The image of Canada: National identity in the capital's landscap

The Federal government's architecture, public art and landscapes in Canada's national capital are the subject of this study. The study examines the uses of style by the Federal government and its agents to promote a national identity and the symbolic meaning of that identity. The study also examines the intentions of Prime Minister Mackenzie King's patronage over the capital's landscape and the Federal District Commission's, subsequently the National Capital Commission's, actions for the continued symbolizing of national identity in the landscape after World War II.;Using the hermeneutic method and drawing on primary Federal documents, the King "Diaries" and other secondary published sources, the creation of the Federal landscape in the national capital between 1867 and 1945 is reconstructed. High Victorian Romantic Eclecticism was the predominant style during this period, with a preference for Northern Gothic Revival and French Second Empire styles in architecture, Natural Realism in public art and Picturesque and Sublime landscape design. Symbolic meanings were drawn from the Romantic aesthetic, influenced by John Ruskin's "On the Nature of the Gothic". These styles long predominated with Federal government projects, prolonged by Mackenzie King's anachronistic patronage.;After 1945, the Modernist aesthetic, with its preference for the International style in architecture, abstraction in public art and Naturalism in landscape design, became dominant in Federal agencies. The ascendancy of the Modernist aesthetic was achieved in part through success in changing the Romantically based aesthetic recommendations of the 1951 Greber Plan. The National Capital Commission failed to understand the symbolic significance for national identity of the earlier period. It moved its adherence to abstract design, universal symbolism and functional planning between 1945 and 1985 despite contrary political recommendations. However, some public recognition and understanding of the earlier symbolism continues to exist. According to visitor surveys, many respondents still see the earlier, but now occluded, landscape as symbolizing Canada's national identity.;The conclusion is reached that this adherence to the Modernist aesthetic occluded the earlier landscape. This occlusion need not have happened. Through it, Canadians' recognition of symbolic identity in the capital's landscape was impaired. This study reconstructs the style of that earlier landscape symbolism and brings fresh clarity to that earlier national identity.