The Masques of Ottawa

The Masques of Ottawa, by
Domino

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Masques of Ottawa, by Domino
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Masques of Ottawa
Author: Domino

Release Date: April 2, 2007 [eBook #20961]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
MASQUES OF OTTAWA***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

Transcriber's note:

"Domino" is the pseudonym of Augustus Bridle (1869-?)

THE MASQUES OF OTTAWA
by
"DOMINO"

"Wherefore are these things hid?
* * * * *
We will draw the curtain and show you the picture."
--SHAKESPEARE.

Toronto: The MacMillan Company of Canada, Ltd., at St. Martin's
House. MCMXXI. Copyright, Canada, 1921. By the MacMillan
Company of Canada, Limited.

THE PLAY-HOUSE CALLED OTTAWA.
Do not imagine that I spend much time at once in Ottawa. I have never
liked the kind of play-house that politicians have made on that glorious
plateau in a valley of wonderland with a river of dreams rolling past to
the sea. Where under heaven is any other Capital so favoured by the
great scenic artist? On what promontory do parliamentary towers and
gables so colossally arise to enchant the vision? The Thames draws the
ships of the world and crawls muddily and lazily out to sea wondering
what haphazard of history ever concentrated so much commerce,
politics and human splendour on the banks of one large ditch. Ottawa's
house of political drama overlooks one of the noblest rivers in the
world, that takes its rise in everlasting hills of granite and pines.

One, Laurier, used to dream that he would devote his declining days to
making Ottawa beautiful as a city as she is for the site of a capital. To
him as to others, Rome, London, Paris, Vienna, Washington, should all
in time be rivalled by Ottawa the magnificent. But the saw-mill
surveyors of Ottawa spoiled that when they made no approach to
Parliament Hill to compare to the vista seen from the river. Ottawa was
built for convenience: for opportunity: for expediency.
Parliament is its great show. Politicians are the actors. Time has seen
some interesting, almost baffling, dramas on that hill. No other
Parliament stands midway of so vast a country. But there are people
who prefer Hull, P.Q., to Ottawa, Ont. We have had some mild
Mephistos of strategy up there: some prophets of eloquence: some
dreamers of imagination: giants of creative energy scheming how to
draw a young, vast country together into nationhood so that the
show-men on Parliament Hill might have an audience.
But the Ottawa of to-day is a strange spectacle for the prophets. The
great new Opera House is all but finished, when no seer can tell
whether the plays to be put on there by the parties of the future will be
as epical and worthwhile as those staged by the actors of the past.
Imagination was not absent when Ottawa was created. But it needs
more than common imagination to foresee whether these political
playboys of the northern world are going to be worthy of the great
audience soon to arise in the country that converges upon Ottawa.
Sometimes in Parliament you catch the vibration of big momentums in
a nation's progress. Voices now and then arise in speech that reflect
some greatness of vision. More often the actors are sitting indolently,
hearing the clack of worn-out principals whose struts and grimaces and
cadences are those of men whose cues should lead them to the dressing
rooms, or to the wings, or somewhere into the maze of the back drop
where nobody takes part in the show. Or they listen to men whose big
informing idea constantly is that all we need to make economic
happiness for everybody is to turn out the company now in and get
another from the furrows. These latter believe that a nation is a
condition of free trade--mainly on behalf of the farmer whose average

idea of industry is a blacksmith shop on a farm.
One's head inclines to ache by reason of listening to the three-cornered
claque on the Tariff as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.
Now and again we are inclined to study the men who are elected to
Parliament and some of those who gravitate towards Ottawa without
the bother of elections. They stimulate interest and challenge criticism,
not less because the interest and the criticism come from a seat in the
audience rather than from "behind the scenes"--which is not always a
disadvantage. While the parliamentarians perform "Promises and