'It's huge': Parks Canada reinstalls first restored window at Province House

Parks Canada is marking a milestone in the renovations at Province House: the first of 101 windows has been reinstalled in the historic building.

The windows were removed in 2018 as part of the $91.8 million renovation project and all but two were sent to a workshop in Ontario to be restored.

Reinstalling the first window took more than ninehoursover two sessions.Because of COVID-19, the work was directed by experts remotely, as well as on-site.

"We had all our specialists and engineers and architects on video link," said Nicolle Gallant, project manager for Parks Canada.

"The people that were installing the window had them directly there with them, to ask any questions as the process was happening, so it was really interesting to watch."

Gallant said the team now has a sense of the potential challenges in installing the rest of the historic windows, which are more challenging than modern windows.

"No window is ever going to be the same, nothing was square, nothing was level, because it's an older building," Gallant said.

"Ittook a lot of manoeuvring, a lot of different tools that they're using and trying to figure out how much distance to put between the frame itself and the masonry work."

• Province House renos continuing through COVID-19
• Final budget for P.E.I. Province House restoration comes in at $91.8M

Gallant said it was "huge"to see the window reinstalled.

"Honestly, it is kind of corny to say, but I get little goosebumps because it's just a step in the right direction," Gallant said.

"It's been such a long process trying to get the design down, and how we were going to approach the whole renovation itself.

"Finally moving towardsomething and seeing it complete, it's just really exciting and being in the building and seeing the difference, it's just awesome."

Restoration stalled

Two of the original windows remained on Prince Edward Island to be restored by students from Holland College's heritage retrofit carpentry program.

But the COVID-19 pandemic brought the restoration efforts to a halt in March, as students were sent home.

• 'An honour': Holland College students to restore pair of Province House windows

Now a second group of students isgetting their first look at the historic windows and will eventually get to share in their restoration.

"They're stripped down, all of the original coatings have been removed and we have it down to bare wood, which is ideal for our students," said learning manager Josh Silver.

"Now we can investigate what problems are in the windows, what we need to fix, how we need to repair them and get them up to perfect shape."

Silver said it's an unexpected opportunity for his new students.

"I hesitate to say that COVID is a good thing, but perhaps the silver lining for my program out of COVID is that last year our students got to be involved in this program," Silver said.

"This type of project is so important and so rare that this likely will be on the resume of these students for the rest of their life, so I'm personally quite pleased that we have two cohorts of graduates working on them."

Silver said it will take about 80 hours of work to restore the windows, which he estimates will take about two months, mixed in with other classwork.

"Most of our students are inexperienced and we're taking them from zero and building their skill level up to where they're making mistakes, now they're learning," Silver said.

"By the time we get all that ironed out, then we can work on something as important as the windows."

COVID-19 delays

Gallant said that COVID-19 has set the project backand Parks Canada is still crunching the numbers to figure out just how much.

"Alot of our masons and labourers that are on-site, they're not from here, sothey wanted to be home with their families as they should be, so we definitely lost a lot of our labour force through that," Gallant said.

"But we were still able to keep the site open, we still had some here. But obviously we did lose some time because we just didn't have the workforce that we were accustomed to."

Gallant said the goal is to have the restored windows installed by the summer of 2021, and the entire project complete in 2022.

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