondence. We knew that we could not keep up the public protests once summer ended, but it was important to keep the issue before the public, in the hope there would be a policy reversal, when Sauve’s tenure came to an end.
New Edinburgh day care children marched to Rideau Hall to deliver their protest letter on the closing of Rideau Hall grounds to the public on May 27, 1986. Paul Latour/Ottawa Citizen
By then, CUGG had the full endorsement of Ottawa City Council, Heritage Ottawa and the Historical Society of Ottawa Gatineau and many prominent individuals in its efforts to reverse the decision and unlock the gates.
The Hon. Romeo LeBlanc, then Speaker of the House of Commons and later Canada’s 25th Governor General, appealed directly to Her Excellency but failed to convince her how unpopular the decision remained.
On January 11, 1987, exactly eight months after the first protest, CUGG joined long queues of people waiting to shake hands with the Governor General at the annual Levee at Rideau Hall. Most wore their “Unlock the Gates” buttons. As I approached Jeanne Sauve in the reception line, I said “Your Excellency, these grounds are for all Canadians.”
“Pardon me,” a startled Sauve replied. I repeated my message and Sauve balked for one second, regained her composure and said, “No you are mistaken. I don’t think so.”
When we went to get our coats from the coat check on the lower level, one of the household staff lifted her long skirt, letting me see a glimpse of her “Unlock the Gates” button pinned to her skirt. That was gratifying.
By 1988, children regularly scaled the fence or climbed through openings as construction to replace the pillars continued. One time, they organized a hockey game. “At first we were kind of sneaking around, but after half an hour we were yelling and screaming,” the Ottawa Citizen quoted one as saying.
Whose decision had it been to close the grounds anyway?
The NCC’s, the Governor General’s? That question remained unanswered two years later, despite thorough searches under access-to-information legislation.
Barrie maintained that the Governor General “had not been consulted … because it had nothing to do directly with the Governor General.”
Marie Bender, press secretary to the Governor General was equally insistent that she had been consulted and “finds it ‘unfortunate’ but listened to the recommendation and accepted it.”
The only evidence of the matter having been raised at all is a May 5, 1986, memo between Maj. Colin Sangster and RCMP Insp. Larry Comeau: “It is felt by Sangster and I concur that changes that would close the park to the public should be implemented.”
Sangster refused our calls to Rideau Hall. Stewart MacLeod summed it up, early on,in his May 26, 1986, Maclean’s article, titled, Only Sauve Knows For Sure.
To mark the third anniversary of the closure, CUGG staged a Let-Them-Eat-Cake mock garden party on May 28, 1989, outside the main gate. Jeanne Sauve was compared with Marie Antoinette, whose contempt for the populace led her to advise the starving pre-revolutionary peasants “let them eat cake” when they had no food. Jean-Robert Gauthier cut the cake. Marc Laviolette, who was then area alderman, dropped by, as did several other provincial and federal officials. CUGG organizers wore white gloves and the finest retro hats with some CUGG enthusiasts arriving in full 1900s garden party attire. A local favorite bakery donated three large cakes. As the saying goes, We believe ‘She (the Governor General) was not amused.’
The first sign of hope came on Oct. 12, 1989, with the announcement of the choice for Canada’s 24th governor general, Ray Hnatyshyn.
New Edinburgh Community Association and CUGG immediately set the governor general-designate a warm and welcoming letter. I received an equally warm and personal reply shortly after. We started to believe there was real hope for a policy reversal with his swearing-in ceremony of Jan. 29, 1990.
Soon after taking office, the new Governor General sent out invitations for a Neighborhood Coffee Party on March 3, 1990. Our hopes of unlocking the gates were starting to materialize. At the March 3 reception, aides to the new Governor General told me to stay where I was as Hnatyshyn wanted to talk to me. As he approached he laughed and said : “Do you have any idea how difficult you have made things for me? Since my nomination, the only question I am ever asked is ‘Are you going to open the gates’? No-one wants to hear my opinions on world issues or the economy.”
We both laughed, and CUGG volunteers knew that the announcement of policy reversal could not be far behind.
Rideau Hall on May 27, 1986.
NCC issued the news release May 18, to become effective on June 2, 1990. With that release, CUGG decided to cancel the parade permit issued to us for the fourth anniversary protest scheduled for May 28, 1990. From that moment on, Hnatyshyn went to great lengths to ensure public access once again to the grounds of Rideau Hall. With much levity, and a lot of rain, CUGG supporters entered the Mackay Street gate on June 2, 1990.
We walked up to the Terry Fox fountain in front of the residence and signed the register, as the first people to enjoy the open access. We drank champagne to our persistence and success, before disbanding CUGG.
