Peace Tower
The Peace Tower is a tower in the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, Ontario.
The Peace Tower is the most prominent part of the buildings. It replaced the 55-metre Victoria Tower, burned in the 1916 Parliament Hill fire; the current tower is 92.2 metres tall.
Built to commemorate the end of the First World War, the 92.2-metre tower is part of the Centre Block of parliament buildings. The base of the Peace Tower contains Books of Remembrance listing all of Canada's war dead; a page is ceremoniously turned in each book every day at 11 o'clock. The books are housed in the white marble Memorial Chamber, a room built to honour the Canadians who have died in military battle.
The tower contains an observation gallery offering beautiful views of the city. Its clock is set by the National Research Council of Canada official time signal and is equipped with a 53-bell carillon. The bells weigh from 4.5 kg to 10,160 kg. The Dominion Carillonneur offers regular recitals. The bell has tolled on many major occasions. Some of them:
- When the body of Pierre Trudeau arrived on Parliament Hill to lie in state--The bell tolled 81 times--one for each year of his life (Trudeau was 80 when he died. However, the bell tolled 81 times because he died three weeks short of his 81st birthday)
- During the 9/11 memorial service in 2001 to signal the end of the 3 minutes of silence.
Like the entire interior and exterior of the building, the tower is decorated with approximately 370 stone carvings, including gargoyles, grotesques, and friezes.
Until the early 1970s, the Peace Tower dominated the Ottawa skyline as a strict 150 ft height limit was placed on other buildings, that was rescinded and it is no longer the tallest structure.