Sussex Drive: Embassies, an Empty House and the Question Ottawa Has Not Answered

The most prestigious residential corridor in the Canadian capital is held together by foreign embassies, an empty Prime Minister's residence, and a Governor General's residence occupied without a break since 1865. Walk Sussex Drive from Confederation Square to the gates of Rideau Hall and the addresses line up into an argument. They record, in stone and wrought iron, a question Canada has not answered: whether the elected leader of the country is supposed to live in an official residence at all.

Embassies first

The walk starts at the National War Memorial and crosses the Rideau Canal onto Sussex Drive, a street of about 2.4 kilometres between the square and Rideau Hall, named Sussex Drive in 1953. The first buildings are foreign. At 199 Sussex, the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, opened in December 2008, is a two-storey pavilion by the Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki with Moriyama Teshima Architects, clad in a pale crystallised glass and set on a black granite podium; its forms take their cue from rock crystal, and it reads best in soft light. At 490 Sussex, the Embassy of the United States, by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, was dedicated in October 1999 and described by its architect as a bridge between the two countries: a long, low building in limestone and glass.

Further north, at 42 Sussex, the Embassy of France is the oldest of the set, the first foreign chancery built on the street. Its three storeys of grey granite, with tall vertical windows in the Art Deco manner, are by the French architect Eugene Beaudouin. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King laid its first stone on Bastille Day 1936, and it opened in January 1939. King himself never lived on Sussex Drive; his home was Laurier House, inherited from Zoe Laurier. The French were on the street a decade before Canada made any house here its Prime Minister's official address.

The empty house

That house is 24 Sussex. It was built between 1866 and 1868 by Joseph Merrill Currier, a lumberman and Member of Parliament, as a wedding gift, and he gave it a Welsh name, Gorffwysfa, meaning resting place. The federal government expropriated it in 1943, designated it the Prime Minister's residence in 1949, and Louis St. Laurent moved in in 1951. Every Prime Minister after him lived there except Kim Campbell, until Stephen Harper left in 2015. Since then no Prime Minister has moved in.

The reason is written in reports rather than in the stone. The Auditor General flagged the house for major restoration in 2008. In 2021 the National Capital Commission rated it in critical condition and put the cost of bringing it back to good repair at about 36.6 million dollars. In 2023 the commission began abatement work, stripping out asbestos and gutting the walls. From the sidewalk you see a Gothic Revival front behind a fence; behind it, a stabilised shell waiting for a decision.

The inversion and the closer

Three hundred metres on, Earnscliffe makes the point sharper. This Gothic Revival house on the river bluff, built in the 1850s by the firm of the stonemason Thomas McKay, was bought in 1883 by Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, who died in it on 6 June 1891 while still in office. Since 1930 it has been the residence of the British High Commissioner, and the British arms hang at its gate. Canada's first Prime Minister died in the house a foreign envoy now lives in, a short walk from the house the current Prime Minister does not.

The walk closes at the gates of Rideau Hall, 1 Sussex. McKay built the original villa in 1838. The Crown leased it in 1864, Viscount Monck moved in in 1865, and every Governor General since has lived there. The Governor General receives heads of state and signs bills into law in that house; the institution decided long ago what its residence was for, and the lights are on. Stand at the gates, look back down the drive and the corridor's argument is complete.

Walking it

The stops are all seen from public sidewalks, since every building on the route is a working embassy or a guarded residence; keep moving at the gates and enjoy the river views between them. It is an easy walk to take at your own pace, with long stretches you can stroll or shorten. The walk is Sandy Hill and Sussex Drive: The Empty House, seven stops over about 3.5 kilometres in roughly 95 minutes, from Confederation Square to Rideau Hall. See all routes on the Ottawa page.

Sources

• National Capital Commission, The Condition of Canada's Official Residences: the 2021 assessment of 24 Sussex and the cost of bringing it to good repair.
• 24 Sussex Drive, Wikipedia: Currier's house, Gorffwysfa, the 1943 expropriation, St. Laurent's 1951 move and the residents since.
• Earnscliffe, Wikipedia: Macdonald's purchase and death in the house, and its use by the British High Commissioner since 1930.
• Rideau Hall, Wikipedia: McKay's 1838 villa, the Crown lease and Monck's occupancy from 1865.
• Roamer's audited tour transcript for the embassies, their architects and dates, and the abatement work.