The Theatah — The Dahnse...

renovations begun at the National Arts Centre, as seen from Elgin Street, June 2016

 The National Arts Centre was built between 1965 and 1969 as a Centennial Project ("I'm gonna be a maple tree!") under the approving gaze of then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. Designed in the Brutalist style and employing a repeated hexagon motif (Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold & Sise, architects), it sits on a canal-side precinct once dominated by Ottawa's first City Hall.

Old Old City Hall, old postcard

 Touted as a "national" performance showcase, it would be silly to pretend that the people of Ottawa weren't and aren't the NAC's prime beneficiaries. The loss of the Russell Theatre (FDC expropriation, 1928) marked the beginning of a four-decade cultural drought in Canada's otherwise lovely capitol city. True, you could go to the Carnegie Library (believe me, we did) or one of our fine museums, again... Movie theatres featured whatever fare the American studios fed us, nightclubs were tawdry, and the Ottawa Little Theatre could only stage so many productions in a given year. Thank God we had the CBC.

 It seems odd (pathetic?) now, but in the mid-sixties, Ottawa's most spectacular live entertainment (short of the hippies on Sparks Street) was probably the Changing of the Guard. After watching that, you could take an elevator to the top of the Peace Tower and imagine what it would be like to jump off. And back then, you could.

 Touring live acts bypassed Ottawa in droves. Orchestras, ballets and major rock musicians routinely played Toronto and Montreal — but not here. We were a small audience with a paucity of decent venues. We all remember Hendrix playing the vaudeville stage of the Capital Theatre precisely because he was the exception to the rule (and of course, because he was Hendrix.) Then there was Bob Dylan who, after his 1966 concert at The Auditorium*, dismissed Ottawa as as "the worst, terrible, miserable hole in the entire Universe." In fairness, some sources insist that he actually called our city a "dirty, rotten stinking hole." A hole, in any event...

 That began to change in 1969. As soon as it opened, the NAC was the place to see and be seen. People actually read and discussed the reviews of the high profile Canadian and international acts that took to one of its three stages, the Opera, the Theatre and the Salon. Typical of the time is this review of a 1970 performance by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Oddly, I barely remember the musical contribution of Lighthouse (apart from the band's sheer loudness) —  but an unplanned aerial performance by at first one, then two large and graceful bats who happened into the Opera, remains vivid.

 Such "highbrow" culture may not have the cachet it did some forty-seven years ago, but the NAC is still home to a prestigious symphony orchestra and two theatre companies, and it regularly hosts international dance companies and touring musicals.

 As you can see from my photo, the building is a bit of a mess at the moment, as is everything else in Ottawa. Current renovations will see a windowed facade installed over the northwest terrace. In preparation, sections of precast cladding have been removed, revealing the massive poured/reinforced concrete structure underneath. The cladding is studded with colourful Laurentian granite aggregate. If memory serves, the concrete supplier was Francon (formerly Ottawa Pre-Mixed Ltd.) The aggregate would have come from Francon's Shawville gravel pit.

 This sequence of aerial photos shows our first City Hall (top image, "CH") in 1928, followed by some massive NAC site preparation dating to 1965. The bottom image is from 2011 and is a good representation of the facility ahead of this summer's renovations. Click to view full sized.

NAC site and environs 1928-1965-2011, image source geoOttawa

*The Auditorium, built as an indoor ice rink in 1923, sat at the corner of Argyle and O'Connor. Its final event was held on October 1, 1967 — a concert by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. The building was demolished and replaced by a YMCA complex. The Ottawa Civic Centre opened in December that same year and established itself as the venue of choice for large, touring rock acts.