The station is steps away from many of the Capital’s most popular tourist attractions and facilities, including the Rideau Canal, National War Memorial, ByWard Market, Château Laurier, Shaw Centre, Government Conference Centre, National Arts Centre, National Gallery of Canada, Arts Court, and much more. The station will also be within walking distance of the many shops, galleries, hotels, restaurants and businesses that make up the Downtown Rideau BIA and ByWard Market BIA.
The three entrances to Rideau station will be located along Rideau Street: adjacent to the William Street pedestrian mall on the north side of Rideau Street, and within the Rideau Centre at the Friedman Mall and at Colonel By Drive.
To help customers differentiate between the three underground downtown stations, Rideau Station will have blue accent wall tiles on the train platform level.
Station Highlights:
- Easy connection to local buses;
- The deepest of the underground stations, with platforms 26.5 metres down;
- Rough-ins for future entrances to the Rideau Centre expansion and to developments on the north side of Rideau Street;
- Illuminated “O” pylons, lantern boxes and clear directional signage at each station will provide wayfinding, customer information, and station identification;
- Passenger information displays on the platforms will show estimated train arrival times;
- Numerous accessibility features including, but not limited to: tactile wayfinding tiles, braille/tactile signage, platform edge indicator strips, dual elevators and audible and visual announcements;
- Cyclists will have access to bike racks and bike “runnels,” which will allow cyclists to easily walk their bikes up and down stairs;
- Fare gates and ticket machines equipped with customer help points to assist customers on their journey; and
- Dedicated retail space to provide services and/or amenities for customers on the go.
What’s Nearby:
- Rideau Canal and National War Memorial;
- Chateau Laurier and Shaw Centre;
- National Arts Centre and National Gallery; and
- ByWard Market and Rideau Centre.
Public Art
With Rideau Station located in Ottawa’s downtown arts and culture district, and being in close proximity to both national and local arts institutions, galleries and theatres, a “Gallery” theme has been established with Rideau Station’s two integrated art pieces to acknowledge the power of art and the creativity of Ottawa’s arts community.
The artist explains her integrated art piece as follows: “In conceiving my design for the project, I have drawn inspiration from the representation of landscape in the history of Canadian art, and from Glenn Gould’s conceptual affinity for the Canadian North as expressed in “The Idea of North,” a sound documentary made for CBC radio in 1967. The notion of the North, which has become a metaphor in the Canadian consciousness, is a symbolic location of the sublime.
Through its allegorical conjuring of the immensity and beauty of Canadian nordicity, FLOW / FLOTS pursues and prolongs this line of cultural thinking. FLOW / FLOTS also evokes the significance of the Rideau Canal and its vicinity to the Rideau Station, as well as the importance of water in Canada’s history, rooted both in the vast area of our land that it covers and in the complex network of lakes and rivers that it forms, an inestimable wealth.
Operating in a liminal zone between representation and abstraction, FLOW / FLOTS is designed to occupy the entire area of one of the concourse walls allocated to the artwork. The photographic image, featuring a shimmering and pictorially rich surface of water, is printed on the glass. The inner surface of the glass sheet is inscribed with undulating silver-coloured forms that ripple across the main image. This graphic element, created through a serigraph process using a mirror-finish fritted ceramic, serves to enhance the dynamic and sensual materiality of the work. FLOW / FLOTS will gleam and shimmer depending on its viewed distance, like a natural landscape.
Possessing a remarkable poetic intensity consonant with the site it occupies, FLOW / FLOTS offers a striking aesthetic experience. The work fuses and superimposes nature and culture, thereby expressing the distinctive identity of the Rideau Station.”
Artist’s biography
An influential figure in Canadian art, Geneviève Cadieux constructs poignant photographic works and large-scale installations that test the limits of the medium while addressing the themes of the human body and the landscape in their mutual implication. Since 2003, Cadieux has been producing artworks in urban spaces redefining the photographic object.
Featured in numerous solo exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan, Cadieux has also represented Canada at the Venice Biennale and participated in prestigious events, such as the 59th Minute: Video Art in Times Square, the Sao Paulo Biennale, and the Sidney Biennale. Solo shows of her work have been presented at: the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo; the Musée Départemental de Rochechouart; the Tate Gallery, London; the Miami Art Museum; the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. In 2011, Geneviève Cadieux received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for the excellence of her artistic accomplishments.
- Title: The shape this takes to get to that
- Artist: Jim Verburg (Toronto, ON)
The artist explains his integrated art piece as follows: “Inspired by the existing subtle grid like repetition of large white tiles throughout the station, these works invert, interpret and imagine these simple forms enlarged, shifted, mirrored or repeated – offering a subtle graphic contrast and interpretation of the space while suggesting a new option or possibility in the mundane. The work consists of seven black tiled sections that contain geometric shaped outlines made of polished stainless-steel rods. The steel catches the light and reads as white against the black of the tile, illuminating the shapes within.
Reminiscent of blueprints, sketches, and architectural drawings, each minimal tableau provides a reminder of the opportunity for creation and change.
My aim is to have the work sit in relation to, and to offer a visually pleasing connection and appropriate contrast with, Genevieve Cadieux’s work in the station. Using a similar palette of black and silver, the simple and clear graphic patterns in the work play off nicely against the photographic, subtle gradient, and translucent quality of Cadieux’s work.
This piece employs a clear, minimal and graphic visual language to offer a moment of reflection and inspiration in a busy public space where so many people visit every day. In the dynamic and culturally rich neighbourhood of the ByWard Market, Rideau Centre, and the National Gallery, this work celebrates the initial stages of, and the ongoing potential for, creativity.”
Artist’s biography
Jim Verburg is a Dutch/Canadian artist currently based in Toronto. With light as a primary inspiration, his works aim to give form to the ephemeral and intangible - using a range of methods and materials to create (deceptively) minimal and captivating layered compositions that mimic the delicate nuances of reflection, absorption, opacity, and translucence.
Recent projects include a choreographed work for the Toronto Dance Theatre (2016), a book project with Fw: Amsterdam (2018), solo exhibitions at Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto (2017), and Rodman Hall Art Centre, St Catharines Ontario (2018). He was recently awarded a prestigious Chalmers Arts Fellowship Research Grant (2017).
He’s launched solo exhibitions at Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2011), widmertheodoridis (Zurich) at VOLTA New York City (2015), the Texas Contemporary Art Fair, Houston (2015), and Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montréal (2016), with group exhibitions at The Power Plant, Toronto (2013), Luciana Caravello, Rio de Janeiro (2014), Access Gallery, Vancouver (2014), and Inman Gallery, Houston (2015).
He’s been an artist in residence at the NFB (National Film Board of Canada, Montreal 2008), G44 (Toronto 2009), The Banff Centre (2010), and Open Studio (Toronto 2014). His film For a Relationship won the 2008 Jury Prize for the Best Canadian Short Film at the Inside out Film Festival (Toronto), and was nominated for the Iris Prize (UK). His book O/ Divided/Defined, Weights, Measures, and Emotional Geometry, was awarded by Dazibao Montréal (2013) and was shortlisted for Best Printed Publication at the Gala des Arts Visual, Montréal (2014). Work from the publication was featured by Art Metropole at Art Basel Miami (2013). His most recent artist book A New Relationship Between Reflective Sides was launched at MoMA Ps1 at the New York Art Book Fair (2015), and was featured in the recent traveling Collectif Blanc exhibition Forme | Édition | Expérimentation (2016, Gatineau and Toronto).