A CONVENIENCE TO MOST, BUT A NECESSITY FOR OTHERS, ELEVATORS CAN MAKE OR BREAK EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT’S ON THE OTHER SIDE.
Like a magic portal, when these beautiful displays of human intellect and imagination shut their doors, they present a new setting to explore upon exit.
If you find that the only elevator is out of service, or that your lecture hall doesn’t even have one, tough luck. I went on every single elevator used by U of O students, with one notable exception… Here’s what I found:
1 Nicholas
“Hi, I’m writing for the Fulcrum and I’m going to test your elevators.”
Now, that’s a sentence even the most depraved fraternity hazing committees couldn’t conjure up. In this case, I said it to the Securitas guard at the front desk, after I stepped into an out-of-service elevator and he escorted me up.
This elevator is operated by the rental corporation District Realty who leases commercial units to the Court Challenges Program and the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa. They may also be your landlord! This lift gets points for hospitality. The guard served as my guide and narrated the quick journey to and from the 15th floor.
He explained the original elevator I stumbledinto was out of service because it often gets stuck between the third and fourth floor. On the way down, we actually met the janitor that gets stuck there. He provided a firsthand account of his harrowing experiences.
All in all, the working elevator was a quick and comfortable ride, and I’d gladly visit again.
Faculty of Social Sciences (FSS)
You have options if you’re headed to your first-year lecture hall. The two main elevator systems are reliable options, but, as with any well-traveled building on campus, you may be waiting a minute to make your way up or down.
This building hosts a seldom travelled third elevator that connects the hallway to the bottom floor of Room 1007.
If you want everyone to know you’re taking the elevator – no need to shout – the elevator does it for you as it chimes a 950hz tone to warn you of the elevator’s closing.
The two-door design adds more room for malfunctions, but allows for a long waiting period between the door opening and closing. This is a great spot to catch up on your required readings from however many weeks ago.
University Centre (UCU)
The first rule of elevator club is you do not talk about how you got to the elevator.
This industrial machine takes you from the first floor to the UCU basement. One of two accessible methods of getting to the basement where the UOSU Food Bank, docUcentre, and various UOSU offices are hosted.
Not present on public floor plans and maps, there’s a second basement underneath UCU accessible with the service elevator. If you read as much internet horror that I do, you’d know anywhere that’s not on the map and looks bigger on the inside than the outside is a general no-go.
I did not dare step foot in this secret basement, because I have no time to get caught in a temporal anomaly or stumble into any pocket dimensions.
With its purely utilitarian design, this elevator takes student use as an afterthought. The screech of the door as it closed made me shudder at the thought of a student in a wheelchair getting stuck in the gap.
Fauteux Hall (FTX)
Now this faux-leather composite veneer panelling can only be described as tasteful. There are one and a half elevators in here, as the main elevator is a half-floor down and only accessible by an open-air chair lift that requires a key to operate.
Brooks Complex
This might just be the mould talking, but I love the Brooks elevator.
The buttons don’t really work, it takes its time going up and down floors, and it can get claustrophobic. If you do get stuck, spend your time browsing the 3 Brothers pizza & poutine specials on the ad board.
Advanced Research Complex (ARC)
Off the beaten path from the rest of campus, this LEED Gold-certified photonics and Earth sciences research centre hosts two elevators: a massive service elevator and a normal elevator to the side.
The service elevator, about the size of an IKEA parking lot, produces a deep rumbling uncharacteristic of other elevators on campus. U of O’s second crown research hub is their campus in Kanata North, and NO – I am NOT going to Kanata.
Gendron Hall, Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Genomics (CARIG), Biosciences Complex
Have you ever felt like being inside a tin can?
Gendron and Biosciences’ elevator, as well as the gate-locked one inside CAREG, provide a premium tin can experience as you’re shuffled up and down the labyrinth that is the combined Biosciences Complex.
Simard Hall (SMD)
If you’ve ever played the hit indie game Undertale (2016), you’d be familiar with the long elevator. I think a full trip up the Simard elevator may take even longer.
It provided a consistent experience from floor to floor, and I never felt like the doors were never going to open. Low bar, I know.
Minto Sports Complex (MNO)
Smells funny. Both of them, as a matter of fact. Two perfectly serviceable elevators from end-to-end of the Minto Sports Complex. The one closest to the highway leads to parking floors, but I got out of there as fast as I could due to the smell reminiscent of airplane scent.
200 Lees Campus, Faculty of Health Sciences
A short walk and even shorter train away from the rest of campus. 200 Lees is the new home of the Faculty of Health Sciences and features an impressive elevator system with RGB lighting and a smooth experience from floor-to-floor.
200 Lees Campus, Building
Yes, it is safe to drink the water. A stark contrast to 200 Lees FHS, the E Building is borderline dilapidated and feels at home in Resident Evil: Requiem.
The elevator’s licence was about to expire in a few days, but the lift itself wasn’t the worst experience. Containing nursing, athletics, and health sciences labs, its empty corridors feels like one of the few places that you can experience the adrenaline of urban exploration without trespassing.
Learning Crossroads (CRX)
CRX hosts perfectly fine elevators. Its issues are not the fault of its construction, but of the onslaught of students commuting to class, administration, and club functions.
I think more clubs should take risks when booking rooms. I want a uOMUNA General Assembly in a Biosciences lab, a uOttawa Cinema Club watch party in the Roger Guindon Hall, and a chili contest in Fauteux. If we maximize our vertical space, we could easily fit next year’s UOSU Winter General Assembly in the hot dog stand outside the 90U parking lot.