Since that time, each governor general – Romeo LeBlanc, Adrienne Clarkson, Michaelle Jean and, most recently, our David Johnston, have added to the amenities and facilities to ensure that Rideau Hall will be an open and welcoming centre for every visitor throughout the year.
Cloutier expressed her frustration with Rideau Hall’s budget allocation compared to other tourist attractions in the national capital region. Compared with the museums, she said, Rideau Hall operates on a very low budget. We are trying hard to get more visibility and make Rideau Hall a true people place, she added.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful true vindication if half a million people enjoyed themselves at Rideau Hall in this 30th year after the gates were slammed shut, I offered. Cloutier and I both hope that happens in 2016.
Gaye Applebaum is a retired lawyer who lives in Centretown. Photo by Errol McGihon
查看原文...
An estimated 100,000 people came on tours, while 195,00 people passed through the Sussex Drive, Thomas and MacKay streets gates, according to Annabelle Cloutier, director of communications for Rideau Hall. Cloutier says that number has risen steadily in recent years.
Today, when you pass through the MacKay Street gate, you will see and hear the laughter of picnicking families enjoying the play structure; in front of you are people strolling through the Canadian Heritage Gardens and, on your right, white-clad cricketers enjoying a weekly cricket match, as they have since before Confederation.
Canadian history buffs will want a photo of the inukshuk, the totem pole and the ever-popular Changing of the Guard ceremony (referred to in Rideau Hall literature as the Relief of Sentries).
People who want a self-guided tour can stop by the visitor centre and follow the route through the interpretative panels on the paths.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston and his wife, Sharon, annually host a Family Fun Day in January and a hugely popular Halloween party.
Year-round joggers run alongside cross-country skiers, while summer activities now include a children’s reading tent and well-attended free movie nights.
“There’s so much to do!” they rightly boast on their website.
That was not the situation 30 years ago this week, when the National Capital Commission issued a terse news release: “After consultation with various government departments, the National Capital Commission announced today that public access to the grounds of Government House will be curtailed effective May 6, 1986.”
Rideau Hall became the official residence of governors general with Confederation in 1867.
The grounds were fully opened to the public by Gov. Gen. Georges Vanier in the late 1950s, with access further increased by Roland Michener in the late 1960s.
Jeanne Sauve, who sworn in as the 23rd Governor General on May 14, 1984, had made it known she intended to end public access to the grounds. At her reception in London, a friend told Sauve how much neighbourhood children loved the grounds. She was reported to have said that would certainly not continue in the future.
Two days after the NCC news release, David Morris, enraged by the closure decision, made a caricature of the Selfish Giant story by Oscar Wilde, superimposing Sauve peering over her closed gates. He postered New Edinburgh and surrounding Lindenlea on May 8, 1986. Community anger was growing throughout the ‘Burgh. There were constant calls for some sort of protest to express our fury at having been told it was a security measure, when we all believed that Jeanne Sauve wanted to keep the public out of what she viewed as her own 79 acre-estate.
I said I would organize a one-time symbolic protest. Five of us volunteered to give up our Mothers’ Day May 11, 1986, and walked to the CANLOAN War Memorial on Sussex and Stanley without any idea of how many people might join us.
We watched, in amazement, as more than 300 locals, many of them senior public servants who had never taken part in a march in their lives, turned up, with signs and with kids. Three hundred disgruntled people and, surprisingly, the media as well. Suddenly, there were phone calls from media outlets in Sudbury, in Richmond, B.C. , and various centres along the East Coast.
No one, it seemed, bought the official line that the decision was not the Governor General’s. Jeanne Sauve had not been a popular Speaker of the House of Commons and the media were anxious for material about the protest. By May 12, Jean-Robert Gauthier, MP for Ottawa-Vanier, saw that the issue was not going away. His letter to the NCC questioning the closure left him frustrated. He wrote a second letter to Robert Simmonds, commissioner for the RCMP and a third to the minister of Public Works, the Hon. Roch La Salle, in which he “deplore(d) the fact that this surprise decision was arbitrarily imposed on us and that we have not been given the explanations we need to understand the decision.”
He continued, “The sole justification advanced so far has been the safety of Her Excellency the Governor General. I do not understand how in Canada in 1986 we can be so incapable of protecting our vicereine and at the same time leaving open this splendid green space.”
On May 13, Gauthier said in the House of Commons that, “Rideau Hall, a symbolic institution dear to the hearts of Canadian men and women, has seen so many people walk through its gates to admire this splendid residence or simply for the pleasures of walking on the Governor General’s lawn,” reminding the members of Parliament that Rideau Hall was “this lovely expanse of green that belongs to Canadians.”
Iain Barrie, spokesman for the NCC, remained dismissive, calling our group “a neighborhood protest of people who have lost a privilege.”
His disdainful assessment was wrong.
