Centre of the Universe

Ottawa is a pretty mellow place so it can be pretty easy for me to forget that it's the centre of political power in Canada.

Occasionally though, when my family comes to visit, I have an excuse play tourist in my hometown. This past weekend I took my Dad on a free tour of the House of Commons, which is where Canada's Parliament sits. I've done this tour a couple of times in the past but I couldn't remember the last visit very much.

It was pretty interesting.

First off, I was surprised to see there were so many other tourists on the tour considering it's the end of November - a typically dead time around here.

Second, even though the tour is a brisk 40 minutes or so you do get to see the main room where legislative debates happen and the House sits. For people with a slightly policy-wonkish nature, like me, that's pretty cool.

Where the Law of our Land gets made

Our tour was cut a bit short because an actual debate was going on in the Senate regarding a postal strike that's been happening. But we did get a chance to see the Parliamentary library, which is probably the most beautiful library in Canada.

Queen Victoria minding over the books

Now, as someone who has actually testified before a Parliamentary committee, and seen how Parliamentary work came be overly theatrical, you might think that I would have a jaded view of all this but surprisingly I'm still an optimist. Call me naive, but compared to most places in the world I think we Canadians have figured out how to run a government pretty well. And seeing all the places where work is done reminds me how close to the centre of power normal people (like me) can get.

No tour is complete without climbing something tall and this one was no different. We ended the tour by going up the Peace Tower, which is the big tower that you see in the middle of our Parliament buildings. From there my dad and I could see from the golden fields of Saskatchewan to the potato fields of Prince Edward Island.

Just kidding.This is Canada. All we saw was snow :)