Tour Queen's Park

Introduction

Hello there and welcome to Queen's Park.

My name is Brenda. I work for the Ontario government, and I'll be your tour guide today.

There are so many interesting things to see and do here so let's go inside.

Interior Main Foyer

Did you know that this building is actually the fifth building to be home to Ontario's parliament?

The other four were destroyed by fire in the 1800s.

The legislative building at Queen's Park opened its doors to the public on April 4, 1893. Wow, that's old.

This is where Members of Provincial Parliament, or MPPs, meet to help make Ontario a better place to live.

Legislative chamber

This is the legislative chamber ... the most important room in Queen's Park.

This is where all the MPPs get together to debate issues and pass laws.

There are over 100 MPPs right now and they each get a desk here.

The Premier of Ontario sits here.

And just over here, you can see the Speaker's chair.

The Speaker is like the teacher of a large and noisy classroom.

The Speaker enforces the rules.

Just like at school, MPPs have to ask permission to speak.

The government sits on the right side of the Speaker, and the opposition sits on the left.

Now, take a look around.

All the art here is by a group of four artists, but only one was allowed to sign his name anywhere.

His name was William McCormick and his signature is just above the Speaker's chair. 

Since the rest of the artists couldn't leave their signatures, did you know that they left their faces carved into the walls? That's pretty cool.

You should come down to Queen's Park to check out the artwork and watch the debates.

There's a seat waiting for you in the public galleries.

There's much more to see and I hope you'll stop by some time to check it out.

Executive council chamber

This is the "behind-the-scenes" portion of our tour.

This is the executive council chamber. Only a few people are ever allowed to come inside.

There's only been a few decorating changes since 1893, so I think some of the original books are still on the shelves.

The Premier of Ontario is the President of the Executive Council. But Ontario is a big place, and he can't govern the province all by himself.

So the Premier has cabinet ministers to help him.

They are all MPPs and they're each in charge of a different ministry.

Every week, they get together in this room.

Cabinet ministers present ideas they would like to see passed into law. 

They work on them together, and then introduce them for all MPPs to consider.

West Wing

This is the west wing of the legislative building.

It didn't always look like this — it had to be rebuilt after a fire almost burned the whole thing down for the fifth time. Here's what happened.

Back in 1909, a couple of construction workers were doing some repairs up on the roof. They went for lunch but forgot to turn off some of their tools.

A fire started and all the MPPs and even the Premier joined the crowds trying to put out the flames.

After the fire, the west wing was rebuilt using marble imported from Italy.

And check out the floor — each one of those tiny tiles was placed by hand on the first floor, second floor and third floor.

So you won't be surprised to hear it took four years to finish this place.

East Wing

This is the east wing of the legislative building, and it looks almost exactly the same way it did back in 1893.

Elevators were a new invention back then and Queen's Park had some of the first!

But don't worry, these aren't the originals ...

If you look up, you'll see stained glass windows that allow the light to shine through.

Do you see the pattern on the stained glass?

You see, the architect of this building, Richard Waite, had the idea to use circles in his design.

He used circles to show that government is continuous.

There are many of his original details still here today.