December 2006

Last August I was in Washington DC to work with clients, and spent a few days beforehand to take in some sightseeing. It was my first trip to Washington, and as I strolled down the Mall, it struck me how French this city is, (in terms of the Classic-revival design favoured by Napoleon) and indeed it was French artist and engineer, Major L'Enfant (1755-1825), who had formed a friendship with George Washington while serving in the Revolutionary War who devised a master plan for the city.

The CEO of the company I was working with, graciously offered to show me the monuments lit up at night. The mood in each of the presidential memorials was one of reverence, and I felt a spiritual presence as I read the famous inscriptions about freedom and democracy on the walls.

It's one thing to read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in books or hear them in a movie, but quite another to experience the impact of these words when they are infused with the iconic power of place that is Washington. The message of freedom and democracy expressed in these temples provide a startling contrast to the realities of life in America today.

The Temple of Invention.

The Temple of Invention was modeled after the Parthenon of Athens and its purpose was to house models and plans of inventions submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. It was to be a monument to American ingenuity and enterprise. President Andrew Jackson, who commissioned it, wanted establish "a temple of the useful arts" to showcase not only patents (such was the importance of invention in its role of defining the newly centralized democracy), but the material wealth and resourcefulness of America, through displays of historical documents, artworks and geological specimens.

"As a showcase of American genius, it would extol the inventive, democratic, entrepreneurial energy of the Republic —itself still a new and not-quite-proven invention. The U.S. patent law then required inventors to submit scale models of their creations, which would be put on public display."
— Charles J. Robertson, author of Temple of Invention, a new history of the Patent Office.

Our tour felt a little bit like a pilgrimage, and I learned later that Pierre Charles L'Enfant, designed the memorials to be temples; not religious temples, but republican temples, representing the highest ideals and noblest aspirations of a new republic.

Jeffrey F. Meyer, a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina, maps out a pilgrimage route based on L'Enfant's grid: down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House ("the axis of power"); from the White House to the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial ("the axis of Enlightenment"); and from Arlington Cemetery back to the Capitol by way of the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall ("the axis of memory").

"One piece of L'Enfant's original plan that is missing, Meyer explains, is a national church, "the victim of total disinterest on the part of the poverty-stricken new republic." Its surrogate, he suggests, is the cathedral-like National Archives, shrine for our documentary treasures, sacred relics and hallowed national scriptures--the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, "the greatest sacramental sign of the new republic."
—Source: Myths in Stone: Religious Dimensions of Washington, D.C (Review).

It occurred to me that just as all Muslims are obliged to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime, Americans should be obliged to make a pilgrimage to the temples in Washington DC to experience the message of the founding fathers, and discuss to what extend society is actualizing these ideals. I also think there should be a ritual for every US president-elect to visit the Temples for the same reasons.

I floated this idea with a group of American women I met while site-seeing and they loved the idea. They asked me what would be the Canadian equivalent. Hmmm. Good question!

I said our temples are the mountains, the rivers, the lakes and oceans of our country. Why? Because the archetype of Canada is a place, according to cultural anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille, and I believe he's right. Ask anybody about Canada, and they say it's a nice place, or a beautiful place, or a safe place, and people move here for those reasons. (We've made headlines this year for having one of the worst environmental records of all industrialized nations, so encouraging pilgrimages to our temples would be good medicine.) The archetype for America is a dream or an idea, and people who move to the USA usually do so because they have a dream.