Ottawa Open House
Today, Ottawa had its annual Open House. For the event, local buildings that one is not likely to visit are encouraged to open their doors up and do tours.

The tours I went on today were the Lemieux Island water plant, the National Research Centre, and the old downtown train station, amongst others.

Lemieux Island was very nice for a water plant. It's finished quite ornately in marble. A neat thing they do is that they leave samples of past technology around. So, there were filter controls from the 1920s, 1970s, and late 1990s, still standing where they originally were. Now, the controls are all in a single workstation and many of the tasks are automated. They had the most informative display I saw all day.

The NRC appeared to be a very nice place to work at. Its long, straight hallways had a very cool quality to them (pictured). On either side of the hall there were state-of-the-art laboratories with nifty equipment.

The train station was a remarkable building. I can see now why there was all the fuss to keep it around. The main hall is very eloquent, coffered ceiling and all. It's the best example of Beaux-arts architecture in the city.

Last but not least, a really funny sign at the door to the main conference chamber at the NRC: