Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Posted by: 
elyob
N 45° 25.379 W 075° 41.835
18T E 445451 N 5030176
The building is at 90 Sparks Street. Sparks Street is a pedestrian mall.
Waymark Code: WMV953
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 03/17/2017
Views: 14
This building at 90 Sparks opened in 1981 as the Royal Bank Centre. It is still host to the Ottawa offices of the Royal Bank of Canada. As with many office buildings in Ottawa, the federal government eventually became interested in the building, purchasing the building in 2001. Soon after, the government named this building after
Thomas D'Arcy McGee who was assassinated near this location in 1868. Government offices in this building include the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada.
An interesting outdoor cut-out of the building's face on Spark Street results in a unique display of the flags of Canada. There should be interesting locations within the office building for photographing the flag display. As is common in the flag displays in the national capital region, the presentation resembles the chronological sequence for entry of each province and territory in the confederation of Canada.
The flags of Ontario, Canada, and Québec are on the lowest level of the cut-out. I suspect that level is in line with the building's third storey. On the next higher level, flags fly for the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. Going up one more level, viewers can see the flags of Saskatchewan and Alberta which both joined confederation in 1905. Up another level, flags fly for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Northwest Territories. At the highest level of the external cut-out, there are flags for the Yukon and Nunavut territories.