Parliament Hill fire mystery still unsolved 100 years later

It's difficult to imagine the scale of the trauma, the wartime anxiety, the shock, the anger, that would have engulfed the nation 100 years ago when the seat of the federal government went down in flames.

Seven people died that bitterly cold night on Feb. 3, 1916, whenthe old Centre Block burned down the building that saw figureslike Macdonald, Bowell, Tupper and Laurier pass through its hallsand sit in the Dominion's first House of Commons.

"The grand old tower put up a magnificent fight for survival.Standing while the support seemed to have burned away, it sent asolid pillow of twisting, billowing gold up into the winter night,"Ottawa Citizen reporter Charles Bishop wrote.

"Finally, it came down, crashing into the concourse in front andwith it, carrying the huge, old clock which had stayed illuminatedand kept on striking to the last."

Replacement mace to be displayed this week

On Wednesday, the House of Commons will mark the tragedy bydisplaying the wooden mace that was first used as a replacementafter the fire. The House will also hear the names of the victimsread out, including Nova Scotia MP Bowman Brown Law.

"At one time Sir Wilfrid's voice faltered and entirely broke,"reads an Ottawa Journal account of Laurier's speech the day afterthe 1916 blaze, as the Commons sat at the Victoria Memorial Museum.

"The veteran white-haired statesman whose eloquence re-echoedthrough the halls of the Commons in ruins was overcome with depth offeeling."

Laurier would die before the new buildings opened.

Enduring mystery

The Parliament Hill fire is one of the enduring mysteries ofCanadian history.

It happened in the middle of the First World War, and there weremany at the time who believed it had been deliberately set by Germansaboteurs.

Just weeks before the fire, an unsavoury American businessmantold a newspaper editor that Germans were planning an attack onOttawa's capital buildings the U.S. was not yet at war. Americanjustice officials had received the tip, but the message apparentlynever made it to Canadian authorities.

Still, an official inquiry came up with no firm conclusion onwhether it was arson, a careless smoker, or maybe faulty wiring.

"You can look at all the facts, and fit them into these theoriesas best you can, and come to your own conclusion," said Don Nixon,a retired Parliament Hill engineer who explores the arguments in hisbook The Other Side of the Hill.

"I think it probably was deliberate, I say probably because wedon't know. The things we know about the fire, it seems to me pointin that direction."

Speaker got wife, children to safety

The Commons had been sitting that night, when fire broke out inthe nearby, wood-lined reading room filledwith newspapers. Theflames rose up quickly, spreading with the help of the oldventilation system.

Albert Sevigny, who was Speaker of the House at the time,rushed to get hischildren and wife out of the building as the flames spread into hisquarters. A guest jumped into a fire department net from a floorabove, while two other women visitors perished from smokeinhalation.

"I realized that our poor friends were dead and I practicallycollapsed myself I was taken out by two of my men there," Sevignytold a special inquiry later that month.

Martin Burrell, the minister of agriculture, suffered burns tohis hands and face in the fire. Prime minister Robert Borden rancoatless and hatless into the night.

Foolhardy reporters like Grattan O'Leary climbed through a windowinto their main floor workroom to grab precious typewriters.

"By this time a great crowd had gathered," O'Leary wrote in hismemoirs. "It was a bitterly cold night, and people caught in thebuilding were coming down ladders or leaping into the snow beneaththe windows."

Few reminders

Inside the current building, which opened for sittings only fouryears later in 1920, there are a few reminders of the old.

The recently scrubbed-up West Block, including the orangey-pinkPotsdam stone, is a reminder of what the old Centre Block would havelooked like in its prime.

The large painting of young Queen Victoria in the Senate foyerwas cut right out of the frame the night of the fire by
quick-thinking staff.

More importantly, there is the Library of Parliament,the oldpine carving and wood panelling a throwback to what some of the oldCentre Block would have been like. The blue iron work with gildedtips along the library's exterior also went around the originalbuilding.

A steel fire door, and plenty of firefighters, helped save thestructure and the books inside.

"The whole thing was a work of art, and from that standpoint ofview it was a priceless loss," said Lucile Finsten, co-author ofthe 1988 book Fire on Parliament Hill!

House of Commons curator Johanna Mizgala points out that thesmall alcove outside the library is also from the original CentreBlock, something few visitors and even MPs might realize.(Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was brought down inthat very spot two years ago.)

"We only think of the library as a separate entity because theoriginal building isn't there anymore. The way it was designed, itwasn't a library and a Parliament building, it was one entity,"said Mizgala.

"You can see the shift in the two kinds of stone. You get asense of what the walls and the physicality of the old building musthave been."