CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

OUR STORIES IN STONE PART 13

Walking back in time in a forest of history

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

Lady Aberdeen was not im-pressed. The wife of the Gover-nor General of Canada, Lady Ish-bel Gordon, was well known forher social conscience — she

founded the Victorian Order of Nursesfor Canada, after all — as well as her so-cial savoir faire. Her parties at RideauHall were the highlight of the season forturn-of-the-20th-century Ottawans.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise that,

when she and Lord Aberdeen departedCanada in 1898 after five years in RideauHall, the lady had unkind words to sayabout the place.

Rideau Hall, she said, was a “shabbyold Government House put awayamongst its clump of bushes.”

Her sentiments were not uncommon.In 1868, the Dominion government paid$82,000 for the property and the two-storey stone villa that lumber baronThomas McKay, a Scottish immigrantwho made his fortune as the main con-

tractor on the construction of the RideauCanal, had built for his family. There wasmuch grousing. Toronto Globe editorGeorge Brown called it “a miserable lit-tle house.”

That house has become, after muchmodification, one of Ottawa’s showpiecemonuments. Or so I conclude after an af-ternoon strolling along the pathways andamong the trees of the 79-acre property.

I make that claim with the enthusiasmof an embarrassed convert. I had notthought to include Rideau Hall on my

To traipse among the trees at Rideau Hall is to revisit history: from wars and revolutions to the passing of kings and the rise and fall of states

The grounds of Rideau Hall contain more than 10,000 trees, many of which were planted by such notables names as King George

VI, Nelson Mandela, Ronald Reagan, Vladimir Putin and Princess Diana.

tour of the national capital’s monuments.But, after a morning looking at sculp-tures and cairns along Sussex Drive —the Hungarian Monument on Green Is-land commemorating the refugees whofled to Canada after the Russian invasionin 1956, and Reflection, the memorial toCanadian aid workers in Rideau FallsPark, for instance — I ended up at themain gate. After 25 years in Ottawa, I hadnever seen the grounds. That lack had toremedied, so enter I did, and I was in-stantly delighted.

The grounds of Rideau Hall containmore than 10,000 trees, some of whichpredate Confederation. Most are merelytrees (if the word “merely” can be ap-plied to a tree), but a few serve the mon-umental function of remembering peo-ple and events.

Starting in 1906, when Prince Arthur,a grandson of Queen Victoria and a fu-ture governor general, planted a red oak,visiting princes, presidents and primeministers have been invited to grab shov-els and plant ceremonials tree on thegrounds. To date, there are about 100 ofthese ceremonial trees, mostly sugarmaples, red maples, red oaks and buroaks.

You encounter the ceremonial treeswithin a few metres of the front gate.They’re marked with plaques to indicatewho did the planting and when.

The trees encapsulate Canada’s politi-cal history during the past century, and,arguably, serve as a symbolic testamentto the country’s place among the nations

of the world. To traipse among the treesis to revisit history — from wars and rev-olutions to the passing of kings and therise and fall of states. And so, for a coupleof hours, I trundled through the smallforest, walking back in time.

Admittedly, the first trees aren’t neces-sarily impressive. That’s because manyare of recent deposit. The sugar mapleplanted by former United Nations secre-tary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali in1995 looks decidedly spindly. Ditto forthe Ohio buckeye marking the 2000 visitof Nigerian president Olusegun Obasan-jo. Yemeni President Ali AbdullahSaleh’s sugar maple, planted in 2000,looks lost beneath the larger trees.

Some trees come with familiar names.There’s former French presidentFrançois Mitterrand’s bur oak, planted in1987. His tree is a close neighbour of asugar maple planted in 1990 by Zimbab-we’s president, Robert Mugabe.

There doesn’t seem to be any ideologi-cal or moral distinctions when it comesto tree sites; you know, one place for dic-tators, another for democrats; one forgood guys, another for the baddies. Allsaplings are equal, it seems.

I find the pin oak planted in 1990 byMikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics.Nearby is former Russian presidentVladimir Putin’s smaller sugar maple,planted during a 2000 visit. Not far away,I spot Nelson’s Mandela’s sugar maple,planted in 1998.

There have been more recent planti-

ngs, of course, including an Americanbeech planted by former Israeli presi-dent Moshe Katsev in 2002, and, mostrecently, the Canadian Hemlock chosenby Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Em-press Michiko during their July visit toOttawa. They chose the hemlock be-cause it grows both in Japan and inCanada.

Of course, the trees get bigger thedeeper you walk into the wood. Remem-ber, you’re walking back into history. In-deed, I find myself remembering bygonegeopolitics — the Cold War, Vietnam,the Six-Day War, the Berlin Wall. I halfexpect to see the spectral figures of long-dead politics skulking in the bushes. Isettle for paying my respects to thesplendid sugar maple planted by thatgreatest of cold warriors, presidentRonald Reagan, in 1981. Setting recogni-tion of China ahead of Watergate, I try tothink kind thoughts at Richard Nixon’sred oak, planted in 1972, two years beforescandal uprooted him from office. I wishI had a dog with me as I contemplate Bill“define sex for me” Clinton’s 1995 sugarmaple.

When I find the huge red oak plantedby president John Kennedy in 1961, I re-member the news photos of Kennedyand former prime minister John Diefen-baker standing beside a scrawny sapling.Kennedy, so the story goes, hurt his backshovelling the dirt, and his wife, Jacque-line Kennedy, blamed Diefenbaker.

The heart of the ceremonial wood hasto be the trees planted by visiting royalty:from Queen Juliana of the Netherlandsin 1952 to Prince Charles and Lady Dianain 1983. Of course, Queen Elizabeth II hasseveral trees to mark her visits, includ-ing a red maple planted in 1957 and an-other, a bur oak, to commemorate herGolden Jubilee in 2002.

Nicely juxtaposed to Her Majesty’s2002 tree is a spectacular red oak and anequally splendid sugar maple planted byher parents, King George VI and QueenElizabeth, the Queen Mum, during their1939 royal visit.

When I’m finally treed out, I retreat toa cracked and lichen-stained marblebench in a small grove below RideauHall where I can watch the touriststraipsing through this small forest of his-tory. I conjure Lady Aberdeen amongthem, coming my way through the treesto ask what I’m doing in her favouritespot.

I think I’ll ask her if she’s impressed bywhat time and history have made of herbush garden.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer for the

Citizen.

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CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN