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<h1>My Hill </h1>
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<p class="summary">An Essay </p>
<p class="byline">James Rimmer </p>
<p><em>[A version of this piece was <a href="http://uwimprint.ca/article/4590-our-hill">orginially published</a> in Imprint, the University of Waterloo student paper]</em></p><p>The best thing about Ottawa is the rare opportunity to develop personal
relationships with national symbols. To fold them right into the fabric of everyday life - the backdrop of average days. </p><p>The symbols I've always felt apperciated this. That for Ottawans they can just be normal - it must be a strain to be so grand for so many people. You can tell the Center block does
enjoy now and again just being someone's office. </p><p>With this weaving into mundane comes a deep sense of ownership. I have a direct, deep, relationship with the national, public symbols I
grew up around. </p><p>Parliament HIll isn't anyone else's hill. Its My
Hill. Its where my Dad worked, and where I annoyingly point out to
anyone who'll listen and many who don't, <em>that my Dad worked there</em>. It's where my friends worked summers as tour
guides and pages. </p><p>When I worked downtown I'd waste 5-10 minutes walking around my Hill enjoying the views. </p><p>The
Hill is even the capstone of a ramblingly 45 minutes tour of Ottawa
landmarks that is the classic-James-Rimmer-is-taking-you-on-a-date-in-Ottawa. </p><p>It is that My Hill is just another space I exist in is why two weeks ago I stood waiting to hear a lecture on World War One and
Henri Bourrassa at the spot where they shot Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. At the time I made
small talk and tried not to gawk too obviously at the Members of
Parliament rushing about for the Iraq War vote. </p><p>
Two weeks later, they killed a man from where I stood.</p><p>
The lecture was a free, public, open event part of a series to
commemorate the start of World War One. It could have been held
anywhere, but as the organizer was an MP, the Centre Block it was. It
was in the Reading Room, used for, among other things, the finance
committee and the opposition caucus, one of the forums that was attacked
Oct. 22.</p><p>
My Parliament Hill is where abstract ideas — openness, transparency, and
bilingualism — become hard realities in stone. Parliament’s door is
physically open and bureaucrats answer committees’ questions in the
Reading Room. Canada’s founding languages are carved into the gothic
curves.</p><p>
Freedom of assembly becomes protestors’ daily vigils on the lawn;
freedom of speech the placards denouncing njustice.</p><p>My Parliament Hill is a living space, a worked in, played in place. Its
lawn is for yoga at lunch, protests in the afternoon, and
sound-and-light shows with grandparents in the evenings. The statues are
for necking teenagers to hide behind and the benches for book readers. </p><p>
This life breathes air into our democracy, making our values and principles real, lived.</p><p>
It means our liberties do not fossilize into the stones they are carved
into. My Parliament Hill is not a museum to our grandparents’ values; it
is a monument to our current principles.</p><p>I was gripped by the attack. I couldn't turn off the news. My space, my Hill had been attacked. I played memories of the halls on loops in my head. I relived those halls as I feared deeply I would never get to live, just as a citizen, in those halls again. </p><p>As an Ottawan I've always had the luck to live in national symbols. To know them personally, to know them normally. I hope that connection is not one of the victims of the acts. </p>
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