Ottawa, Spirit of Place: An Aerial Panorama

Foreword An elevated vision, a limitless horizon                                                                 By Randy Boswell                             I’ve always been fascinated by the “bird’s-eye view” of Canada’s future capital, created in 1859, that sprang from the imaginations (and evident ground-proofing) of English-born architects Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver. As vintage images of the city go, this depiction of early Ottawa and neighbouring Hull — today’s Ottawa-Gatineau, population 1.3 million-plus — is the best visual baseline for any illustrated history of the national capital. Key characteristics of the fledgling city were skillfully captured by the artists: the centrality of the Ottawa River, the significance of the Chaudière Falls, the area’s rich natural endowments, the majesty of the shoreline bluffs, the connectedness of the twin settlements, the industriousness of the citizenry, the seemingly limitless horizon.    Romanticized? Of course. Blind to the area’s Indigenous history? Sadly, yes. This was, first and foremost, a branding exercise — a marketing poster — meant to shore up support for Queen Victoria’s recent and highly controversial decision to make muddy old Bytown the new capital of provincial Canada. But the Stent and Laver sketch, better than any other image from its time, offers vital orientation to anyone interested in the Euro-Canadian settling of what became the National Capital Region, as well as its 19th- and 20th-century transformation into the world-class metropolis we’re privileged to inhabit in the 21st.    Aerial perspectives allow us to momentarily escape the imperfections, complications and ordinariness of ground-level existence. They offer pleasing patterns, a sense of order and scope, the giddiness of a hot-air balloon ride. We shouldn’t surrender ourselves wholly to sublime delusions, but neither should we forget the awe-inspiring, ancient landscape that underlies contemporary Ottawa and its iconic tourist sites, impressive architecture, bustling retail districts, vital arteries — liquid and asphalt alike — and quiet, leafy residential neighbourhoods.    John McQuarrie, aerial photographer par excellence, has captured all of that, and much more. He is modern Ottawa’s heir to the bird’s-eye tradition established by Stent and Laver more than 150 years ago, well before cameras took to the skies. And fittingly, the picture-story McQuarrie tells about Canada’s capital begins with a nod to their sky-high sketch of Ottawa-Hull (see page 6), a tribute to the visionary architects who also left their designs of the East and West Block buildings of Parliament Hill as enduring gifts to the nation.     McQuarrie has created his own impressive legacy: a series of lavishly illustrated volumes showcasing Ottawa and other major Canadian urban centres, each one brimming with superbly composed aerial photographs that offer mesmerizing views of their subject cities. This book, his latest contribution to a genre that he has pioneered and perfected, supplies a wealth of detail-rich and frequently breathtaking images of present-day Ottawa-Gatineau — as well as a time-machine trip to the city’s storied past. McQuarrie’s then-and-now portrayal of the capital’s evolution from gritty industrial hub to manicured metropole is a testament to the achievements of generations of city planners and the citizens who consented — albeit not always unanimously — to an elevation of tone and urban vision more befitting of the political centre of a G7 nation. Even so, the city’s rugged landscape, unruly shoreline and vestigial wildness can still be glimpsed in these sweeping panoramas. The natural underpinnings and cultural overlay of the city combine to create the “Spirit of Place” that McQuarrie has made it his mission to capture in so many parts of Canada; he’s certainly done it again in this thoughtful, admiring album of Ottawa from the air. McQuarrie’s stunning aerial shots are augmented by well-chosen archival images, along with his own written observations and the insights of other local scribes about the scenes unfolding below. But the pictures are the stars of this show. It’s easy to spend hours hovering, hawk-like, from dizzying heights above Parliament Hill, Rideau Falls or a suburban expanse, peering down on office towers and shopping malls, parks and homes, streams and fields, streets, maple groves and national landmarks — familiar sights now seen from a lofty, exotic, picturesque point of view. McQuarrie’s work retains something of the dreaminess captured long ago by Ottawa’s earliest aerial artists, but his photographic precision — the sharply rendered documentary detail — only deepens the sense of grandeur. As you soar high above a postcard capital, may you enjoy your flight through time and space.                                                            Carleton University professor Randy Boswell is a veteran journalist with a passion for writing about Canadian history and geography, particularly with respe