That one-time protest of May 11, by the so-called elitist crowd from the ‘Burgh, mushroomed into cross-country anger. Volunteers came forward to help with future protests, with letter-writing, fundraising and meetings with NCC officials. We named ourselves Canadian Unlock the Gates Group (CUGG – “See you, GG”) and we moved into action.
A well-known Ottawa printer, who lived in Nepean, called and asked how he could help. Would he consider giving us some bumper stickers and buttons at a discount? He said we could have the entire $750 order free of charge.
Rideau Hall on May 12, 1986.
A public meeting at Crichton Street public school on May 21 saw an overflow crowd vent their anger on Barrie, who continued to repeat the official line – it was not the Governor General’s decision, it was solely a security matter.
Our goal, from the beginning, was to discredit the security pretext and show it for the smokescreen we believed it was.
A small, little-known but well-used gate on MacKay Street, provided us with much of the ammunition in this fight to regain access to a heritage site. The gate, accessed by a small stone stoop, always remained unlocked despite the presence of a $3 padlock, for show, long after the May 6 announcement.
Cricketers and their supporters gathered in the historic Rideau Hall pavilion each weekend, as they had done for many years. Entrance to the field house and cricket pitch was determined, not by the RCMP, as one would have thought in a “security” shutdown, but by Rideau Hall Cricket Association and its executive. On Sunday May 25, two weeks after the initial protest, CUGG organized a Rideau Hall Cricket Watchers event so that we could all enter that gate and mix with the friends and families of the players (I thought we should be allowed access to the refreshments, but perhaps that was pushing our luck).
Peter Mirsky, a neighborhood lawyer and avid Cricket Watching Protester, said he came to the game “because it was the only time we’ll be able to get into the grounds and enjoy them.”
Toward the end of May, as a result of these tongue-in-cheek protests and the outcry which was gaining momentum, the NCC had to issue a partial reconsideration of the original ban. People were to be allowed inside the grounds, for the purpose of watching a cricket game on weekends. Control of the gate would rest with the RCMP.
Perhaps the Cricket Association had not yet delivered that key to the RCMP, by the time of our Sunday demonstration, as embarrassed officers present had to make a number of phone calls to the association, which had hurriedly locked the secret gate.
CUGG staged another fake cricket watchers event on Sunday, June 10. The “red-faced officials at Government House and the National Capital Commission can’t explain why ‘fake’ cricket fans were allowed on Rideau Hall grounds Sunday,” read the Ottawa Citizen story.
Many people wore our buttons, with the Jeanne Sauve caricature holding a cricket bat and “Unlock the Gates” logo.
On Sunday, June 22, we were planning to hold another cricket-watchers party from 1 to 3 pm. We were told that we could stand in a circle on the chalk line that had been drawn around the pitch. The summer pageant of Changing the Guard had begun earlier that week. Sentries, led by a piper, would march to the front gate to relieve the sentries who had been on duty for an hour. A crowd of children would march to the gate, in step with the soldiers.
Suddenly I heard the piper, but no one could join them on their march down the ceremonial driveway. A public ceremony that no-one could watch. It was too ridiculous. I had regularly marched with the piper and sentries for many years and was determined to watch it this time as well. A largish woman grabbed me by the arm and said I was not going anywhere. I told her, emphatically, I was going to watch the changing of the guard as I’d always done. She then identified herself as RCMP and arrested me, throwing me into the car nearby, as the CBC filmed it all, for national news. I was held for a brief time until they finally agreed there were no grounds to lay charges.
As we were scheduled to fly to Israel the next morning, I agreed to sign an undertaking not to enter the grounds for a month. When they drove me home to produce some identification, the female RCMP officer whispered to me as we went into my house: “Actually I support your protest, Mrs. Applebaum.” It was almost gratifying. I did need to explain the day’s events to my mother, in Toronto, who watched her daughter being led away on the evening news.
People outside Rideau Hall demonstrate the proposed closure of the grounds, outside its gates on June 14, 1986. Bruno Schlumberger/Ottawa Citizen
During my absence, many people kept up the once-weekly protest throughout the summer. Wendy Shatner, Jane Heintzman and Rosemary Shepherd organized events, met with officials and answered the growing mountain of correspondence. We knew that we could not keep up the public protests once summer ended, but it was important to keep the issue before the public, in the hope there would be a policy reversal, when Sauve’s tenure came to an end.
New Edinburgh day care children marched to Rideau Hall to deliver their protest letter on the closing of Rideau Hall grounds to the public on May 27, 1986. Paul Latour/Ottawa Citizen
By then, CUGG had the full endorsement of Ottawa City Council, Heritage Ottawa and the Historical Society of Ottawa Gatineau and many prominent individuals in its efforts to reverse the decision and unlock the gates.
The Hon. Romeo LeBlanc, then Speaker of the House of Commons and later Canada’s 25th Governor General, appealed directly to Her Excellency but failed to convince her how unpopular the decision remained.