1 Stewart (STT)
Hosting one classroom and some research/administrative facilities, most students have never even heard of this building across from the Ottawa Art Gallery. Fortunately, that means only a fraction of students have risked the 1 Stewart elevator.
This elevator is the most unique, antiquated elevator in the main campus. The mechanism to get to any floor besides the first is keycard-locked, meaning you can open and close it and nothing else.
The non-illuminating buttons look like they were taken off a payphone, the door (barely wide enough for a wheelchair) slams open and shut, but they didn’t skimp on the panelling of the elevator that resembles real slabs of pine.
100 Marie Curie (MCE)
This elevator is the only one on campus with a permanent warning to take the stairs and is also the only accessible connection to the Academic Accommodations Service’s offices on the fourth floor.
Home of the campus pharmacy and Byward Family Health’s EMG clinic, this elevator made noises uncharacteristic and unbecoming of a safe elevator.
School of Information Technology and Engineering Building (STE)
What’s going on? How’d I get stuck in this scary box? This elevator fails my review because I got stuck in it.
Telfer’s Executive Campus
Not operated by the U of O, but the only accessible path to its campus, the Centre for Executive Leadership houses any student that thinks they’re “too good” to sit in Hamelin Hall like the rest of us.
Telfer students studying for an Executive MBA, a Masters of Business in Complex Project Leadership, or a Telfer Executive Program may wind up on the second floor of 99 Bank, a bustling commercial complex also hosting Planet Fitness, the Rideau Club, and the office of His Excellency, V. Alfred Gray.
There’s like eight elevators here and all of them look classy and reliable.
Marion Hall (MRN)
I am not brave enough to stand on the chairlift down to the basement of Marion, but I am in awe of those who are. As for the elevator in the other half of Marion, the ride gets a little jumpy.
If you take it to the top floor, prepare to enter the splash zone. You’re greeted by PPE warning signs in front of lab equipment, so you’d better don your safety goggles and labcoat before getting off.
Roger Guindon Hall (RGN)
In a Fulcrum exclusive, this criminologist contributor took the shuttle bus to the east end to scout out the Roger Guindon Hall, a five-story complex that hosts the Faculty of Medicine and some Health Sciences courses. Sandwiched between The Ottawa Hospital’s General Campus and CHEO, they’ve got a lot of stuff here.
Unit 4 hosted a finely-aged lift with lovely curves. It smelled of fish and rumbled a lot. I lacked both the clearance and PPE necessary for Unit 5, an excursion involving biohazards.
600 Peter Morand
Quite the luxurious shuttle ride to get to the Alta Vista campus. The exterior of the school bus was grim, but rest assured that the seats are padded with leather befit for an intercity charter bus and not the bumpy benches from an average yellow bus. As this lift slowly rises to the third floor, note the vague smell of cinnamon that lingers in the air.
850 Peter Morand
I don’t really know what they do here. After waiting outside the locked door and picking up the yellow telephone at the entrance (it didn’t work), a salaryperson let me in and promptly returned to their desk. They told me they mistook me for Protection Services because I was wearing a tie under my jacket. This elevator has a deafening buzzer that goes off at every press of a button. It’s claustrophobic and a little smelly, but it gets the job done.
Tabaret Hall (TBT)
I don’t know how they got away with this one.
Tabaret’s maze of half-floors, only connected by a vertigo-inducing half-step staircase, is already an accessibility nightmare, but the elevator connecting each main floor takes the cake for untrustworthiness.
According to the Technical Standards and Safety Authority, this is safe. Legally, it holds a maximum of eight people, but I doubt the door is wide enough to fit a standard bariatric wheelchair, let alone more than four students.
On my reconnaissance trip, I found Ottawa paramedics arriving at the Tabaret basement, and when I went in a few minutes later, I found their stretcher parked unattended outside the door. Thankfully, their patient didn’t need urgent transportation to the hospital. If elevators could kill, Tabaret’s would do it.
And the worst part? It’s slow.
D’Iorio Hall (DRO)
D’Iorio’s elevator is a relic of the 70’s. Its dim LED lights show every floor you pass. I’ve always been a stickler for the rules, which is why the first thing I noticed about the elevator is that its permit expired last month. Quite frankly, it is a miracle I left alive.
Hagen Hall, 100 Laurier, SMN, 200 Wilbrod, 35U Thompson, 600 King Edward
The aforementioned buildings get a zero, because there are no elevators in these mixed-use classroom/office facilities. Were I a litigious man, I’d call up the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs,the Premier, and maybe the 20 vs. 1 guy to see if he’d win a debate on the intersectionality of heritage designations and ableism.
STEM Complex (STM)
This elevator features RGB lighting and exceptionally short loading times, slamming in my face as I went to leave.
When you leave the stainless steel interior of STEM’s elevator, you’re greeted by an inspiring look into the active manufacturing, combustion, and fluid mechanics labs. You can quickly see why Student Ambassadors avoid taking their delegations to Colonel By at all costs.
Colonel By Hall (CBY)
Last but certainly not least, Colonel By lives up to the hype. This was the only elevator where I felt that I was going to miss my class getting stuck in it.
The Colonel By experience was such a thrill that I went up and down about five times to test my luck, a fast and jerky ride comparable to the tallest rides at Canada’s Wonderland. If I got unlucky, the worst-case scenario would be a tour of the Ottawa Civic after getting my leg ripped off in the closing elevator doors.
If you’re not a thrill-seeker, there is another elevator a half-floor up that’s completely normal, but for those where a half-floor is impossible, all you’ve got is “Colonel By’s Wild Ride”.
