ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the film The Westminster of the West directed by Gordon Sparling. The Westminster of the West is a film about Ottawa that focuses almost exclusively on the city's status as the nation's capital and on Parliament Hill. It's also the most conventional of Sparling's series of city symphonies, providing a tourist's view of the "little lumbering town" that became a "vice-regal city." when the film crew visits the famed Peace Tower, it focuses on the elaborate machine works that form the basis of its carillon. The Montreal Star noted that the film was "interesting," but complained that its narration, induced "in the spectator a somnolent feeling," The Montreal Herald noted its modernist flair: "the subject is largely a series of unusual views of the Parliament Buildings, Rideau Hall, and the Mint".
