Welcome to the Red Chamber, home of the Canadian Senate and site of the Throne Speech reading to open the 36th Parliament. My name is Barry. I will be your guide today.
The aging gent behind the podium is Governor-General RomŽo LeBlanc. He has been reading for close to an hour now, his voice a bit scratchy from a touch of laryngitis.
The speech used to be read from the throne which serves as the Speaker’s chair. Perhaps it should now be called The Speech from the Podium. In any event, he’s telling us the government soon will have money to spend again on new or under-funded programs. The line for people with ideas forms on the left.
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Outside the chamber, those folks milling around and craning their necks for a look are some of the 300 MPs not allowed into the Senate but invited to the doors to hear the speech. Like children on a day trip to the library, they chatter noisily until someone shushes them quiet.
Meanwhile, for the several hundred Senators and invited guests crowded onto the floor of the chamber, the thrill of the day is as much in gawking around as it is in the speech.
It is a day to see and be seen.
It is dreadfully hot in here and one of the best spectator sports is watching these Very Important People try to stay awake.
The toughest battle usually is waged by the justices of the Supreme Court, sitting on chairs in the middle of the chamber dressed in heavy, fur-lined robes. The heat gets to them first. Today, two of the seven have nodded off for brief naps.
The crowd, as usual, is sprinkled with past political luminaries, familiar faces we stare at as we search for a memory of who they are.
There’s Sinclair Stevens, a former Tory minister forced to resign in scandal, and now in the publishing business.
Former Liberal consumer minister Judy Erola is here, though she now lobbies for big drug companies.
Former Tory cabinet minister Perrin Beattie is now the Liberal-appointed CBC president.
There’s Senator Eugene Whelan in the front row, making his Parliament Hill return after a near-death experience last winter and emergency heart surgery.
Behind him on his first day is newly minted senator Fernand Robichaud, former junior agriculture minister who at age 57 just won the Senate lottery for services rendered to Jean ChrŽtien and his country.
And of course, the crowd includes the spouses and lovers of the nation’s political leaders, all dressed to the nines – Aline ChrŽtien, Sandra Manning, Michele Dionne (Charest) and former Tory cabinet minister turned New Democrat David MacDonald, here on the arm of NDP leader Alexa McDonough.
By the end of the unusually lengthy speech, the room is stifling and half the crowd uses the official program to fan themselves.
Mercifully, the dignitaries exit quickly and the guests head out to the corridors of Parliament, where the taxpayers have generously provided tables heaped with snacks and beverage.
Parliament is open.
