The Library of Parliament (french: Bibliothèque du Parlement) is the main information repository and research resource for the

Parliament of Canada The Parliament of Canada (french: Parlement du Canada) is the federal legislature of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and is composed of three parts: the King, the Senate, and the House of Commons. By constitutional convention, ...

. The main branch of the library sits at the rear of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill in

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the c ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. The library survived the 1916 fire that destroyed Centre Block. The library has been augmented and renovated several times since its construction in 1876, the last between 2002 and 2006, though the form and decor remain essentially authentic. The building today serves as a Canadian icon, and appears on the obverse of the Canadian ten-dollar bill. The library is overseen by the

Parliamentary Librarian of Canada The Parliamentary Librarian of Canada is one of the key officials of the Parliament of Canada. While the Library of Parliament was created shortly after 1867, the role of librarian was not created until 1871 to be in charge of management and contr ...

and an associate or assistant librarian. The Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate is considered to be an officer of the library.

Main branch characteristics

Thomas Fuller Thomas Fuller (baptised 19 June 1608 – 16 August 1661) was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his ''Worthies of England'', published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and ...

and Chilion Jones, and inspired by the

British Museum Reading Room The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, ...

, the building is formed as a

chapter house A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room that is part of a cathedral, monastery or collegiate church in which meetings are held. When attached to a cathedral, the cathedral chapter meets there. In monasteries, the whole commun ...

, separated from the main body of the Centre Block by a corridor; this arrangement, as well as many other details of the design, was reached with the input of the then parliamentary librarian, Alpheus Todd. The walls, supported by a ring of 16

flying buttress The flying buttress (''arc-boutant'', arch buttress) is a specific form of buttress composed of an arch that extends from the upper portion of a wall to a pier of great mass, in order to convey lateral forces to the ground that are necessary to pu ...

es, are loadbearing, double- wythe masonry, consisting of a hydraulic lime rubble fill core between an interior layer of dressed stone and rustic Nepean sandstone on the exterior. Around the windows and along other edges is dressed stone trim, along with a multitude of

stone carvings A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

, including floral patterns and

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

s, keeping with the Victorian High Gothic style of the rest of the parliamentary complex. The roof, set in three tiers topped by a

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, f ...

, used to be a timber frame structure covered with slate tiles, but has been rebuilt with steel framing and deck covered with

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pink ...

. The initial overall combination of colours—grey Gloucester limestone and grey Nepean, red Potsdam and buff Ohio sandstones, as well as purple and green slate banding—conformed to the

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

style known as ''structural polychromy''. The main reading room rises to a vaulted ceiling and the walls and stacks are lined with white pine panelling carved into a variety of textures, flowers, masks, and mythical creatures. In the galleries are displayed the coats of arms of the seven provinces that existed in 1876, as well as that of the Dominion of Canada, and standing directly in the centre of the room is a white marble statue of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...

, sculpted by Marshall Wood in 1871. The northern galleries are also flanked with the white marble busts of Sir John Sandfield Macdonald; Prince Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII);

Alexandra, Princess of Wales Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia; 1 December 1844 – 20 November 1925) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from 22 January 1901 to 6 May 1910 as the wife of ...

(later Queen Alexandra); and Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché. The library's collection comprises 650,000 items, covering hundreds of years of history and tended by a staff of 300. Access to the facility is generally restricted to those on parliamentary business, but research publications are produced by the library and are available to the public. The main branch on Parliament Hill is only the central hub of a larger complex that spreads to other parliamentary buildings, where services are offered in a number of branch libraries and reading rooms.

History

The Library of Parliament's roots lie in the 1790s, when the legislative libraries of Upper and

Lower Canada The Province of Lower Canada (french: province du Bas-Canada) was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec ...

were created; these operated separately until the creation of the

Province of Canada The Province of Canada (or the United Province of Canada or the United Canadas) was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, in the Report on the ...

in 1841 and the collections were amalgamated and followed the provincial capital as it moved between Kingston,

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, and

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...

