Canada’s highest court is nearing the end of a massive moving effort. Every piece of the operations of the Supreme Court of Canada is being shifted across the street from the building that has been its home for 80 years.
The building that housed the court has faced symptoms of physical decline similar to those that afflicted 24 Sussex Dr. – the official historic residence of the prime minister – and the Centre Block of Parliament Hill. Centre Block and 24 Sussex remain closed for renovations.
Now it’s the turn of the high court.
Its building, completed in 1941, began functioning as a court in 1946. Eight decades later, the court furnishings and records are being moved, piece by piece, to the West Memorial Building, on the other side of Wellington Street. The 1950s-era complex, which covers a city block and once housed Veterans’ Affairs, was vacated in 2008, and has been upgraded to temporarily accommodate the Supreme Court, along with one of Canada’s largest law libraries.
When the justices convene for the court’s fall session in October, they will do so in the West Memorial Building.
But it will be a massively changed version of that building. For the past six years, the government has been rehabilitating the building, making it more accessible, resistant to earthquakes, as well as preserving its heritage features. This week, the Public Services and Procurement Canada department said the cost of the upgrades totalled $671-million, excluding taxes.
As for the renovation of the original Supreme Court building, department spokesperson Michèle LaRose said the effort remains in the planning stage and a detailed timeline and costing are being developed.
“This is a significant undertaking, comparable to other major heritage rehabilitation projects managed by Public Services and Procurement Canada,” Ms. LaRose said in a statement. Previously, the renovation project had been budgeted at more than $1-billion.
In a statement, Chief Justice Richard Wagner acknowledged the court’s move is bittersweet.
“While we will miss our historic building, we recognize that the rehabilitation is necessary to preserve this important piece of Canadian heritage and symbol of our justice system for future generations.” The building will be used for the Supreme Court’s functions once again once the upgrades are completed.
Chief Justice Richard Wagner says the library's move is an important step to adapt it to a changing world.Nicolai Gregory/JOBFlocks
The move has included the Supreme Court of Canada Library, based for decades in the original building. That’s a lot of books, files and historic records.
Xuan Zhou, the director of the court library, said the exercise has not been easy. “The library move has been one of the most challenging components of the overall relocation,” she said.
The challenges include the size and specialized nature of the collection, the placement of thousands of linear metres of material, and the necessity of maintaining essential research and information services throughout the transition.
Ms. Zhou said that the library team conducted extensive research on best practices for such a move. That included discussions with staff at the Library of Parliament, formerly housed in Centre Block, which is in the midst of a renovation process expected to run into the early 2030s.
“The Supreme Court of Canada Library has one of Canada’s most specialized and authoritative legal collections, reflecting the research needs of Canada’s highest court,” Ms. Zhou said in a statement.
It has 300,000 physical volumes, 3,000 rare books and 50,000 perpetual-use electronic resources. And there are also audiovisual materials.
The West Memorial rehabilitation project is a joint venture between Moriyama Teshima Architects and Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning. Sketches of the new court space within the building have been published online, but access for the media has been limited so far.
However, JOBFlocks was invited to visit the interior of the temporary new home. The route to the library complex passes through a spectacular new Grand Hall, an atrium in the core of the building that echoes the grand entrance hall space in the classic building. However, the new space, engineered as a greeting area and event space, is more striking. It’s five storeys high, with office windows looking out over the space.
To get to the library, there’s the option of taking a glass-enclosed spiral staircase down into the space. Visitors can also take an elevator.
The new space, awaiting the arrival of members of the legal community seeking its resources, is smaller than the library’s space in the original building - 1,400 square metres compared to 2,029 square metres. It is slick, and spacious, with a breezy feel. It has the ambiance of a new public library in a prosperous Canadian community. There are 19th-century law books spanning the history of Canadian law on spotless shelves filling the space.
A spokesperson for the team that designed the new library space says that it was central to the overall project.
“It was strategically located near the Grand Hall in order to preserve the access for the legal community, creating a meaningful connection through the new circular feature stair/elevator, allowing the flow of natural light,” Emmanuelle van Rutten, an Ottawa-based partner in Moriyama Teshima Architects, said in a statement.
To the architects, the glass circular stairway is a way to bring natural light into the library and connect it to the court complex above, a spokesperson for the project says.Regenerate 344 Joint Venture: Moriyama Teshima Architects and Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning
Additions to the new space include a dedicated rare-book room, printing room and meeting room as well as a microform room. “Microform” refers to microfilm and microfiche records, of which the library has more than 180,000.
Ms. Zhou noted that litigants appearing before the court can access the library on the day of their hearing. Also the library makes material available through inter-library loans.
The court was established in 1875, with a small collection that grew over time, necessitating the appointment of a librarian in 1892. The Supreme Court Library was eventually designed by Ernest Cormier in the 1952 court complex.
Justice Patrick Kerwin, at work in 1949, was a prolific user of the Supreme Court library when it opened three years later.Malak, Ottawa
But Ms. Zhou says the library was physically declining, consistent with problems in the overall building, battling water leaks, temperature and humidity-control issues, and problems with the compact-shelving system.
“These issues presented particular challenges for a library responsible for safeguarding a large and valuable collection,” says Ms. Zhou. At times, items had to be moved to areas with better conditions to protect them.
The library move, planned for the last five years, was completed in early August after five weeks of work, said Ms. Zhou.
Ms. Zhou said Chief Justice Wagner has encouraged the library staff to think about how the library can continue supporting the court’s work in a changing and evolving legal and technological environment.
“As the Library settles into the West Memorial Building, we will work with Court staff to explore new approaches to library services,” she said.
The West Memorial Building will play host to the Supreme Court's next session when it begins in October.
Grégoire Webber, a law and philosophy professor at Queen’s University who once served as a law clerk to former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie, said the court’s iconic art deco building has been an Ottawa landmark, and standing representation of our system of government’s commitment to the rule of law.
“It is to Churchill that we owe the thought that although we shape our buildings, in turn our buildings shape us. The Court’s justices will be shaped by their time in their new home,” he wrote.
“I hope that the court continues to be – and to be perceived by the wider public – as open to all and accessible.”
Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
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