The Library of Parliament () is the main information repository and research resource for the

Parliament of Canada The Parliament of Canada () is the Canadian federalism, federal legislature of Canada. The Monarchy of Canada, Crown, along with two chambers: the Senate of Canada, Senate and the House of Commons of Canada, House of Commons, form the Bicameral ...

. The main branch of the library sits at the rear of the

Centre Block The Centre Block () is the main building of the Parliament of Canada, Canadian parliamentary complex on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, containing the House of Commons of Canada, House of Commons and Senate of Canada, Senate chambers, as we ...

Parliament Hill Parliament Hill (), colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern bank of the Ottawa River that houses the Parliament of Canada in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. It accommodates a suite of Gothic revival buildings whose ...

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

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

Main branch characteristics

Designed by Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, and inspired by the British Museum Reading Room, 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 communi ...

, 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 a ramping arch that extends from the upper portion of a wall to a pier of great mass, to convey to the ground the lateral forces that push a wall ou ...

es, are loadbearing, double-

wythe A wythe is a continuous vertical section of masonry one unit in thickness. A wythe may be independent of, or interlocked with, the adjoining wythe(s). A single wythe of brick that is not structural in nature is referred to as a masonry veneer. ...

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, including floral patterns and

frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

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, usually dome-like structure on top of a building often crowning a larger roof or dome. Cupolas often serve as a roof lantern to admit light and air or as a lookout. The word derives, via Ital ...

, 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; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) 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 pinkish-orang ...

. 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 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 Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...

, 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 (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 () was a British colonization of the Americas, British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence established in 1791 and abolished in 1841. It covered the southern portion o ...

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 British North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, in the Report ...

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

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, and

Quebec City Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

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

chose Bytown 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 Deputy Lieutenant, DL (18 January 1823 – 12 August 1891) was an English industrialist and art collector. Early life Fairbairn was born in the Polygon in Ardwick, near the centre of Manchester. He was the thir ...

Engineering Co. Ltd. of

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

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, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

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 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 fact that ea ...

, 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; ),''Public Services and Procurement Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Public Works and Government Services (). formerly 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'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

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 (Griffin and DeCelles shared the post) * 1920–1938:

Martin Burrell Martin Burrell (19 October 1858 – 20 March 1938) was a Canadian politician. Born in Faringdon, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), Burrell emigrated to Canada as a young man, where he eventually became a fruit grower on a farm about two miles e ...

* 1944–1959: Francis Aubrey Hardy * 1960–1994: Erik John Spicer * 1994–2005: Richard Paré * 2005–2011: William R. Young * 2012–2018: Sonia L'Heureux *2018–2024: Heather Lank *2024–present: Christine Ivory

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 Counci ...

References

External links