VIDEO: Rare tour of legislature offers slice of history

WE know about the Golden Boy. We know about the twin bison inside. We know about the grand staircase and many of us know about the Pool of the Black Star.

But most don't know about the Door to Nowhere.

It's on the third floor of the Manitoba Legislative Building on the west side, just to the left of the entrance to the public gallery of the legislative chamber.

The blocked-off door is what was supposed to be the entrance to an elevator, part of a journey to a once-planned observation deck. And it signifies a tremendous amount of Manitoba's history.

Infrastructure Minister Steve Ashton, the man responsible for the province's most historical building's upkeep, says the builders of the "Ledge" had an even grander vision than what we see today.

Ashton took the Free Press on a rare tour of the inside of the dome in commemoration of Manitoba Day, which is Wednesday. This year also marks the 90th anniversary of the opening of the legislative building. It officially opened July 15, 1920.

Ashton said plans for the observation deck exist only on the original blueprints.

"They ran out of money," Ashton says.

Climbing up to the dome is like a entering a time machine. The first section, a tight spiral staircase, is like climbing up a castle turret. Next are metal stairs that snake above the interior rotunda dome to a musty circular chamber lined with brick. Another set of spiral stairs leads to a second chamber above. Tiny windows let in only a faint light. The entire room smells of old wood. In the dark, under a few candles, it would be a good spot for a seance.

"Some people say the building is haunted," Ashton jokes.

Many of the men who built the building scrawled their names in chalk and pencil on the bricks and steel beams. Many more from more modern times have left their own names, but in black felt pen.

The intent in 1913 was to have all Manitobans see these chambers.

That west-side elevator was to run visitors up to a fourth floor above the rotunda dome to an escalator, which would take people up to a fifth and sixth floor to an interior observation deck, just below where the Golden Boy now stands. At the time, at about 73 metres above the ground, the deck would have been the highest spot in Winnipeg.

A few years earlier in 1913, when construction started, the future of Manitoba was as bright as perhaps it's ever been. The construction contract, worth $2.86 million, was awarded to Thomas Kelly & Sons. At the time, it was the largest contract for a single building in Canada's history.

Manitoba's population had tripled in the previous decade. Winnipeg was quickly becoming the economic heart of Canada, agriculture and railways leading the way. In 1912, the province's boundaries expanded to include the north.

But by 1914, then one year into the building's construction, things started going south, literally and figuratively. The Panama Canal opened and it soon changed the way of international trade. Faraway ships replaced Prairie trains. They weren't needed as much to move goods from coast to coast. Air travel would deal another blow.

The First World War had started in Europe, and work slowed on the building as many young men suited up to serve overseas.

That same year, the Liberal Opposition called for a public inquiry into cost overruns in the building's construction, and accused the government under Conservative Rodmond Roblin of defrauding the public of $800,000 -- peanuts compared with the corporate crime today.

Roblin was forced to call a commission into the allegations. The Mathers Commission, named after Chief Justice Thomas Mathers, also included Justice Donald Alexander Macdonald and police magistrate Hugh John Macdonald, the son of the first prime minister of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald.

The commission concluded there had been some hijinks related to the building's construction and how the contracts were awarded. Workers were also cheated out of wages. Allegations also popped up that building materials were funnelled to other projects.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg. Roblin's Conservatives were accused of being in collusion with the main contractor to divert money from the legislature construction to party coffers. Roblin, after 15 years as premier, was forced to resign. Criminal charges were later laid against him and other ministers. Two years later, the charges against Roblin were dismissed.

The scandal and the war delayed the building's construction by three years. It also meant lower expectations for the finished product.

The elevator shaft on the west side of the building was blocked off, and plans for the public observation deck were scratched. Forever.

But you can see where the deck would have been. The scaffolding for it is still there, just a few metres away from the Golden Boy's toes.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 11, 2010 B1