. The library was to be established in Ottawa after, in 1867,

chose

Bytown Bytown is the former name of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded on September 26, 1826, incorporated as a town on January 1, 1850, and superseded by the incorporation of the City of Ottawa on January 1, 1855. The founding was marked by a s ...

as the new seat for her crown in the Dominion of Canada, and the Library of Parliament Act formed the institution in 1871. Though construction of the present library began in 1859 and the collection arrived in Ottawa in 1866, work was halted in 1861 and was not completed until 1876, when the 47,000 volumes—including several donated by Queen Victoria—were installed. Around 1869, the builders discovered that they didn't have the technical knowledge to build the domed roof, meaning that

Thomas Fairbairn Sir Thomas Fairbairn, 2nd Baronet (18 January 1823 - 12 August 1891) was an English industrialist and art collector. Fairbairn was born in the Polygon in Ardwick, near the centre of Manchester. He was the third of eight surviving children of Si ...

Engineering Co. Ltd. of

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

had to be contracted to provide a prefabricated dome within a few weeks; this gave the Library of Parliament the distinction of being the first building in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

to have a state-of-the-art wrought iron roof. Further, in 1883, the library's 300 gas lights were converted to electricity. However, such additional costs brought the library's price to $301,812, a sum added on top of the total cost for all the parliament buildings, which had already gone far above the original allotted budget. Within only 12 years, the entire roof was stripped of its slate shingles in a tornado that hit Parliament Hill in 1888, since then the roof has been clad in copper. The library's contents grew over the next five decades and were saved from the 1916 fire that destroyed the majority of the Centre Block; the building was only connected to the main complex by a single corridor and the library clerk at the time, Michael MacCormac, secured the library's iron doors before the fire could spread into that area. Fire eventually broke out in 1952, in the library's cupola, and caused extensive damage through smoke and water. It was then necessary to perform structural work, as well as to install a replica of the inlaid parquet floor and dismantle the wood panelling and ship it to Montreal for cleaning and partial fireproofing. The Centre,

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

, and West Blocks subsequently received extensive climate control and electrical upgrades, but the library was largely overlooked. The deficiencies, plus conservation, rehabilitation, and upgrading, were addressed when a major, $52 million renovation was researched in 1996 and undertaken between 2002 and 2006.

Public Works and Government Services Canada Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC; french: Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada)''Public Services and Procurement Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Public Works ...

contracted the Thomas Fuller Construction Company (operated by the building designer's great-grandsons) to manage a project that fixed leaks in the roof and crumbling mortar in the walls on the exterior, as well as extensive repairs to the wood and plaster work and the installation of climate control systems on the interior. Also done at the time was a nine-metre-deep excavation of the bedrock beneath the library building, in order to provide more storage space, mechanical areas, and a link to an existing loading dock. The project used precision survey,

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...

measurement,

photogrammetry Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant ima ...

, and the then fledgling technology of Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application. After four years of work, the library was opened to the public, with tours of the library resuming on 5 June 2006, though Thomas Fuller Construction filed a $21 million lawsuit against the Crown for cost overruns. File:Parliament section.jpg, A drafted architectural section of the original Centre Block, showing the Victoria Tower at the far left, and the Library of Parliament to the right File:View of the Library of Parliament and the Centre Block on the day after the Centre Block fire.jpg, The library of Parliament standing unharmed the day following the fire of 1916 File:Library of Parliament renovation - 2003 (DSC00487) (cropped).jpg, The library undergoing renovations in 2003

Parliamentary librarians

* 1870–1884: Alpheus Todd * 1885–1920: Martin Joseph Griffin,

Alfred Duclos DeCelles Alfred Duclos DeCelles, CMG (August 8, 1843 – October 5, 1925) was a Canadian journalist, writer, lawyer and librarian. For thirty-five years, from 1885 to 1920, he was the head of the Parliamentary Library in Ottawa. He often signed his name a ...

(Griffin and DeCelles shared the post) * 1920–1938: Martin Burrell * 1944–1959: Francis Aubrey Hardy * 1960–1994: Erik John Spicer * 1994–2005: Richard Paré * 2005–2011: William R. Young * 2012–2018:

Sonia L'Heureux Sonia L'Heureux is a Canadian civil servant, who was the Parliamentary Librarian of Canada from 2012 to 2018."Meet Canada’s first female Parliamentary librarian: Sonia L’Heureux". '' The Hill Times'', July 9, 2012. She was the first woman ever ...

*2018–present: Heather Lank

Partnerships and collaboration

The Library of Parliament is a member of the

Canadian Association of Research Libraries The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) was established in 1976 and brings together thirty-one research libraries. Twenty-nine members are university libraries, plus Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the National Research Council ...

References

External links