So welcome to the Canadian Museum of Nature. This is our beautiful castle.
This is where we would have come in if we could have got in today and right
here you'll see the plaque erected by the government, commemorating the fact
that Parliament was here from 1916 to 1920. Here we are, we're going to go in.
Coming into the museum and here we are in the main atrium, as you can see,
beautiful tiled floors. Here we've got our quite famous moose.
So our tiled mosaic moose... this guy he doesn't hide anything but I'll tell you...
apparently in the 1950s and I think into the 1960s, they strategically placed a
carpet over this guy so that he wouldn't be showing his stuff, so to speak. But
he's got great antlers. And as you come in here, normally of course this is very
busy. We'd have, you know, well... thousands of people, normally come to the museum
every day, so normally this would be our lineup and we would be receiving people
right here. Today, I mean it's very quiet you can look up, you can see the various
balconies of the museum. So welcome to the rotunda.
This is just a beautiful room. It's a beautiful space but beyond that this
room has just one heck of a history. I mean every time I come here to work,
sometimes I think about that, there's so much history in this building but this
room maybe in particular, because in February of 1916, in the depths of the
First World War when frankly things weren't going that well,
Parliament burned down to the ground. And the very next day they moved Parliament
down, to the I guess, the only other facility that could really do the job in
town and that was right here in this room. And this building,
well, this building served as Parliament, but this room served as the
House of Commons from 1916 to 1920 and some very important bills were passed
here. You can imagine that that would be the throne, so the Speaker of the House
was there. Sir Robert Borden who was Prime Minister would be right here as
leader of the government and Sir Wilfrid Laurier who was a former prime minister
at that time but leader of the Opposition during the First World War
would be right there. And within this room, think of it from 1916 to 1920,
basically it was the turning of the tide and the winning of the First World War
and it happened out of here. To do that, two very important bills were passed. One
was conscription, very controversial so otherwise known as the draft I guess, but
the conscription bill to enlist soldiers to go and fight in Europe in World War
I. So you can imagine how difficult that was.
And also passed in this room... the Temporary War Measures Income Tax
Act, but still with us of course, so it wasn't that temporary. And it's not that
popular now maybe, but back then it was very popular because people didn't want
to see others profiting from their sons going off to Europe and dying for this
country. Also passed in this room, women's right to vote in 1918. And again, a lot of
that is attributed to the whole different climate that was around our
legislators at that time. They were in this building, there was public access
and there was a real groundswell to give women the right to vote, it happened here.
And because this is the Museum of Natural History and Natural Sciences, I
have to mention a fourth very important bill which is the Migratory Birds
Convention, again passed here in 1916. Now why would passing a bill to protect
birds be a priority during a world war? And the reason for that is really the
shock of losing the passenger pigeons. The passenger pigeons went extinct, the
last one died in captivity in 1913 and everybody was stunned. And so it was a
priority to protect other species, and they passed the Migratory
Birds Convention here, very important bill, protected birds ever since, still in
effect, passed right here in this room. The museum when it opened in 1912,
originally had a great big stone tower on it, that is now that glass Lantern,
is in its airspace. But in 1915 they had to take it down because it was leaning.
You can actually see what the lean is when you look at the gap between where
the banister ends and the wall is. There it's what, maybe an inch and a half or
so but as you go up, we'll see as we go up, when you get to the top, the gap
between the banister and the wall is many times that. So that
differential is what the lean was on the tower and still is the lean on our wall.
So we're in the inside of the Queen's Lantern. It's absolutely beautiful and
you can see Luke Jerram's moon in all its glory right in the middle. As I said this
is the tower that's in the airspace of the old stone tower. It's absolutely
gorgeous. You may have seen it as the dance floor
on Nature Nocturne nights or maybe, you had your wedding here.
Anyway we'll look forward to having you back when we get through this Covid crisis.