On January 11, 1987, exactly eight months after the first protest, CUGG joined long queues of people waiting to shake hands with the Governor General at the annual Levee at Rideau Hall. Most wore their “Unlock the Gates” buttons. As I approached Jeanne Sauve in the reception line, I said “Your Excellency, these grounds are for all Canadians.”
“Pardon me,” a startled Sauve replied. I repeated my message and Sauve balked for one second, regained her composure and said, “No you are mistaken. I don’t think so.”
When we went to get our coats from the coat check on the lower level, one of the household staff lifted her long skirt, letting me see a glimpse of her “Unlock the Gates” button pinned to her skirt. That was gratifying.
By 1988, children regularly scaled the fence or climbed through openings as construction to replace the pillars continued. One time, they organized a hockey game. “At first we were kind of sneaking around, but after half an hour we were yelling and screaming,” the Ottawa Citizen quoted one as saying.
Whose decision had it been to close the grounds anyway?
The NCC’s, the Governor General’s? That question remained unanswered two years later, despite thorough searches under access-to-information legislation.
Barrie maintained that the Governor General “had not been consulted … because it had nothing to do directly with the Governor General.”
Marie Bender, press secretary to the Governor General was equally insistent that she had been consulted and “finds it ‘unfortunate’ but listened to the recommendation and accepted it.”
The only evidence of the matter having been raised at all is a May 5, 1986, memo between Maj. Colin Sangster and RCMP Insp. Larry Comeau: “It is felt by Sangster and I concur that changes that would close the park to the public should be implemented.”
Sangster refused our calls to Rideau Hall. Stewart MacLeod summed it up, early on,in his May 26, 1986, Maclean’s article, titled, Only Sauve Knows For Sure.
To mark the third anniversary of the closure, CUGG staged a Let-Them-Eat-Cake mock garden party on May 28, 1989, outside the main gate. Jeanne Sauve was compared with Marie Antoinette, whose contempt for the populace led her to advise the starving pre-revolutionary peasants “let them eat cake” when they had no food. Jean-Robert Gauthier cut the cake. Marc Laviolette, who was then area alderman, dropped by, as did several other provincial and federal officials. CUGG organizers wore white gloves and the finest retro hats with some CUGG enthusiasts arriving in full 1900s garden party attire. A local favorite bakery donated three large cakes. As the saying goes, We believe ‘She (the Governor General) was not amused.’
The first sign of hope came on Oct. 12, 1989, with the announcement of the choice for Canada’s 24th governor general, Ray Hnatyshyn.
New Edinburgh Community Association and CUGG immediately set the governor general-designate a warm and welcoming letter. I received an equally warm and personal reply shortly after. We started to believe there was real hope for a policy reversal with his swearing-in ceremony of Jan. 29, 1990.
Soon after taking office, the new Governor General sent out invitations for a Neighborhood Coffee Party on March 3, 1990. Our hopes of unlocking the gates were starting to materialize. At the March 3 reception, aides to the new Governor General told me to stay where I was as Hnatyshyn wanted to talk to me. As he approached he laughed and said : “Do you have any idea how difficult you have made things for me? Since my nomination, the only question I am ever asked is ‘Are you going to open the gates’? No-one wants to hear my opinions on world issues or the economy.”
We both laughed, and CUGG volunteers knew that the announcement of policy reversal could not be far behind.
Rideau Hall on May 27, 1986.
NCC issued the news release May 18, to become effective on June 2, 1990. With that release, CUGG decided to cancel the parade permit issued to us for the fourth anniversary protest scheduled for May 28, 1990. From that moment on, Hnatyshyn went to great lengths to ensure public access once again to the grounds of Rideau Hall. With much levity, and a lot of rain, CUGG supporters entered the Mackay Street gate on June 2, 1990.
We walked up to the Terry Fox fountain in front of the residence and signed the register, as the first people to enjoy the open access. We drank champagne to our persistence and success, before disbanding CUGG.
Since that time, each governor general – Romeo LeBlanc, Adrienne Clarkson, Michaelle Jean and, most recently, our David Johnston, have added to the amenities and facilities to ensure that Rideau Hall will be an open and welcoming centre for every visitor throughout the year.
Cloutier expressed her frustration with Rideau Hall’s budget allocation compared to other tourist attractions in the national capital region. Compared with the museums, she said, Rideau Hall operates on a very low budget. We are trying hard to get more visibility and make Rideau Hall a true people place, she added.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful true vindication if half a million people enjoyed themselves at Rideau Hall in this 30th year after the gates were slammed shut, I offered. Cloutier and I both hope that happens in 2016.
Gaye Applebaum is a retired lawyer who lives in Centretown. Photo by Errol McGihon
查看原文...
